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ProductivityIntranet Governance: 4 Key Considerations for Intranet StrategyHave you ever wondered how to make your company's intranet more than just a digital filing cabinet? Welcome to the world of intranet governance. It's the secret sauce that turns a run-of-the-mill internal network into a powerful tool for achieving your organizational objectives.
Why Does Intranet Governance Matter?
An intranet is a secure network used by organizations to distribute resources and share information among employees. Without a solid intranet governance strategy, your intranet could end up cluttered, unorganized, and barely used—wasting precious company resources. To prevent this, you need an intranet strategy that outlines user training, usage monitoring, and other crucial aspects.
One of the most important elements of this strategy is the intranet policy. This document provides employees with information on what the intranet can and cannot be used for, aligning with the system's intended uses and any relevant legislative requirements.
To emphasize the importance of a well-managed intranet, let's look at some potential risks of an unmanaged one:
Content becomes unorganized and virtually uselessResources get cluttered, making it hard for employees to find what they needData is shared with unauthorized persons due to improper access
Sounds like a mess, doesn't it? But worry not—here are four key steps to building a successful intranet strategy.
4 Considerations For a Successful Intranet Strategy
When creating an intranet strategy, here are four key considerations to think about:
Define Your Intranet ObjectivesEvaluate the State of Your Current IntranetPrioritize Your Strategy Assemble Your Intranet Crew
1. Define Your Intranet Objectives
The first step is to outline your intranet's purpose and objectives. Is your intranet a digital workplace for fostering collaboration and communication? Or is it primarily a central information and communication platform?
Knowing what you want from your intranet will guide the features you need and the technology you choose. For instance, here are some common objectives that an intranet can help businesses achieve:
Improved communicationHigher workplace engagementIncreased efficiencyGreater collaborationMore effective training
✶ Learn all about the differences between Intranet and Extranet
2. Evaluate the State of Your Current Intranet
If you already have an intranet, it's crucial to assess its current state. This analysis will help you identify gaps and areas of concern.
Here are some questions to ponder:
How efficient is the current intranet?Are there underused or outdated features?Does your intranet provide employees with the information they need?Does it help increase productivity?Is it effective in terms of communication and collaboration?Can remote or hybrid workplace employees access your intranet?
By understanding your current situation and seeking employee feedback, you can start shaping an effective strategy for your intranet and improve the overall employee experience.
PRO TIP:Employee feedback is crucial for improving your intranet. Consider conducting regular surveys or creating a feedback form on your intranet.
3. Prioritize Your Strategy
After defining your objectives and assessing your current intranet, prioritize the areas that need attention first. Identify business processes you want to improve and map out functions and features to help you meet those goals. For example, if reducing paperwork is a priority, consider including digital document management systems in your strategy.
Remember to involve key stakeholders in this process to ensure alignment with business goals. Also, review company materials such as your vision statement, yearly business plans, and reports to help shape your intranet strategy.
Did you know?Intranets aren't just for large corporations. Small businesses can also benefit from an intranet to foster collaboration and streamline processes.
4. Assemble Your Intranet Crew
Intranet governance isn't a one-person job. It requires collaboration between multiple teams. Therefore, form a core crew comprising representatives from departments that need to be involved. These representatives should clearly understand their tasks and responsibilities regarding the intranet. This includes managing the intranet, making regular updates, and training new users.
PRO TIP:An engaging intranet encourages user participation. Consider incorporating interactive elements like forums, polls, or social feeds to increase engagement and improve productivity.
Leveraging Your Intranet for Success
By assessing your current intranet, prioritizing objectives, and assembling a dedicated intranet crew, you're on the path to leveraging your intranet as a powerful tool for your organization. This will improve communication, efficiency, and collaboration—essential elements for a successful business in today's digital age.
But to take your intranet to the next level, you need a tool designed to supercharge your intranet search. That's where Unleash comes in.
It's all you need for fast, efficient knowledge management and better collaboration between teams—plus, it’s intuitive and easy to use. Unleash searches every folder and application to surface the information you need, helping you improve productivity and increase efficiency.
Knowledge management4 Knowledge Management Processes for an Effective StrategyAn effective knowledge management strategy can help organizations leverage collective knowledge, increase employee productivity, and streamline operations. Additionally, organizations can save time and effort on training by speeding up knowledge transfer—assuring employees are equipped with relevant skills and knowledge to perform their duties.
Let's dive into the crucial processes that can bolster your organization's collective knowledge, enhance employee productivity, and optimize operations.
Understanding Knowledge Management
First things first: what is knowledge management? At its core, knowledge management encourages collaboration and increases efficiency within organizations. The process involves capturing, organizing, sharing, and managing an organization's collective knowledge and expertise for effective use among its employees and teams.
Knowledge management processes integrate knowledge management actions (such as capturing and organizing data) into already existing business processes. This way, internal and external users can access and update knowledge as needed.
