Search Across the Platform

Search Across the Platform

1. What it is

The search bar at the top of every page lets anyone find people, records, navigation destinations, admin settings, and content from any enabled app — all from one field. It also acts as a gateway to Ask AI: the first row in the results panel is always an option to ask the question instead of searching for it.

• Access: Every logged-in user on the desktop web experience. No app licence or role is required — the search bar is part of the platform.
• What it is not: This is a quick-find lookahead, not a full-text document search engine. It returns the top handful of matches per category so you can jump straight to the right record. For deep content search within a single app (such as filtering by date, status, or custom fields), use that app’s own search or list page.

2. Standing it up

Search works immediately with no setup. The only admin-managed features are the synonym dictionary and the per-app search toggles, both of which are optional:

1. No activation required. The search bar appears for every logged-in user as soon as the tenant exists. Results are scoped to each user’s permissions and enabled apps automatically.
2. Review the zero-result report. Go to Admin → Search relevance (/admin/search). The page shows the most frequent searches that returned nothing in the last 30 days. Use these to identify gaps in your synonym dictionary.
3. Add synonyms for your organisation’s terminology. Click Add synonym and enter the term and its aliases — for example, mapping FY to Fiscal Year, or PTO to Paid Time Off. This lets employees search in either form and find the same content.
4. Check per-app search toggles. Three apps — Libraries, Wikis, and Drive — have an Include in Global Search toggle in their individual app settings. All three default to on. If your organisation has a large library or wiki corpus that clutters results, consider turning the toggle off for that app — employees can still search within the app itself.
5. Verify it works. Type a synonym term into the search bar and confirm that results for both the term and its aliases appear. The synonym cache refreshes within 10 minutes.

3. How it fits together

Categories and app gating. A single search fans out across every enabled app and several platform-wide surfaces. The platform-wide surfaces — people, tasks, personal notes, bookmarks, navigation, and admin settings — are always searched regardless of app licensing. App-specific categories only run when that app is enabled for the tenant. The full list of searchable apps includes (among others): Shifts, Leave, Time & Attendance, Timesheets, Chat, Forms, Surveys, Inspections, Wikis, Libraries, Drive, Workspace, Service Desk, Contracts, Onboarding, Offboarding, Recognition, Performance Reviews, Goals, OKRs, Job Board, Skills & Certifications, Digital Signage, Bookings, Calendar, E-Signature, and Company Store. Within each category, results are further filtered by the searching user’s role and permissions. A user never sees a record they could not open directly.

Permission model. Each category enforces its own access rules:

• Own records — personal notes, bookmarks, meal waivers, HR files, leave balances, and direct messages show only the searching user’s own data.
• Own + team — shifts, leave requests, absence reports, timesheets, and performance reviews show the user’s own records plus their direct reports’ (for managers).
• Admin-only — admin settings, App Builder templates, Digital Signage screens, and billing invoices require an admin or app-admin role.
• App visibility rules — libraries, wikis, Power Tables, Live Boards, surveys, and calendar events respect each record’s audience or read-permission settings.
• App enablement — covers row-level enablement, bundle inclusion, and active subscriptions. If an app is entitled through any of these paths, its results appear.

People search. The people directory gets its own matching layer with three techniques:

• Fuzzy matching — tolerant of typos. “Annup” still finds “Anup”.
• Phonetic matching — tolerant of spelling variations. “Anoop” still finds “Anup”, because both names sound alike.
• Preferred-name aware — if an employee goes by “Chris” but their legal name is “Christos”, searching either form finds them.

It searches name, preferred name, email, and employee ID by default. Broader profile fields (city, bio, custom directory fields) are only included once the query reaches 4 characters, to keep short queries focused on names.

Navigation shortcuts and sitemap. Typing a destination name (like “Leave settings” or “Dashboard”) returns quick-jump links to pages in the platform. These come from two sources — a curated shortcut list and the platform sitemap — which are merged and deduplicated, capped at 5 results. Admin-only pages (anything under /admin/) are hidden from non-admin users. Shortcuts are also gated by app enablement — a shortcut to a disabled app’s page does not appear.

Settings search. When an admin types a settings-related term, the results include matching admin settings pages with their navigation path. This is powered by the Settings Hub registry — the same catalog that drives the Settings Hub search — so an admin can jump to “Payroll export” or “SSO” directly from the search bar.

Synonyms and query expansion. When an admin adds a synonym, the search bar automatically expands matching queries before they reach any category. This is invisible to the user — they type “FY” and results for both “FY” and “Fiscal Year” appear. Synonyms can be one-way or two-way, and they are cached per tenant for 10 minutes after any change.

Synonyms are a search-relevance tool — they are distinct from the Translation Glossary (under Admin → Translation), which handles localization of the interface. The two do not interact.

Ask AI integration. When Ask AI is enabled, the first row of results is a pinned “Ask” prompt that shows the user’s typed query. Pressing Enter on that row opens the Ask AI sidebar and submits the question there — it does not answer inline. This row appears on every keystroke and does not wait for search results to load.

Recent searches and starter suggestions. The search bar remembers up to 6 recent queries per user. Focusing the empty field shows two sections:

• Recent — the last few queries this user clicked a result from. These are stored in the browser, scoped per user and per hostname, so shared devices do not leak one employee’s searches to the next.
• Try asking — up to 3 suggested starter questions drawn from the tenant’s enabled agents (only shown when Ask AI is enabled). Clicking a starter opens the Ask AI sidebar with that question. Starter suggestions are per-user — an agent that is not available to a particular user does not generate starters for them.

