Improving Manager Document Search for Non-Admin Users in Evolution CMS 3.1.6

Manager search bugs are especially confusing when they affect only some user roles. The donor case came from Evolution CMS 3.1.6, where document search behaved differently for non-admin users because document-group logic and role-based filtering did not line up the way the editor expected.

The key clue was in the search controller path that decides which document groups the current manager user can see. When that logic is wrong or incomplete, search results can disappear even though the documents themselves still exist and remain editable for higher-privilege users.

What to check

• The code path that resolves manager-visible document groups for the current user.
• The value of session-based group state such as manager document groups.
• Whether the role configuration and the expected search scope actually match.

This is a good reminder that manager search is not just a UI feature. It is a permission-aware query surface, and small mismatches in role logic can make it look broken only for specific users.