✶ Learn how to use a knowledge management matrix
The Benefits of Knowledge Management
Implementing an effective knowledge management system can nurture a culture of continuous learning and development. It's like building a vast library of wisdom and expertise that employees can draw from to improve their skills and productivity. This process can increase engagement and motivation and also aid in attracting and retaining top talent. For example, Toyota has gained industry-wide recognition for its knowledge management practices, which have become an integral part of its organizational culture.
Now, let's examine the four pivotal processes that form the backbone of any effective knowledge management strategy.
The Four Pillars of Knowledge Management
The top 4 processes you need to know about to implement an effective knowledge management strategy are:
Knowledge acquisitionKnowledge storage and organizationKnowledge distributionUtilizing knowledge
1. Knowledge Acquisition
Think of knowledge acquisition as laying the foundation for your knowledge management strategy. It involves collecting, identifying, and creating new knowledge.
This process includes setting up systems for capturing internal and external knowledge, such as using raw data or examining a business competitor's new products. Additionally, organizations can import relevant data from other sources or encourage employees to submit their ideas.
Accurate data is the key to successful knowledge acquisition, as it drives informed business decisions.
NOTE:If knowledge is previously undocumented in an organization, then it's necessary to document existing knowledge and flag new knowledge for categorization and processing.
2. Knowledge Storage and Organization
Once you've acquired the knowledge, the next step is to store and organize it effectively. This is like building the shelves of our library. Without proper storage and organization, even the most valuable information can be rendered useless. Tools like knowledge management systems can help keep data from multiple sources organized and indexed for better utilization.
Most businesses have plenty of unorganized data and information, but effective knowledge organization can help them make the most of relevant information. Knowledge storage saves both existing and new knowledge for organization and categorization.
3. Knowledge Distribution
With our knowledge library set up, the next step is to ensure that this wealth of information is accessible to all employees. Knowledge distribution involves sharing both implicit (less tangible things like organizational culture) and explicit knowledge (accessible and easily shareable knowledge like case studies and documents). This process fosters a collaborative environment and enhances the free flow of information within the organization.
Institutional KnowledgeEffective knowledge management protects valuable organizational memory, which could otherwise get lost due to poor documentation or employee turnover.
4. Utilizing Knowledge
The final pillar of effective knowledge management is using the acquired, organized, and distributed knowledge to benefit the organization's goals. Whether it's to speed up task completion, make informed decisions, or solve problems, effective knowledge utilization ties together all other processes.
Knowledge utilization occurs either through routine or direction:
Routine: Used in routine processes and behavior within an organization. It refers to knowledge use ingrained in organizational procedures, workflows, processes, and products.Direction: An external source, such as a consultant or industry expert, provides advice and knowledge input based on existing information about an organizational issue that needs solving.
It's worth noting that an effective utilization process also requires an organization to effectively link acquired knowledge and resources with the skills and abilities of its employees for better optimization. Additionally, organizations should ensure that they have methods of measuring the success and accuracy of their decisions based on the knowledge they are using.
✶ Here's how you can supercharge your intranet search
Unleashing the Power of Knowledge Management
When implemented correctly, these four processes can provide a robust structure for an effective knowledge management strategy. Companies can gain a competitive edge, increase productivity and efficiency, and reduce costs. Remember, the key to successful knowledge management lies in continual learning, sharing, and effective utilization of knowledge.
f you're on the hunt for a tool that can support your knowledge management processes, consider Unleash. It's an AI-powered tool that allows you to instantly access and organize your company's knowledge, making it readily available for use across all teams. Try Unleash for free today and see how it can empower your knowledge management strategy!
Knowledge graph4 Simple Steps to Building a Knowledge GraphImagine if Siri or Alexa were tailored to your organization, providing detailed insights to enhance decision making. Sounds exciting, right? That's the promise of a knowledge graph. To help you organize data better, we'll walk you through the process of building one in four simple steps. But first, let's make sure we understand what is a knowledge graph.
It is a way to represent data that emphasizes the relationships between data points in a specific domain—this could be a subject, field of study, business, or organization. To make this more tangible, picture a network where nodes are entities (like two people or any real-world thing), and the edges describe the relationship between those entities (for example, a mentorship). This model allows us to visualize relationships between data and, in turn, unearth insights about an organization, which can inform strategic business decisions.
4 Steps to Building a Knowledge Graph
While the specific technical steps can change based on your goal, the general process for building a knowledge graph remains consistent. Here are the four key steps:
1. Define Your Goals
The first step is to identify the problems your knowledge graph will solve. With the abundance of data available, it's easy to get lost in the details and overload your graph with unnecessary information. Remember, the aim is to extract knowledge from data to support better decision-making. Keep your goals clear from the start.
Some ways you can use your knowledge graph include:
Analytics Modernization: Improve your organization's efficiency by upgrading to a knowledge graph-based data platform.Data Lake Acceleration: An enterprise knowledge graph can connect data lakes and enhance datasets, enabling teams to make better-informed decisions.Semantic Search: Get accurate answers quickly, regardless of the structure or location of the underlying data.
These are just a few examples—knowledge graphs have a wider variety of applications, depending on your goals.