Search logging. Every search query is logged with its result count and source (platform search, in-app search, mobile search, or Ask AI). These logs are retained for 90 days and are automatically cleaned up. They feed the zero-result suggestions on the Admin → Search relevance page, helping admins see which terms their employees search for but find nothing.

Semantic search top-up. For a few content-heavy apps — including Workspace and Contracts — the search bar supplements keyword matching with meaning-based matching. If the keyword search returns thin results and the query is long enough to carry intent, the platform also looks for records whose content is semantically similar to the query. This happens automatically and requires no admin configuration.

Desktop only. The global search bar is visible on medium-and-larger screens (it is hidden on narrow or mobile-sized viewports). The mobile experience (/m/) does not include the platform search bar.

4. Running it

Searching

1. Click the search bar (placeholder: “Search or ask anything…”) or press Cmd+K (Mac) / Ctrl+K (Windows) from any page. The shortcut focuses the search bar and selects any existing text, so you can start typing immediately.
2. Type at least 2 characters. After a brief pause (about 300 milliseconds of no typing), results appear in a dropdown grouped by category — people, navigation, settings, and then app-specific sections such as shifts, leave, forms, wikis, tasks, and more.
3. Use Arrow keys to navigate between results, Enter to open the selected result, Esc to close the panel.
4. To ask instead of searching, select the pinned Ask AI row at the top (or press Enter when it is highlighted). This hands the question to the Ask AI sidebar for a conversational answer.
5. Clicking a result saves the query to your recent searches, which appear the next time you focus the empty search bar.
6. When you are inside the Drive app, pressing Enter with no search results navigates directly to Drive’s full search page for that query.

Managing synonyms

1. Go to Admin → Search relevance (/admin/search).
2. Click Add synonym. Enter the term (up to 120 characters) and one or more aliases, separated by commas, semicolons, or line breaks.
3. Leave Two-way on (the default) if you want searches for any alias to also expand to the term and the other aliases. Turn it off for a one-way expansion (the alias expands to the term, but not the reverse).
4. Synonyms take effect within about 10 minutes (the cache window). No restart is needed.
5. The page shows a Searches that found nothing (last 30 days) panel with the most frequent zero-result queries as suggestions. Click any suggested term to pre-fill a new synonym with that term.
6. To manage synonyms in bulk, use Export to download a CSV and Import CSV to upload changes. The CSV columns are: term, aliases (comma- or semicolon-separated), bidirectional, and active. Existing terms are matched by name and updated on import.
7. Each synonym can be individually deactivated without deleting it. Set the Status to inactive to pause it.

Controlling which apps appear in search

For Libraries, Wikis, and Drive, an admin can turn off their inclusion in platform search:

1. Go to the app’s page (e.g. Libraries → Settings, Wikis → Settings, or Drive → Settings).
2. Find the Include in Global Search toggle.
3. Toggle it off to remove that app’s content from platform search results.

All three default to on. No other app has an individual search toggle — all other enabled apps are included in search automatically whenever they are enabled for the tenant.

Turning a toggle off does not affect the app’s own in-app search — it only removes that app’s records from the cross-platform search bar. The change takes effect immediately for new searches.

Understanding the results panel

The results panel is a dropdown anchored to the search bar. It shows results grouped by category, each with an icon and the record’s title, a subtitle (such as the app name or a breadcrumb path), and a brief description when available. The panel scrolls vertically and is keyboard-navigable.

At the top, the pinned Ask AI row appears whenever the query is 2 or more characters and Ask AI is enabled. Below it, categories appear in a fixed order: navigation shortcuts, settings, people, and then app-specific categories in the order they are evaluated.

Reviewing search gaps

Go to Admin → Search relevance. The Searches that found nothing panel shows the most-searched zero-result terms from the last 30 days, ranked by frequency. This is the fastest way to discover terminology gaps in your organisation — terms employees use that don’t match how content is titled or tagged. Adding a synonym for the top terms in this list is the highest-impact search improvement an admin can make.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Synonym — Term	Admin → Search relevance → Add synonym	(none)	The word or phrase the search bar should recognise for expansion
Synonym — Aliases	Admin → Search relevance → Add synonym	(none)	One or more alternate forms that the term should expand to
Synonym — Two-way	Admin → Search relevance → Add synonym	On	When on, searching for any alias also expands to the term and other aliases. When off, only the term expands to its aliases
Synonym — Active	Admin → Search relevance → Add synonym	On	When off, the synonym is paused — it stays saved but does not expand queries
Include Libraries in Global Search	Libraries → Settings	On	When off, library items do not appear in platform search results
Include Wikis in Global Search	Wikis → Settings	On	When off, wiki pages do not appear in platform search results
Include Drive in Global Search	Drive → Settings	On	When off, Drive files do not appear in platform search results

6. More help

• Search FAQ — specific questions about what the search bar finds, result limits, and troubleshooting (when available).
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about search and navigation from these articles.
• Settings Hub — admin settings are also searchable from the Settings Hub (Admin → Settings) using the same catalog the search bar draws from.