Each Gradual community has a search engine available to all users, whether they are logged in members or just visiting your community. This allows users to search the entire environment for keywords or phrases, and find people, content, events, pages, discussions, and more, related to what they're searching for.
Search result display settings
Community admins can choose how search results appear in their community.
To update this setting:
Go to the admin dashboard
Open Customization
Find Global Search Result Display
Select either Default Categorized View or List View
Default Categorized View keeps the existing search experience, where results are grouped by feature type.
List View shows all matching results in a single list ranked by relevance, instead of grouping them by feature. In List View, results load 20 at a time, and users can click Load More to continue viewing results.
User Experience
Users can enter a word or phrase in the search bar at the top of the community. The system will display results for matching items across the community. Search results can appear in either the default categorized view or List View, depending on your community settings. Page results display the page title and a short snippet from the page content that includes the matching keyword or phrase, so users can quickly understand why the page appears in search.
Space-restricted assets, or items within a secret club, will only appear to those who are part of the space or club.
The search function will return relevant results from:
The search function shows the total number of results for that word or phrase in the community. In the default categorized view, results are also organized by item type.
Visitor Search Bar
Visitors to your community (users who are not logged in) can now use the search function to find relevant forum posts, content, events, and more.
Events, content, pages, forum posts, etc. that are marked as 'All Members' or 'Restricted to Spaces' will not display in the visitor or public search as users must be logged in to see these items.
The People section is blocked from public search for users who are not logged in; visitors cannot search for members or details of members from their profiles.
If the community is set to private, visitors will not be able to see the search bar or function, and must log in to search.
Notes & Considerations
The system will order the results by relevancy:
Results with the search term in the title or the member's name
Results with the search term in the member's company or job title
Results with the search term in the subtitle
Results with the search term in the description
Results with the search term in the member's bio
Results with the search term in the agenda
Results with the search term in the speakers or authors
Results with the search term in or as the tag
In List View, search results load 20 at a time. Users can select Load More to view the next set of results.
This search engine does not identify or suggest terms when the entry is misspelled
The URL will include parameters such as the query string and type
This is great if you need to guide users to all results with that term or phrase