✶ Change the way you use Slack search with Unleash
2. Get Stakeholders Involved
The next consideration, of course, is who will be involved in creating the knowledge graph. If you defined your goals in step 1, you'd already have an idea of who these people are. It's best to involve stakeholders early on, especially if they will use the knowledge graph or provide input.
Determine each stakeholder's roles and responsibilities and ensure a team is available to support them throughout the process. Keep refining your objectives as needed to keep stakeholder requirements manageable and to allow you to build your knowledge graph quicker.
Here are some helpful questions to help you through this step:
Which teams will be using the knowledge graph regularly?Who will have access to it?Who will be in charge of updating it and ensuring its accuracy?Will we introduce external contributors (e.g., suppliers, consultants, clients)?
3. Determine the Scope of Your Knowledge Graph
The scope of your knowledge graph, or your knowledge domain, will broadly be defined by your goals. Initially, it's helpful to ask yourself, “What questions am I trying to answer?” This helps limit the scope of your graph to what is relevant to your goal.
For example, an eCommerce business may identify the following buckets of information for its knowledge graph:
Product classifications and descriptionsProduct prices and inclusionsPromos, discounts, and offersWarranties and service policiesRetailers and their details
The ultimate goal is to understand how these categories relate to each other—and where this data is. If needed, request access to any data sources you may need to peruse within your organization.
✶ Is Dropbox search giving you trouble? Learn how to fix it here
4. Select a Platform For Your Knowledge Graph
Before you can start building your knowledge graph, you'll need to decide on the platform you will use. This is a crucial decision because it will stay the same as long as you use your knowledge graph.
Consider factors like whether the platform is open source and if it can be run in-house or in the cloud. It's crucial to pick a platform that aligns with your knowledge graph goals and allows for easy collaboration without the risk of unintentional changes.
Data Quality and ConsistencyWhen building a knowledge graph, it's essential to consider the quality and consistency of your data. Inconsistent data or data filled with errors will lead to a less reliable and useful knowledge graph. Regularly review and clean your data to maintain the accuracy and utility of your knowledge graph.
✶ Learn more about how enterprise search improves internal communication
Organize Your Team's Knowledge Smarter
If you're seeking a smarter way to organize your team or company's knowledge, give Unleash a try. With the proper preparation and research, you can build and maintain an effective knowledge graph that will help you gain valuable insights into your organization's data.
Our Collection tool keeps all related links, documents, and resources in harmony, turning company information into easily accessible employee knowledge. It's intuitive and easy to use, capable of searching across all folders and applications to streamline workflows and boost productivity. Experience the power of Unleash today—it's free!
Knowledge managementKnowledge Management Matrix: 4 Steps to Improve Team PerformanceA knowledge management matrix helps organizations assess their knowledge assets. It can be used to develop an awareness of any skills shortages, enhance operational proficiency, and boost overall performance. The matrix comprises four quadrants (internal, external, institutional, and individual), each representing a different kind of knowledge.
To foster a successful knowledge management system, companies should create a learning and growth-oriented atmosphere that motivates employees to share their findings. This will ultimately benefit the overall workforce by providing access to valuable resources. Here are four steps to successfully implement and maintain a knowledge management matrix:
1. Encourage Collaboration
No matter what knowledge management methods you have, employees may keep their most important insights to themselves if your team's atmosphere does not promote collaboration and knowledge-sharing. In competitive work settings, people attempt to outdo one another—often causing a lack of trust and communication between employees.
To circumvent this issue and allow for the free exchange of ideas among staff members, organizations should cultivate an environment that builds camaraderie and encourages collaboration. This will allow everyone to feel comfortable enough to share valuable information.
2. Prioritize Important Information
Effective knowledge management requires a focus on sharing meaningful information that can boost productivity and innovation. It's essential to prioritize information that is critical for achieving your organization's goals, such as knowledge related to product development, distribution, and customer service operations. By doing so, you can help employees work more efficiently and better serve customers.
NOTE: You will have the opportunity to fill in the gaps with non-priority information later. This allows your team to focus on the information that is most critical for success while still leaving room for additional knowledge to be added to the system over time.
✶ Learn how to use Notion for project management
3. Identify the Experts in Your Organization
In today's rapidly evolving workplace, knowledge management is no longer just about storing data—it's about creating an environment of continuous learning. Identifying the experts within your organization and tapping into their insights can be a powerful way to manage knowledge.
An efficient knowledge management matrix allows experts from different departments to come together and share their experiences in an organized manner. By periodically conducting surveys or interviews with these experts via the matrix, you can better understand their knowledge base and enrich institutional knowledge. Experts can also submit reports or articles that capture the latest insights on relevant topics, allowing your organization to keep up with industry trends.
✶ Search might be the missing element in your internal knowledge base software
4. Find the Right Tools
Effective knowledge management requires finding the right tools to help your team capture, store, and share institutional knowledge. However, this can be challenging, especially if the size and needs of your organization change over time. To maximize the benefits of knowledge management, you need to be adaptable and willing to try different tools to determine which are the best fit for the needs of your business.
