Searching your digital workplace
Searching your digital workplace
Search is an effective method for locating information within your digital workplace. However, due to the amount of information, it can sometimes be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for, especially when your search term contains common words. To help you narrow down your search results, you can include advanced search operators in your search terms, perform post search filtering of results, and use search spellcheck suggestions.
Search basics
When you perform a search where the search term is a single word search will return all content and users that contain that word. However, if you perform a search with two or more words, the results will include content and users that have all of the terms in them. For example, if your search term is vacation calendar, your results will include content that contains both vacation and calendar.
Search does not differentiate between capital and lowercase letters. Vacation and vacation will return the same results.
Basic search terms like these can result in a large number of results. While these can be filtered, you can reduce the initial number of results by including advanced search operators in your initial search term.
Spellcheck suggestions
After performing a search for content, but not members, the search results page will suggest an alternative search term when your term has no results or your term closely matches a common term in your digital workplace. Clicking this suggestion performs a new search using the suggested term.
These suggestions are based on the current language, the titles of existing content, and the titles of existing locations (Pages, Spaces, Channels) in your workplace. Additionally, these suggestions will never be combined or split versions of your original search term.
Search History
When performing a search from the Advanced Search page, you can quickly rerun prior search queries that you've run. When you first click on the blank search box, you will be shown a list of up 10 of your previous queries (in order of recency). As you type your new query, this list will update to display similar previous queries. You can select any of these past queries to run that same search again.
You can remove individual queries from your history by clicking the x next to them, or clear your entire history by clicking Clear Search History (found at the bottom of the list of previous queries).
Your search history is unique to you, other users will have their own. However, anonymous users (user's not signed into the digital workplace) will not receive this list of past queries.
Filtering search results
After performing a search with your query you receive a list of all matched items. You can further filter these results using the provided filters. Click the Advanced Filter button (+ Add Filter button if a filter is already applied) provides the following filter options:
- Content type: Filter results to only show blogs, documents, events, forum topics, microblog posts, pages, people, spaces, or wiki articles. Multiple content type filters can be selected.
- Author: Filter results to show content created or updated by a single author. Only a single Author filter can be applied to search results. Adding an additional Author filter will replace the existing one.
- Last updated: Filter results to show content that was last updated during a specific date range. If the content was never updated, the creation date will be used. Only a single Last updated filter can be applied to search results. Adding an additional Last updated filter will replace the existing one.
- Space: Filter results to show content under a specific Space. Only a single Space filter can be applied to search results. Adding an additional Space filter will replace the existing one.
- Label: Filter results by Label. Label categories are shown collapsed. Selecting the category will expand the list of Labels. You can select a Label to apply it as a filter. Multiple Label filters can be selected.
Check the "Include Archived Content" option will include archived content in the search results.
Searching the hub from a spoke
In a networked enterprise, when you are performing a search from the Advanced Search page of a spoke, you can toggle whether the search will look in the current Spoke or the Hub by selecting the corresponding workplace tab. When switching tabs, any search will be rerun on the new location using any existing Content Type and Last Updated filters.
There are some limitations to searching the hub from a spoke:
- Related People content is not presented in the Hub Search results.
- You cannot conduct a search with the advanced filters of Author, Labels or Space
Networked Administrators must enable a Spoke's ability to search the Networked Enterprise Hub from the Enterpise Administration Panel.
Advanced search operators
Include these operators in your search terms to pinpoint the information you are looking for:
| Operator | Usage |
|---|---|
| " " | Search for an exact phrase.
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+ | Search for items that contain multiple words by prepending + to additional words.
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- | Search for items that contain a word, but not other words, by prepending - to the additional words.
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AND | Search for items that contain a word and another word.
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| OR | Search for items that contain any combination of the provided words. OR is inserted by default between the components of a search term, except when + or - are used.
|
| * | Search for items that contain a partial word followed by any number of characters, any number of characters followed by a partial word, or a partial word followed by any number of characters and another partial word.
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| ? | Search for items that contain a partial word followed a single character, a single character followed by a partial word, or a partial word followed by a single character and another partial word.
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| " "~ | Search for items that contain specified words within close proximity to each other.
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| ~ | Search for items that are similar to the search word. You can specify the number of characters that can be different.
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Combining operators
You can chain together the advanced operators to form a single search term. If you are not using + or - operators, the components of your term will be treated as having OR values between them. For example:
"annual report" budget will return all items that contain "annual report", or contain budget anywhere, or have both "annual report", and budget anywhere.
You can specify that both components should be included by inserting AND into the search term:
"annual report" AND budget will return all items that contain "annual report" and contains the word budget anywhere.
Applying + or - to a component of the search term effectively also applies an AND between both components of the search term:
"annual report" +budget will return all items that contain "annual report", and contain budget anywhere.