Search User Guide
The search functionality in Content Hub allows you to quickly find the information you need, whether it's documentation, tutorials, or specific content. With advanced filtering options and intuitive keyword matching, you can easily refine your results to locate relevant resources. This guide will walk you through the different search features, including tips on how to optimize your queries and navigate through the results for a seamless experience.
Sections
Overview
Content Hub search allows users to retrieve documents based on keywords or phrases without using advanced query options or complex filters. When you perform a search, our platform scans indexed data across different fields (such as titles, tags, description fields, and content) for matches based on relevance scoring.
Key aspects of Content Hub search include:
- Full-text search: Searches across all text fields in the documents.
- Relevance ranking: Results are ranked based on how well they match the search terms.
- Basic matching: Supports partial matches and handles common linguistic variations, like stemming (e.g., searching for "run" will match "running").
- Natural language processing: Incorporates basic processing to handle common queries and word variations.
This is ideal for straightforward queries where complex filtering or conditions aren't necessary.
Filters
Content Hub search includes several filters to help you narrow your results and find exactly what you're looking for. Here's an overview of the available filters and how they work:
- Display Results Matching: This filter allows you to specify which fields you want the keywords to match. Fields available to filter on are Title, Description, Content, and Tags. All fields are included by default.
- Location: Use the location filter to search for content stored in specific areas within the platform. This is particularly useful when you know where the information should be located but want to search for a certain keyword within that area.
- Date Modified: This filter enables you to narrow your results by the date the content was last modified. You can specify a date range allowing you to quickly find the most recent or historical content.
- File Type: If you're looking for a specific type of document, such as a PDF, Word document, image, or spreadsheet, this filter helps you isolate results by file format. Select from all file types in the platform to limit your results to only those formats.
- File Size: The file size filter allows you to specify a size range for your search results. This can be useful when looking for larger files like videos or presentations, or when trying to avoid files below a certain size threshold.
These filters can be combined to refine your search results further, giving you more control over the content you retrieve.
Results
After performing a search query, results will be returned in two categories: Files and Stories. Admins can choose whether File or Stories are returned first in the list in Platform Configuration.
File Results include the file title, a thumbnail of the file, the file type, date last updated, an excerpt from the file if available, the location of the file, and a count for how many times the search term is found within the file. If the file can be found in multiple locations within the platform only one instance will be displayed in the search results list, the user can open a detailed view showing them the full list of locations the file is published in that they have permission to view. From the File Results list, users can open the full file, or open the pages containing the search term - making it easier for them to find the exact context they are looking for. Files and individual pages within a file can be added to Pitch Builder directly from the search results list allowing users to create personalized documents without leaving the search page.
Story Results include the story title, a thumbnail of the story, date last updated, an excerpt from the story description field if available, and the story's location. From the Story Results list, users can open, share, bookmark, like, or add to an existing Room without leaving the search page.
Advanced Search
The advanced search feature allows users to refine and customize their search queries beyond basic keyword searches. This guide will walk you through the various advanced search options, including Boolean operators, field-specific searches, and other techniques to help you find exactly what you need with ease.
Terms:
- A search query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.
- A Single Term is a single word such as "test" or "hello".
- A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "hello dolly".
- Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below).
Fields:
When performing a search you can either specify a field, or use the default field.
NOTE: The default field in Advanced Search is All fields.
Field names are: Title, Description, Text, Tags. Title searches for File and Story Titles, Description searches within the Story description field, Text searches the content within files published in the system, Tags searches for tags associated with Files and Stories.
You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for.
As an example, if you want to find the document entitled "The Right Way" which contains the text "don't go this way", you can enter:
title:"The Right Way" AND text:go
Note: The field is only valid for the term that it directly precedes, so the query
title:Do it right
Will only find "Do" in the title field. It will find "it" and "right" in the default field.
Modifiers:
Advanced Search supports modifying query terms to provide a wide range of searching options.
Wildcard Searches
Bigtincan supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrase queries).
To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol.
To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.
The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:
te?t
Multiple character wildcard searches look for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:
test*
You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term.
te*t
Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.
Fuzzy Search
Bigtincan supports fuzzy searches. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a Single word Term. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search:
roam~
This search will find terms like foam and roams.
Boosting a Term
Bigtincan’s default results order is Relevance, which creates a list of results based on the relevance of terms found. To boost a term use the caret, "^", symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.
Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a search result by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for “Sales Enablement” and you want the term "Sales" to be more relevant. Boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type:
Sales^4 Enablement
This will make documents with the term Content appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example:
"Sales Enablement"^4 "Sales Training"
Boolean Operators
Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Advanced Search supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators(Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).
OR
The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR.
To search for documents that contain either "Sales Enablement" or just "Sales" use the query:
"Sales Enablement" Sales
or
"Sales Enablement" OR Sales
AND
The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
To search for documents that contain "Sales Enablement" and "Sales Training" use the query:
"Sales Enablement" AND "Sales Training"
+
The "+" or required operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in a field of a single document.
To search for documents that must contain "Sales" and may contain "Enablement" use the query:
+Sales Enablement
NOT
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT.
To search for documents that contain "Sales Enablement" but not "Sales Training" use the query:
"Sales Enablement" NOT "Sales Training"
Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:
NOT "Sales Enablement"
-
The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol.
To search for documents that contain "Sales Enablement" but not "Sales Training" use the query:
"Sales Enablement" -"Sales Training"
Grouping
Advanced Search supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.
To search for either "Sales" or "Learning" and "platform" use the query:
(sales OR learning) AND platform
This eliminates any confusion and makes sure that “platform” must exist and either the term “Sales” or “Learning” may exist.
Field Grouping
Advanced Search supports using parentheses to group multiple clauses to a single field.
To search for a title that contains both the word "training" and the phrase "Sales Enablement" use the query:
title:(+training +"sales enablement")
Escaping Special Characters
Advanced Search supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are
+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \
To escape these characters use the \ before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2 use the query:
\(1\+1\)\:2
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