PRO TIPIf you find that the tools you are using are not a great fit, don't hesitate to change. The success of your knowledge management system depends on your team's ability to effectively use the tools available to them.
One popular knowledge management tool is Confluence, a digital workspace for teams to exchange knowledge. It's great for document management and makes it easy to collaborate on projects. However, it only reaches its full potential when you make use of third-party integrations like Unleash. Put simply, Confluence search sucks as a lot of its search functions are not in the main navigation menu, and users need to perform complex workarounds to actually use it.
Streamline Productivity and Improve Performance with Unleash
By embracing a knowledge management approach, companies can leverage the expertise of their employees and teams to increase efficiency by disseminating crucial information. However, finding and organizing that information can be challenging. This is where enterprise search tools with third-party integrations like Unleash come in.
Unleash can help you consolidate all your organization's knowledge into one place, making it easier to manage and access. In addition, you'll be able to customize your search and even set up personalized search rules. By taking advantage of these features, you can improve team performance, streamline productivity, and help your organization achieve its goals.
ProductivityGitHub Search Not Working? Troubleshooting Solutions and TipsWith the rise of work-from-home culture and digital nomads, an increasing number of individuals are turning to online coding courses to achieve their ideal career (and lifestyle). GitHub is a leader in the online coding community because it offers one of the most robust digital development platforms available online. But it’s a shared headache for many programmers when the GitHub search doesn’t work. This stalls projects and leaves room for errors since resources and codes cannot be accessed.
Approaching the ProblemA multi-platform search engine for software engineers’ code repository tools is needed in this situation. Engineering teams can improve their focus and productivity since they no longer have to switch between multiple code repository tools and apps to find the information they need. However, as with all good things, nothing is without flaws. If you're experiencing problems with GitHub's search function, here are some common causes and solutions.
Reasons GitHub Search Might Not Be Working
GitHub is perfect for collaboration between coders. But there’s no denying that sometimes its search feature feels simply broken. Here are some common reasons why your GitHub search is not finding code- ranging from blank results to server timeouts and error messages galore.
Server Timeout Request
If there are no search results or the GitHub search function appears frozen, this may be due to the server request timing out. Since GitHub strives to keep its search function quick for users, it limits the amount of time each search query can run before timing out. This helps conserve bandwidth on the site. A server timeout error means that search results may be incomplete because your query was terminated before it could collect all possible search results.
Improper Search Query
If your search results do not include return documents or programs that you are certain are available, or if you receive an error message while searching, it is likely that you are experiencing a GitHub search syntax issue. Improper queries or syntax can be overcome by using a robust multi-platform search tool like Unleash. Its AI-enhanced search engine can locate resources even if the search terms are not precise. It works on platforms beyond GitHub, like Jira, as well.
✶ Book a demo and experience the power of Unleash
How to Resolve GitHub Search Issues
Resolving Server Timeouts
1. Check Your Internet Connection
Ensure that your internet connection is up and running, as a slow connection could result in timeout issues given the search time limit if it is not. To check your connection status, use other GitHub functions or open a new browser window to ensure that other websites load properly.
2. Review the Status of GitHub’s Servers
There is a possibility that the GitHub search is not finding code due to a botched hotfix or another significant update on the GitHub servers. To ensure that GitHub is up and running, check its server status page. This page will inform you of any real-time incidents and the status of their operations, pull requests, pages, and other functions. The page can be used as an excellent tech support resource and to learn about the most recent updates to GitHub's technology.
Resolving Search Query Issues
1. Ensure Your Character Length Is Appropriate
A GitHub search string cannot exceed 256 characters (approximately 64 words) as per the site policy. Using the correct terms is a vital part of searching on GitHub. If you are unable to search for a particular string of code, it may be because your query is too long to be processed. AI tools can help in crafting the correct GitHub search query.
2. Watch Your Operators
Knowing how many GitHub search operators to include in your query will affect the results you get. It is important to note that GitHub does not support searches with more than five operators (specifically, AND, NOT, and OR). If your search query contains five or more operators of that type, no results will be returned.
3. Read Up on Additional Limitations for Searches
While this is quite technical and may not be immediately applicable as a first step, it is essential to review GitHub’s search documentation to ensure you have entered the correct search query. This is particularly important when searching for code, as there may be additional restrictions on what constitutes a valid search query, most likely when searching for advanced code strings. Every platform has its own specific query languages for coders to learn.
In the long run, reading about these more technical aspects will make you more proficient at GitHub advanced searches.
GitHub Search Troubleshoot Success
If you're experiencing search issues on GitHub, follow the steps above to resolve the problem. If, for whatever reason, these solutions do not provide relief, check out GitHub's excellent support resources so you can continue coding and pursuing your goals. You can also turn to tools like Unleash, which eliminates context-switching by storing all information in a single interface. Overcome the shortcomings of GitHub’s search engine and book your Unleash demo today!
