Start typing and the box searches. Not one index of everything, but twelve separate live queries running at the same time against the parts of the platform you have access to.
What it reaches
| Group | What is searched |
|---|---|
| Cockpit | Items in your queue, by title |
| Tasks | Tasks you own or are assigned |
| Chat | Messages in rooms you are in |
| Contacts | People in the CRM, by name |
| Deals | Opportunities, by business name |
| Tickets | Support tickets, by title |
| Knowledge base | Articles, by title |
| Sprints | Engineering sprints, by title |
| Engineering | Issues, by title and number |
| People | Colleagues, by name |
| Invoices | By invoice number |
Alongside those, the box always searches two things that are not records: quick actions and navigation, so typing "invoice" finds both your invoices and the screen where invoices live.
What is yours and what is everybody's
This distinction matters and it is not visible on screen.
Tasks and Cockpit items are scoped to you. You see tasks you own or have been assigned, and items in your own queue. Searching for a colleague's task will not find it, which is deliberate rather than a gap.
Chat messages are scoped to the rooms you are in. A message in a private channel you are not a member of does not appear, and there is no permission level that changes that from here.
Everything else is scoped to your organisation and to whatever your permissions already allow. The search does not widen your access; it only makes what you already have reachable faster.
Colleague search excludes client accounts, so looking for a name returns staff rather than a mixture of staff and customers.
How the results are ordered
Results group by kind, and the groups appear in a fixed order rather than by relevance.
Quick actions first, then navigation, then your daily-loop surfaces: Cockpit items, tasks and chat messages. Then the CRM and administrative records: contacts, deals, tickets, articles, sprints, issues, people, invoices.
The reasoning is that the things you touch every day should be above the things you touch occasionally, even when the occasional thing matches your text slightly better. Relevance ranking across twelve unrelated sources tends to produce a confident wrong order; a fixed order is predictable, and predictable is faster to learn.
Two behaviours worth knowing
It waits for you to stop typing. There is a short pause before the search runs, so a fast typist triggers one query rather than nine. That is why results appear a moment after you finish rather than character by character.
Record search needs two characters. A single letter matches navigation and quick actions only. This keeps a stray keystroke from running twelve queries against every table.
Limits, honestly
Each source returns a handful. Between four and eight per kind, and the combined list is capped at twenty-eight rows.
That means the box is a jump-to tool, not a reporting tool. If your search returns exactly five contacts, there are probably more, and the right move is to go to the CRM and search there with filters.
It matches text, not meaning. Searching for a company will not find a deal named after its parent, and searching for "overdue" will not find overdue invoices. For questions like that, use the Ask row: that is what it is for.
One source failing does not break the rest. The twelve queries run independently, so a slow or unavailable source leaves a gap rather than an error.
Why something is not found
Four reasons, in the order they actually occur.
You searched the wrong field. Deals match on the business name, invoices on their number, engineering issues on title and number. Searching an invoice by the customer's name will not find it.
It is somebody else's. Tasks and Cockpit items are yours only. If a colleague owns it, it is not here.
It fell outside the handful. Each source returns a few matches. A common word returns the few it happened to find first, and a more distinctive fragment finds the one you meant.
It is not a record. Settings, configuration screens and features are found through navigation rather than through record search, and the Atlas is the better tool for "where do I configure this".
Three worked searches
A deal you half remember. Type the distinctive part of the company name. It appears under Deals with its phase, and Enter opens it.
An invoice somebody just mentioned. Type the number. One result, no ambiguity, straight there.
A message from last week. Type a distinctive phrase from it. It appears under Chat with its date, and opening it lands you in the room at that message rather than at the bottom of the thread.
That last one is the underused capability here. Message search across every room you are in, from any screen, without opening the chat app.
Beneath the results
Two rows sit at the bottom of every search: Ask and Create, both carrying whatever you typed.
Their order changes based on what you wrote. A question puts Ask first; something with a time in it puts Create first. The rows are always both there, so a wrong guess costs you an arrow key rather than a retype.
This is the part that makes the box forgiving. Type a sentence meant as a question, see search results that miss, and the answer is one row down rather than a fresh start.
Getting to the result
Arrow keys move through the list, including the two offer rows at the bottom.
Enter opens whatever is selected.
Escape closes. If you have gone into the Ask or Do lane, the first Escape brings you back to the search results and the second closes the box.
Searching well
Use the distinctive word. "Meridian" beats "Meridian Group Holdings", because everything is a partial match and the shortest unique fragment gets there fastest.
Search the number for invoices and issues. Both are indexed by their reference, and a number is unambiguous where a title is not.
Do not search for a screen you visit daily. Pin it, or learn its hub shortcut. The box is best for the thing you need once.
When nothing is found, look at what you typed. The most common cause is searching for a description of something rather than its name, and the fix is usually the Ask row rather than better search terms.
Did this answer your question?
No, ask a person