In this article, references to "quotation marks" indicate double (" ") quotation marks, not single (' '). Using single quotation marks when searching the Resource Center does not change your results.
This article offers tips that will help you improve search results, narrowing them down so you can find the information you need more quickly.
Search tips (overriding the default search behavior)
Default Search Behavior
Search for more than one term
By default, when you enter multiple search terms, the built-in search functionality will look for any of the terms you entered. That means that if you enter view message, the results will include all articles with EITHER the word view OR the word message. In many cases, the number of search results can be overwhelming. Read Search tips to learn how to override the default functionality.
Search Scope
All categories (home page)
When you search using the main search box, located on the home page, your search spans all categories of the Resource Center:
- Monitoring & Observation: AutoPilot M6
- Administration & Secure Self-Service: Navigator
- Transaction Tracking & Analytics: XRay
- Miscellaneous Help: Support information, Newsletters, Release Notes, and General Information
One category
From the Resource Center home page, you can choose to focus on one category. While on the home page, click one of the category tiles (pictured below) to view the contents of that category; a search box is also available. When you search within a category, your search is filtered by that category (only the articles in that category are returned in search results).
For example, after you click the Navigator tile to view Navigator contents, a breadcrumb path at the top of the page shows that you are searching the Navigator category:
In the example below, the 80 articles in the main results area are all in the Navigator category. An additional pane on the left shows that the entire Resource Center includes 131 articles that contain the node search term:
You can click on the links in the left pane to view a list of these articles:
As shown in both examples above, after results are displayed, the breadcrumb path shows meshIQ > Search results. This indicates that the search box will now apply to the entire Resource Center. For example, a search for dashboard at this point will include dashboard topics for Navigator and XRay:
If no results are found, a Browse Help Center link is provided for you to return to the Resource Center home page. For example, if we enter a term that we know will not be in the category we are in, the following page is displayed:
As noted above in the Search all categories section, some articles are in the Miscellaneous Help category, which does is not represented by a tile. When searching for release notes, newsletters, or support information, use the search box on the home page for the best results:
Search Tips
Search for all terms
To look only for articles that contain both (or all) of the search terms that you enter, enclose each search term in double quotation marks, with spaces in between. For example, to find all articles that contain both the terms message and schema, perform this search within the Navigator category:
“message” “schema”
By adding quotation marks in this way, the number of search results is reduced to fewer than 15.
Search for a phrase
To find a phrase (that is, multiple words in a row), enter the entire phrase in quotation marks. A good example in Navigator is user view. To focus on the Navigator category, click its tile—labeled Administration and Secure Self-Service—on the home page. Then enter the following into the search box provided:
"user view"
By enclosing both terms in one set of quotation marks, you narrow the number of results from more than 500 to fewer than 10:
Exclude a term
To find articles that include some terms and exclude others, enter a minus sign in front of the term to be excluded.
SearchTermToInclude -SearchTermToExclude
Create a complex search
Lastly, you can combine more than one method, for example, by searching for both a phrase and an individual term. To find out which release notes might cover features involving color, enter the following using the home page search (to include the Miscellaneous Help category, which contains release notes):
“color” “release notes”
This search yielded 9 results. The same search without the use of quotation marks would have yielded more than 100 results.
Our Resource Center uses the Zendesk Guide platform. For more information about searches on this platform, see the following article, which is authored by the creators of Zendesk:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408894061338-About-Help-Center-end-user-search