ProductivityWhy Jira Search Is So Frustrating and How Unleash Can HelpLove it or hate it, Jira is one of the most popular issue-tracking and project-management tools out there. According to Atlassian, 65,000 companies currently use Jira. The tool offers a handful of different search engines, each with a unique set of rules. This approach can offer more options for more preferences, but it also makes search a convoluted, multi-step process with a steep learning curve.
Get the most value out of Jira and keep employees happy by integrating it with a powerful search engine that can search all of Jira at once.
Jira Has Many (Complicated) Ways to Search
As soon as you start using Jira, you start seeing search boxes everywhere with no hints as to which search box can search which parts of the software. With this configuration, you’d have to memorize the placement, functions, and limitations of each form of search.
Here’s a brief rundown of the different search boxes you’ll find in Jira, what kind of search results you’ll get from each, and what you need to know to use that type of Jira search.
Quick Search
This is usually the first type of search new users try because it’s right at the top right of the homepage in Jira as soon as you log in. Quick search can search issues as well as everything else (such as comments, boards, etc.) but only allows limited filtering and refining results. This type of search can only handle simple search criteria.
Quick search mostly uses Boolean operators to filter results, a search syntax many users will already be familiar with. For instance, if you add “AND” in all caps between keywords, Jira’s quick search will only pull up results with both. Quick search doesn’t require learning JQL (Jira Query Language) to search—in fact, JQL syntax will be ignored when entered into the quick search box.
Basic Search
Basic search is another attempt to make it easy for beginners to find issues and get started with Jira quickly. Basic search is accessible through the “Filters” dropdown at the top of the page. This allows you to search by project, issue type, assignee, and many more parameters. Navigate to “All issues.” The search box will be near the top of the page but a few inches under the quick search box.
The dropdowns here are meant to make basic search more powerful by offering more filters to narrow results. Jira filters allow users to set up more complex searches than they can with quick search. But for users doing the same search over and over again, configuring the basic search each time can get old quickly. That’s why Jira built another feature to solve that issue: saving filters.
If you frequently need to perform the same search over and over, you can save time searching by saving frequently used filters. You can favorite the saved filters you use most frequently. If you have any coworkers who need to use the same complex search parameters, you can share search results/filters with them. And you can subscribe to your team members’ saved filters, too.
✶Maximize productivity by learning how to move issues between Jira projects
Advanced Search
Like basic search, Jira’s advanced search is also only accessed via the issues tab and is only an issue search tool, but unlike basic search, advanced search is only able to handle JQL queries.
To get to advanced search, you start in basic search and then click the link to the right of the search button that says, “Switch to JQL.”
Advanced search allows users to make complex queries, but users have to learn JQL to get there. And JQL search comes with a steep learning curve—this isn’t something anyone is going to learn in one day. Not every Jira user wants to put in the time and effort to learn an entirely new query language just to search one platform, but for those who spend much of their days in Jira, putting in the effort to learn JQL can pay off.
✶ Take Jira searches to another level—find out how to search using JQL
Board and Roadmap Search
On top of the other three search engines, Jira also includes a search bar in the board and roadmap sections, which are just two different ways to view issues. To use board or roadmap search, navigate to the board you want to search and look on the left side just below the name. Board and roadmap search is currently limited to quick search functionality.
Both of these search engines can search issues, and everything else included on your boards/roadmaps but cannot handle any JQL or Boolean operators. These search engines are designed to slightly speed up finding an issue via the board or roadmap view, so users don’t have to hunt when their issues pile up.
How a Better Search Tool Can Simplify Jira
Pair Jira with a powerful search tool to simplify your searches without sacrificing accuracy. The search engine for a tool like Jira doesn’t need to be split into five different separate tools if the tech is sophisticated enough.
Instead of forcing your team to make do with Jira’s maze of search boxes, search all of Jira at once from a single search box. In addition to reducing the learning required for new team members, using one search for all of Jira can save your team time and improve the Jira user experience. Users don’t have to navigate to Jira just to check the status of an issue in progress, saving your team time and frustration.
And because you’re adding a tool and not altering Jira itself, any users on your team who still want to use the search boxes located in Jira won’t be affected. They can still use Jira as they always have.
Unleash the Best Jira User Experience With a Single Search Engine That Can Do It All
Unleash can not only search all of Jira at once but also searches other tools your team uses, like email, Slack, GitHub, Bitbucket, AWS, and dozens more. Our tool can also do more than just search. With one-click app launching directly from search results and a calendar view, every Unleash feature is designed to make your team’s jobs easier.
We’re constantly fine-tuning our search engine to provide users with the best search functionality possible. In February, we updated our Jira search to add special filters such as sprint number, status, labels, project name, and last edit time.
Learn more about how Unleash can improve Jira along with many other apps your employees use.
✶ Is GitHub search giving you trouble? Here are some troubleshooting tips
ProductivitySlack Search Sucks: Here’s Why (And 5 Tips to Help You Find What You Need)How long do you spend searching for files? How much time do you spend specifically searching for files in Slack? Slack can be an excellent application for communication and collaboration, but locating specific files or messages within the application will test your patience.
