Thanks, #-Link-Snipped-# . Since posting the thread, I've learned more about ES. Right now, I'm in the 'fine-tuning' phase for @mention suggestions.

Let's say a user starts typing a name. Ideally, we should return multiple matches that have the starting characters, but these matches have to be relevant. I'm therefor experimenting with 'edge-ngram' tokenizer.

Here's the query I posted on a forum -

Here's how my current settings look like -

protected $settings = [
   'analysis'  => [
       'filter'    =>  [
           'autocomplete_filter'   =>  [
               'type'  =>  'edge_ngram',
               'min_gram'  =>  2,
               'max_gram'  =>  12,
           ],
       ],
       'analyzer'  =>  [
           'autocomplete' =>  [
               'type'  =>  'custom',
               'tokenizer' =>  'standard',
               'filter'    =>  ['lowercase', 'autocomplete_filter']
           ]
       ]
   ]
];

and

public function buildQueryPayload()
{
   return [
       'must'  =>  [
           'multi_match'   =>  [
               'query'     => $this->builder->query,
               'fields'    => ['first_name', 'last_name', 'name^2'],
               'type'      =>  'phrase_prefix'
           ]
       ]
   ];
}

This is my best try so far; but I'm not happy with the results. I've the following in my User model -

public function toSearchableArray() {
   return [
       'first_name'    =>  $this->first_name,
       'last_name'     =>  $this->last_name,
       'name'          =>  $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name
   ];
}

I'm thinking of adding an extra field from my database to the index called last_activity_at and then sort the suggested users according to those who've the most recent last_activity.

Can someone suggest if I need to make changes to my filter, analyzer or the query? The end result I want to achieve is -

User types: @Joh . The system should return

1. 'John Doe' [most recently active]
2. 'John Doe' [second most recently active]
3. 'Johan Kent'
4. 'Johar Woe'

... like that. If the last_activity_at field is null, ES should only match based upon the closest search.

Would welcome suggestions.