Cross posted with pictures on Stack Exchange: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/220145/get-recent-files-in-global-file-manager-dolphin.

I just converted from a Fedora 20 KDE to an OpenSUSE 13.2 KDE, but I can't get my file management boxes right. What I see in Gimp, with a "recently used", is precisely what I want--but every other application has this lousy, impoverished left-side menu. I'm pretty sure I've set everything to use Dolphin; I've set it in the system default handlers. I've installed Nepomuk, which ALMOST gives me what i want in a straight-up Dolphin session, but nothing seems to help with file dialogs, which never have anything like my precious Recently Used option. This is a major nuisance for me since, as a web professional, I do lots of downloading and uploading and that Recently Used option saves major amounts of time and clicking.

Any suggestions?

You'll need something like http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/?content=145878 (but I don't know whether it's still maintained/functional)

RecentDocuments are found in ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments and ~/.local/share/RecentDocuments, but they're organized as desktop services (ie. textfiles with metainformations)

While I never felt demand for such, it's actually quite surprising that this isn't a stock kio slave -shrug-