Slack users can rely on a few best practices to make searching the platform easier, but the app itself offers limited functionality. Users should ultimately abandon Slack search in favor of Unleash, which is simpler and easier to use. Unleash searches every folder and application simultaneously, reducing frustration and boosting efficiency.
Numerous app integrations Access information anywhere Create memorable links for your team
Slack Search Is Complicated and Clunky
Although Slack is an excellent communication tool, its search functionality leaves much to be desired. It is exceedingly difficult to use, lacks an intuitive design, and has a steep learning curve. Moreover, limiting search to a single application can slow down the process of locating important information.
Slack search frequently returns irrelevant results, forcing you to sift through dozens of posts to find what you seek. To help you narrow your results, Slack touts its search modifiers. It’s a nice idea, but in reality, that means users have to memorize their modifiers or look them up each time they want to use them.
Slack is also only one of many applications you use, so its search will only be useful if the information you seek is within the app. If you're looking for a document or message sent via email or another app, no Slack modifier will help you find it.
In actuality, it becomes increasingly impractical to search each application your organization employs individually. As of 2021, enterprises utilized between 100 and 288 SaaS applications. Even if your employees only utilize a dozen applications, they likely spend significant time locating files and messages.
When employees use a communication app such as Slack alongside project management apps, email, and document management tools, it is inevitable that they will forget which app contains the information they are seeking. And if you're searching Slack but what you're looking for occurred in an email conversation, Slack cannot assist you in locating it.
Spend Less Time Searching Slack With These 5 Tips
Although Slack's search functionality is difficult to use, there are a few things you can do to simplify the process. Aside from memorizing its modifiers for faster-advanced search or employing a different search tool, the best way to improve your experience with Slack is to avoid using its general search in the first place. Use its other features to organize threads, messages, and channels of importance.
1. Save Messages or Threads You Want to Revisit
Save essential messages or threads for future reference and avoid sifting through Slack search results in the future. To accomplish this, hover over the message or thread you wish to save and click the ribbon icon on the desktop app. In the left sidebar of the desktop application, you can access previously-saved content, or If it is missing, you can find it by clicking "More."
Long-press the message and select "Add to saved items" to save it. To locate saved messages on a mobile device, tap "You" in the lower-right corner of the display and then "Saved items."
✶ Want to make Slack search actually work? Learn how you can make your employees' lives easier
2. Set Reminders on Threads or Messages
Request that Slack remind you of important threads or messages at your convenience. Using the desktop application, hover over the message or thread you wish to recall. When a bar appears, click the three dots to the right. Click the second option, "Remind me about this," from the drop-down menu that appears. Then simply choose a time. Slackbot will notify you via message when your reminder is due. Long-press the message you wish to be reminded of and select "Remind me" to set a reminder in the mobile app.
✶ Keep searches easy by fixing your Jira Slack integration.
3. Use Bookmarks and Pin Important Messages
Using bookmarks, you can place important links at the top of a channel, allowing anyone to access them quickly. To add a bookmark to a channel in the desktop app, navigate to the channel and then click "+ Add a bookmark" at the top of the page. Unfortunately, the mobile app does not support adding bookmarks.
Important messages can also be pinned to the top of the page, so they are always the first thing you see when you visit the channel. Go to the three dots in the upper-left corner of the message you wish to pin in the desktop app. Select "Pin to channel" To pin a message to the top of a channel on a mobile device, press and hold the message and tap "Pin to conversation."
4. Create Custom Sections
This feature is exclusive to paid Slack users but worth the price. Custom sections allow you to completely customize how your Slack channels are organized. This allows you to organize channels according to your preferences. For instance, you could group the social channels at work that are unrelated to work in one area and create a separate section for the channels you need to perform your job every day.
To create custom sections, open the desktop application and hover over "Channels" in the sidebar on the left. There will be three dots to the right. Click the dots, followed by "Create sidebar section"
5. Leave Channels You Don’t Use
Since Slack can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate, one way to manage it is to reduce the number of channels you're in. This doesn’t help much when it comes to actually searching since leaving a channel doesn’t remove it from your searches. However, it can reduce the number of channels you must manually scan when Slack search is not cooperating.
To leave a channel on the desktop app, go to the left sidebar, right-click the channel you want to leave, and click on “Leave channel.” To leave a channel in the mobile app, open the channel, tap on the ⓘ symbol, and scroll down to the last option, “Leave.”
✶ Learn about: Federated Search and its benefits
Use a Multi-Platform Search Tool to Reduce Slack Frustration
Unleash eliminates Slack search issues with a centralized search tool that can also search cloud storage drives, email, code depositories, folders, tickets, and meeting invitations.
Features Guaranteed to Reduce Frustration With Slack
Centralized tool: Unleash organizes all apps and folders without having to use multiple apps.Simultaneous search: You can search for files in Slack, your email, and other apps.Filter function: Use various criteria such as app or app type (email apps, drives, etc.) to recall a file that was attached to an email.Favorites feature: Access any file or message quickly from the left sidebar.Calendar view: This allows you to join remote meetings with a single click.In-house search: The app launches the site or app where your files are located without having to exit it.Launch apps: You can launch your files with the correct app from Unleash once you have located them.
