Overview
The Enterprise Service Management (ESM) system supports text search in a variety of areas, with different searches having different capabilities. The following article describes the things to consider when as writing knowledge articles.
In this article:
Searching within the Service Portal
In order to successfully optimize a knowledge article for search results its important to have a good understanding on how the Service Portal search function works.
Full Search in the Service Portal
The Service Portal search returns results from Knowledge Base articles, Services, and Service Offerings. The following fields are utilized in the search with their relative weight.
Field and Associated Search Weight
| Field |
Weight |
| Subject/Title |
10 |
| Tags |
6.5 |
| Category Breadcrumbs |
3 |
| Summary/Description |
2 |
| Attachment Names |
2 |
| Category Name |
1.5 |
| Body |
1.5 |
Note
The Category Name field is included in the Category Breadcrumbs, so its real weight can be considered 4.5.
Full Search Operators
When using full search, the following operators are available:
AND: Requires that both terms are included in the results. For example, cats AND dogs will find results including both cats and dogs.NOT: Requires that the term after NOT is not included in the results. For example, cats NOT dogs will find results including cats and exclude all results that include dogs.OR: Allows results where either term is included. For example, cats OR dogs will find results with either term. As the OR operator is the default search operator, the previous example would be equivalent to searching for cats dogs."": Requires that the exact phrase is included in the results. For example "cats and dogs" will search for results including the exact phrase "cats and dogs".#: Searches for a tag, in areas that support tags. For example, #animals will search for articles that are tagged with the animals tag.
Text Search
Text search provides similar results to the Full Search, but it has limited search operators. Text Search will look at multiple fields.
Text search is used when searching for Tickets in the Service Portal. The following fields are included in the Text Search:
- Tickets
- Title
- Description
- Custom Attributes
- Feed Entries
Text Search Operators
When using text search, the following operators are available:
"": Requires that the exact phrase is included in the results. For example "cats and dogs" will search for results including the phrase cats and dogs. This is only available for the Title field in the Ticket search.
Basic Search
Basic searches perform a search only on a few specific fields (usually name, email or title fields). This search will look for the search text exactly as it is, so it is usually only able to find single words.
Basic search is used for all other searches in the system.
Tips & Suggestions
Article Title
As discussed in the Knowledge Article Title Strategies selecting a good title for the article is extremely critical for influencing on how an article appears in search results.
Important
The article title/subject is the single field given the highest priority when "ranking" search results.
Article Summary
The article summary is an additional bit of text displayed to a person when browsing, as well as searching the Knowledge Base before they choose to open the article. It should succinctly capture the main point(s) of the article content and help them decided if the article is the one they're looking for or now. Often this will resemble, if not be a direct copy-paste, of the first paragarph of the article.
Tip
The article summary is also the text provided to the person who receives an article sent by the Share button.
When to use Tags with Knowledge Articles
As discussed in the Enterprise Service Management Tags aritlce, tags are used to provide additional search options, as well as helping to guide search prioritization. Their usefulness stems from keeping things consistent. It is better to reuse an existing tag insted of adding a new one. The Enterprise Service Management search will not surface results with similar tags, they must be an exact match.
Tags should generally be common terms or titles such as:
- Article Type
- Company / Vendor Names
- Example: Adobe, Microsoft, etc.
- Customer Context
- If customers use different terms than what is already in the subject, you can add them as a tag
- Restrictions on Access
- Acronyms
- Examples: Enterprise Service Management (ESM), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Virtual Desktop (VDI)
Need additional help or have issues
For support, requests may be submitted anytime using the appropriate Enterprise Service Management form. Requests generate a Ticket which will be worked in order received and urgency by IT Employees with the knowledge and permissions to assist with the request.
For immediate assistance please review the Contact Us page for the appropriate support group.