Refining Search Results

Overview

If you are getting a huge set of search results when trying to search something in Kayako, there are ways to refine the search results by powering up the search queries with minimal effort using modifiers. 

Diagnosis

The search bar at the top portion of Kayako is what you will use to run powerful searches that can lurk through everything you have stored in Kayako, from conversations (tickets) and Help Center articles to users and organizations. Your searches will cover titles, subjects, body content, names, identities, tags, priorities, statuses, attachments – even custom fields.

Often, searching leads to a huge result set and it gets time-consuming for you to find the appropriate result. Check out the techniques in the solution section below that you can apply to refine your search results.

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Solution

To refine the search results, listed are a few of the many techniques: 

• Search for exact phrases
  By enclosing your search terms in quotation marks, you can tell Kayako to only return results for those words in that precise order.

  Example: Searching for "replacement parts" will only return content where both words appear together.

• Exclude search terms
  You can preface any search term with a minus sign to exclude items that contain that term from appearing in the search result.

  Example: Searching for "replacement parts" -percolators will return any results about ordering parts as long as they're not for a percolator.

• Define your context
  You can also tell Kayako to look in a particular context, like conversations, users, organizations, or articles.

  Example: Searching for "replacement parts" -percolators in:conversations will return only conversations about replacement parts that don't mention percolators.

• Use ranges
  When you're searching by numerical values or dates, you can use the greater than or lesser than symbols to filter for a range of results.

  Example: Searching for "replacement parts" -percolators in:conversations created>2020-07-01 will return only your percolator-less replacement part conversations if they were created after July 1, 2020. Using < would limit it to conversations older than the date.

• Look for what's missing
  Kayako can also filter your results according to whether a particular field is empty by using null as your search value.

  Example: Searching for "replacement parts" -percolators in:conversations created>2020-07-01 assignee:null will give you only those recent non-percolator parts conversations that have not yet been assigned.

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Testing

The examples above are a few of the possible options. Go ahead and try using these techniques by typing your search query on the search bar.

Different Search Modifiers are available to build search queries and refine search results.

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