With an application such as Unleash, what else could you want? This centralized hub will increase your workplace productivity and guarantee your success.
✶ Searching for missing information? Find out how to Slack search deactivated accounts.
Let Unleash Show You What the Future of Productivity Looks Like
Unleash will locate any file on your computer or in one of your many cloud applications. While many applications (such as Slack) include search tools within their apps, it is no longer practical to use each application's search feature to locate files. Modern employees must be able to search for everything simultaneously.
ProductivityConfluence Search Sucks. Here Are 3 Things You Can Do to Improve It Using UnleashIDC research shows data professionals spend 37% of their week searching for information. People waste a lot of time searching, for information, and often to no avail. You would assume that Confluence's centralized wiki would have superior search capabilities, given that the company promotes its partnerships with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Slack. The reality is that Confluence search sucks.
Confluence or Confusion?
Confluence’s search capability is limited. Your enterprise search tool should allow your employees to discover information from one or more databases in a single query. You deserve better when navigating and searching your Confluence documentation wiki. Essential info may be scattered throughout other platforms (Google Docs, Drive, etc.), often causing confusion.
✶ Supercharge your productivity by integrating Asana and Confluence
Confluence Search Is Limited and Isn’t Intuitive
Confluence is a web-based workspace for wiki-based communication, collaboration, and documentation. While it works well as collaborative software, many users wish it had more navigation, syntax, and general search capabilities.
One of the most voiced concerns by Confluence users is that it is not intuitive. The interface is not user-friendly, making navigation difficult. Using a tool like Confluence should be straightforward, like a guide taking you through the jungle on a path. This isn’t the case here.
Confluence has a lot of search capabilities that are “hidden” from the main navigation menu. In order to access them, you have to know where to look in order to create a shortcut.
You should not have to create a workaround to access your documents or implement a search. Search should be as easy as setting parameters, using filters, narrowing down your search, and finding the exact document you need.
For new users, it has a steep learning curve. And using hacks to make Confluence work for you may introduce further time-consuming issues down the road. One of the most valuable commodities is time, and searching for meeting notes, product requirements, or project plans should not be where you invest it. Let's look at the list of advantages and disadvantages of Confluence:
Advantages of Confluence
Searchability: Allows users to index search pages and attachment formats.Generic filters: Different filters like; time modified, space, article, type, and label are available.Categorization of material: Users can categorize their material using "labels".
Disadvantages of Confluence
Lacks metadata: Confluence relies heavily on metadata and there isn't a lot of it available.Inability to sort function: Identifying and sorting the correct pages with no metadata is almost impossible.Labels with no meaning: Managing data with just labels and no metadata is cumbersome.Large organizations are more complicated: They use more than just basic Microsoft Office-based attachments.Impossible search for organizations: With larger amounts of data, searching for attachments and refining results isn't easy.
If a large organization lacks a standard policy and streamlined search capabilities, it will run the risk of producing duplicate documentation and pages. These restrictions are simply too troublesome. Here are three things that you can do to save the precious time you waste on searching for stuff.
Improve Confluence Search With Unleash
1. Streamline Navigation With Unleash Integration
Learning how to navigate your documents and wiki should be as simple as following an easy pathway. Using an enterprise search tool will help your employees find what they need across Confluence and other tools. Using a third-party integration like Unleash allows you to create a central hub to bypass Confluence's clunky navigational interfaces.
The Unleash Menu is divided into three sections to simplify your life and help you get the information you need quickly: Explore, Views, and Apps. When you click on a specific app, the search box will provide results related to that app or account. Within the related applications, you can see the many resources that are accessible for that app and account. It will allow you to find the documents you need with ease.
✶ Need to see it for yourself? Explore the Unleash features at your fingertips
2. Increase the Documentation Search Threshold
Confluence is wonderful for searching as long as you know the exact location of your files and documents. That's a major problem as your documentation wiki grows; no one has time to remember these kinds of finer details — which is why document configuration matters.
Someone in the organization who is not on the technical team may not think about documentation the same way. A well-structured configuration management process guarantees that documentation for objects like requirements, design, test, and acceptance is correct and compatible with the system objects' real physical and logical structure.
It is important to create a standard process for all teams that need access to documents using consistent file name formats and location pathways. Unleash offers instant, advanced, and contextual search capabilities to refine the overall search.
Full-text search allows you to search pages, documents, and files to find precisely what you need. Unleash can find the data you're looking for in any format and from any Confluence location, including databases, document management systems, e-mail servers, and paper.
✶ Can organizing files result in chaos? Discover why leveraging advanced search tools are better
3. Create Custom Filters
The best way to streamline is to customize your search by creating filters. Custom filters allow you to refine your search with ease and create a better user experience.
Discover what you're looking for and reduce the need for numerous search queries to narrow and modify your search results. Filter docs created by a specific account – ;Drive → ;File → ;Created by → Select account
You can create advanced filters for document types, labels, reported by, shared by, modified by, and other filter types specific to your needs. Your search parameters do not change when you utilize filters.
