| Suite | Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus |
| Support with | Guide Professional or Enterprise |
Depending on where you are in the help center, you can use any of the following search methods to locate content: instant search, native search, article suggestions, or Knowledge in the context panel.
- Using instant Help Center search to get content suggestions
- Using native Help Center search for specific results
- Using Knowledge in the context panel to search for articles
- Using article suggestion search when an end user submits a support request
- Using generative search for AI-powered answers to search queries
Using instant Help Center search to get content suggestions
Instant search is used when you first start typing in the search field. As you type, article titles that match your search appear. Keep typing to reduce the list of articles.
Instant search:
- Uses a partial word search
- Includes article titles only, not body text or labels of articles
- Does not include community posts
You can click any matched article to go directly to the article without going to the search results page. If you don't see any articles that fit your criteria, press Enter, and the native Help Center search is applied.
Using native Help Center search for specific results
Native search is used when you type in the Help Center search field and click Enter. Search results appear as a list on the search results page.
Native search:
- Uses full word search, not partial word search
- Includes titles, body text, and labels
In this example, you'll see results for content that includes the words instant or search, with the first results containing both instant and search. See searching for content for tips on how to find phrases and operands to perform specific searches.
By default in standard themes, the number of votes and comments appear next to each result on the search results page. You can filter your result set first by content type (knowledge base article or community post) and then by category or community topic.
Using Knowledge in the context panel to search for articles
Agents can use the Knowledge section of the context panel while working with tickets to conveniently get information and answers relevant to the conversation they're in.
The knowledge section uses Zendesk bots to automatically provide relevant suggestions you can use to answer questions in your tickets. You can also manually search your help center to find additional content, then you can link to content or quote content directly in the ticket. See Searching, linking, and quoting content in tickets.
Using article suggestion search when an end user submits a support request
Article suggestion search is used when an end user submits a support request in the help center. As the end user types in the Subject field, articles are suggested.
Article suggestion search:
- Includes titles, content, and tags or labels
- Uses a relevance score to order suggested articles
If a user clicks a suggested article, they are taken to the article directly, and the support ticket is not opened.
Using generative search for AI-powered answers to search queries
With generative search, available by default in your help center, users can enter questions or phrases of two words or more in the help center search field and receive AI-generated answers to their question. Answers are derived from the top search results for their query and show users the information they're looking for in the search results, without requiring them to open each link and scan through the articles for an answer.
For information about generative search, see Using generative search to provide AI-powered answers to search queries.
18 comments
Christopher Moore
Is there a way at the non-developer level to configure the search bar in your help center to allow filtering results by section? We have various sections (products, actually) that could potentially all generate results that appear the same. It would be great if our users could enter a search term and specify a particular section.
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maria luisa coello notario
Hola, quiero darme de baja y no lo consigo
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Hiedi Kysther
Hi Cheryl Lane
I do agree that it would be a nice feature to have, and I'm happy to pass your feedback to our Voice of the Customer team for further discussion. Please feel free to let me know if I can help with anything else!
Have a great day!
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Cheryl Lane
Hi Hiedi Kysther
Thanks for confirming that, hadn't seen that specific part of the documentation.
Yeah, we assessed options like that, but instead turned off instant search and hid the subject based suggested articles box on the forms. But, thought I'd reach out and see if maybe we'd missed a setting that would let us do it natively.
It would be a helpful feature for us, but I suspect we're a niche case.
Thanks,
Cheryl
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Hiedi Kysther
Hi Cheryl Lane
Thanks for the clarification! Natively, instant Search article suggestions ignore scoped parameters. For reference: searchHelper documentation.
While theoretically, it is still possible to implement using our Help Center API, it's likely that performance issues make this a bad option. It would be necessary to make an API call for every single character (or every x characters) entered in the search input. I did a quick research on my end and most of our internal teams recommended against this.
Also, note that any custom solution like this would fall outside the scope of our support.
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Cheryl Lane
Hi Hiedi Kysther
Thanks for your reply. We design and manage our own themes and have added this in the same way as Copenhagen does:
{{searchsubmit=false
scoped=settings.scoped_kb_search
instant=settings.instant_search
class="search search-full"
}}
where the settings are boolean settings.
This correctly scopes the search (when you enter some text and hit enter and a new page opens, this is restricted to the category as expected), but not the instant search ( https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408832681626#topic_xqw_dd1_cw - where you start typing and a drop down appears before you hit enter).
Instant search is what I'm trying to see if it's possible to scope, which doesn't seem possible or at least isn't mentioned in the documentation and isn't done in the Copenhagen theme.
Thanks,
Cheryl
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Hiedi Kysther
Hi Cheryl Lane
Yes, it's possible to scoped the user search based on the current category they are in. For reference: Hiding and showing elements in your Copenhagen standard theme. Make sure that you only have "Scoped search in Knowledge Base" enabled so the search results will remain on the Category the end-user is in.
Please note that this function should only work if you are using the Copenhagen theme. If you are using a 3rd party theme, this feature will not be available.
I hope this helps!
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Cheryl Lane
Hi,
I'm wondering, is it possible to scope the instant search results? Even with my search bar having the scoped attribute, the instant search drop down contains results from all categories, but if I submit the search, the native search page only contains the articles from the current category.
I would also like to scope the search done by the subject in forms, ideally by form (eg. if i have 2 products and these have their own category, if someone is on a form for product 1 support, i only want product 1 articles to appear as suggestions)
Thanks!
1
Arianne Batiles
Hi Jana Debusk,
If you have assigned a category per product, you can limit searches within a category via scoped search attribute in themes https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/help_center/help-center-templates/helpers/#search-helper
This scopes the search to the category or even community topic the user is currently in. You should add the
scoped=trueattribute on thecateogry_page.hbs, section_page.habs, article_page.hbs and search_results.hbstemplates of your theme.0
Jana Debusk
Hi! Thank you for this article! I have a specific question that I can't seem to find a solution for in the help center. We're looking to combine help centers for two different products. Some of our customers have one or the other - some have both. I'm wondering how we can separate the search results once they click the desired product from the main "Help Center Homepage". One keyword may mean two entirely separate things from one product to another. Any tips or tricks or special code or great advice? Maybe an article that can point me in the right direction? Thank you!
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