✶ Will searching give the answer? Discover why search is often the missing element in a knowledge base
Power Your Confluence Search to Work for You
Search is quickly becoming one of the most important technologies in our daily workflow; using tools rather than hacks allows you to spend your time where you need it most. Unleash is the ideal central hub connecting documents and indexes and analyzing all of your relevant organization data to provide actionable information at your fingertips.
Integrate some of the most extensively used applications to get more work done with less clutter. Unleash allows you to locate exactly what you're searching for with a single search and obtain relevant ranked results in a flash. Download Unleash today to experience the Unleash difference.
ProductivityNotion Search Sucks: Here's Why and 3 Things You Can Do to Improve ItEnterprise search platforms are the single most significant tool for organizations to enhance productivity. Notion is one of the most popular project management software solutions out there, and while it takes care of some big, hairy problems, searching for files/docs within the platform is an absolute nightmare.
One of the biggest problems is that Notion’s search engine lacks the ability to conduct refined global searches within databases from the main search area. For best results, your team should be able to search Notion holistically rather than piecemeal to find the exact results they need. Find out why Notion's search function is not working for you and the steps you can take to fix it.
✶ Having issues with Notion syncing across your devices? Here's how to fix it
Notion Search Is Basic and Lacks Internal Search Integrations
For a tool that is intended to boost efficiency and production, the current native search capabilities have a number of significant shortcomings, according to users. A lot of times it's not working properly, and when it does, it's just too slow.
Notion's Quick Find has the following drawbacks:
Lack of integration: Since there is no integration between quick find and databases, searching for specific data in a database table is practically nonexistent without navigating to the exact database you need. Having multiple databases means having to manually configure a new search every single time.Over-reliance on keywords: Keyword searches are not dependable, as they may fail to return relevant content that doesn’t mention the search keyword directly. When search results are inaccurate, researchers run the risk of missing vital information and presenting poor data.No global search option: Notion’s Quick Find doesn’t cover subpages. Due to the lack of a global search option, exact titles, pages, authors, and dates cannot be located due to the narrow search range. Trying to search all pages in Notion proves to be a difficult task without further software integrations.Disappointing sorting options: After a keyword search has been conducted, results can be sorted according to preference. The available sorting options are very basic and can be found in most search engines nowadays.
Notion’s Filter option continues to disappoint. It has two areas and they come with the following options:
Quick Filters (created by me; edited last week; on the current page)More Filters (in page; created by; created; last edited)
If an organization uses Notion extensively to create documentation and databases, these basic search features won't suffice.
Organizations want to be able to search all of their attachments, and they also want to be able to refine search results, which is difficult to achieve with Notion. Without a common policy and improved search tools, duplicate documents and pages are a concern.
✶ Learn about federated search and its benefits
Notion Search Not Working? Here's How to Improve It
1. Use a Centralized Search Bar
A centralized search bar where you can conduct your search and apply filters saves time and allows for easier navigation. While Notion’s search option, Quick Find, is the central search area, it’s not integrated with a database search. If you need to search for specific data located in a database or several databases, you will have to navigate to each database to conduct your search manually on the page.
You can avoid Notion’s multiple-step search path by using a third-party integration like Unleash to establish a central search hub. You may use the Explore Bar to input a search query to locate information in Notion and other linked applications.
If you want to search specifically within Notion, you can locate Notion listed in the apps section of the menu just below the Explore Bar. The search box will provide that app or account results when you select a specific app.
Within the related accounts, you can see the many types of resources accessible for that app and account. In the main search bar for Notion, you can search all your pages, tables, lists, databases, and other documentation.
✶ Discover the pros and cons of Notion project management
2. Create Custom Filters to Speed Up Your Search
The quickest way to find what you are looking for is by creating custom filters. Filters are created in the main search bar using a pathway starting with the name of the app followed by the type of information and action you want to perform. For example, if you want to filter by various accounts and labels, use ;Account Name → ;Assigned To / ;Created By / ;Shared To.
These additional layers of customized filters aid in further narrowing searches by delivering exact results and enhancing the ease and efficacy of your search. When you use filters, your search parameters remain unchanged.
✶ Take your search to another level with these Notion shortcuts
3. Take Advantage of Unleash’s Drag-And-Drop Functionality
Using search to find a document or page to add a file or information is made easier if you can add it simultaneously to the file/document. Every resource in Unleash that has a file or attachment may be “Dragged & Dropped” onto your computer screen or directly into Notion.
You can move a resource by left-clicking on it and dragging it to the desired position without releasing the button. To drop the resource into place, let go of the mouse button.
Unleash Takes Notion Search From Basic to Holistic
Notion search sucks, but it should not keep your team from using it to create databases and documentation vital to your organization. Using an enterprise search tool like Unleash can reduce your team’s time and effort when searching for information.
With Unleash, you can get precisely what you’re looking for in one search with relevant results in seconds. Download Unleash today to enhance your Notion search and see how it can change your team’s workflow.