Search FAQ
Answers to common questions about Search, for the people using it and the
admins running it. For what Search is and how the pieces fit together, see the
Search Overview.
Setup
Do I have to turn Search on before people can use it?
No. The search box and the results page work for everyone signed in, on every
paid plan, with no admin action at all. What a licence governs is Search’s own
pages — Saved searches, My connections, and the admin pages — and whether
Search appears in the side navigation. Every result is still permission-checked
individually, so an ungated results page never shows anyone anything new.
What do we need to set up before people can search an external system?
Register the system at Search → Sources, then each person connects their own
account at Search → My connections. What the source needs depends on the
system:
- Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams files) reuses the Entra ID
app registration you already use for Microsoft sign-in or calendar sync, with
the Search callback URL added as a redirect URI. - Google Drive can reuse your Google sign-in client, or carry its own.
- Confluence, Jira and ServiceNow each need their own OAuth client
ID and secret on the source, plus the site host (for example
yourcompany.atlassian.net). - Slack needs its own Slack app’s client ID and secret. There is no host to
enter — the workspace is whichever one the person signs in to.
Registering the source is only half the job: until someone connects, that source
returns nothing for them.
Why is there no AI overview above my results?
The overview needs three switches on, and any one of them removes the card:
Search’s own Show an AI overview above results (on by default), the Ask AI
app being published to that person, and Ask AI’s own company-knowledge switch.
The overview is also deliberately skipped when a live answer is already the
answer — a leave balance or a next shift needs no summary — and it never
appears when the person is holding an In or Only mine filter.
Permissions and access
Can search show someone a document they are not allowed to open?
No. Every area is queried with the person’s own permissions, and ranking only
reorders rows those queries already returned — it can never widen what someone
sees. External systems make their own decision: the search runs as that person
through their own sign-in, so they see exactly what they could see in SharePoint,
Drive, Confluence, Jira, ServiceNow or Slack themselves.
Who can open the Analytics, Synonyms, Promoted results, Sources, Search as and Settings pages?
Business admins, and anyone made a Search app admin. Everyone else sees only the
results page, Saved searches, and My connections. A Search app admin is granted
from Search’s entry in the Apps Marketplace.
Search as is the one exception. A Search app admin gets Analytics, Synonyms,
Promoted results, Sources and Settings, but not Search as — reading what one
named colleague can find is held back from the delegated role by default. A
business admin can hand it over with Let Search app admins use “Search as” in
Search → Settings; business admins themselves always have it.
Can I see what my team searches for?
Not by team. Analytics is admin-only and reports on the whole company — top
searches, searches that found nothing, click-through by area, phone versus
desktop — with no per-person or per-team breakdown. Individual search history is
deliberately private: a person’s recent searches are theirs, and are never turned
into a company-wide “trending searches” list.
Can I check what one of my people would find?
Only an admin can. Search → Search as shows what one named person would get
for a query, listed as titles by area, and private areas such as notes, HR files,
pay and messages are counted but never listed. It shows up to five titles per
area and nothing can be acted on from it. Every use is recorded.
Why does the Sources page tell me to upgrade?
External sources are an Enterprise platform tier capability. The Sources page
stays in the sidebar for admins on every plan and shows the upgrade state rather
than disappearing, so you can see what it would do before you buy it. Everything
else in Search works the same on every paid plan.
Day-to-day
How do I search for an exact phrase?
Put the words in double quotes. "radiation safety officer" matches those three
words together, in that order, and skips pages that merely mention all three
somewhere. Without quotes, Search matches the words individually as it always
has — including through your company’s synonyms — which is usually what you
want.
What do the In, When and Only mine filters actually change?
Each of the three narrows the page differently:
- In runs one area only. External sources, the live answer, “People who can
help” and the AI overview all stand down; meaning matches stay, but only from
the area you picked. - When puts a date floor under everything. External sources keep running and
are date-filtered too — an external result the system gives no date for is
hidden rather than let through. The live answer, meaning matches, experts and
the overview all stay. - Only mine shows your own rows and your own live answer. External sources,
meaning matches, experts and the overview stand down.
Under any filter, “Go to” shortcuts and “Did you mean” are switched off. A chip
appears for each filter you set, and each chip removes only its own filter. The
filters live in the page address, so a filtered page can be sent to someone else
or reloaded unchanged.
“How do I get told when something new turns up for a search I care about?”
Run the search, choose Save this search, give it a name, and set alerts to
Daily or Weekly. Alerts are No alerts unless you choose otherwise. The alert
only ever tells you about results that are new since you saved the search — a
document that already existed when you saved it never counts as news, even the
first time. Alerts arrive in your Inbox and by email, listing up to 8 new rows
with “…and N more” if there are others.
“How do I connect Slack or SharePoint so my searches include them?”
Go to Search → My connections and choose Connect beside the system. You
sign in to that system once, in its own window, and from then on every search
also asks it as you. You only see the systems an admin has registered, and the
tab only appears once at least one exists. Disconnect deletes your sign-in
for that source and nothing else.
“Why does one result have an Acknowledge or Pick up button and another one doesn’t?”
Because the button appears only when the action is genuinely open to you right
now. Acknowledge shows while your own acknowledgment is still pending;
Complete shows on your own open task, and not when that task requires a
completion photo; Pick up shows on an open shift with no claim already
pending. The buttons are the same ones inside the owning app, with the same
rules — Search does not grant anything.
Should I add a synonym or promote a result?
Add a synonym when people use a different word for the same thing — teaching
Search that FY means Fiscal Year makes every area match both, for every search.
Promote a result when the right page exists but keeps losing: a promoted
result pins one specific page or link to the top for the words you choose and
labels it Promoted. Promotions match whole phrases, so promoting “holiday
schedule” does not fire on a search for “holiday”.
When something looks wrong
“I searched for a document I know exists and it didn’t come up”
Work through these in order:
- Check the search itself. Search needs at least two characters, and a
quoted phrase must appear exactly as typed. - Check for a filter. A When filter hides anything Search cannot date;
an In filter searches one area only. - Check the area. An admin may have switched that area off at
Search → Settings, or excluded that file type. Content stays findable
inside its own app either way. - Check permissions. Archived wikis and workspaces are out unless
Include archived content is on, and deactivated people are out unless
Include deactivated people is on. Otherwise the answer is usually a
permission in the owning app — an admin can confirm with Search as.
“Search asked ‘Did you mean…’ — where does that come from?”
It appears when a search returns almost nothing, and it offers the nearest
spelling that works. Two things feed it: searches other people here have already
run successfully in the last 90 days, and the words in the few results and
meaning matches your own search did find. That second source is why a
first-ever misspelling still gets corrected — “radiaton safety” is offered
“radiation safety” even if nobody has ever typed it here before.
“My external source says Reconnect, or that it didn’t answer in time”
These are two different problems. Reconnect means your own sign-in to that
system has expired or been withdrawn — choose it and sign in again; nobody else
is affected. Didn’t answer in time means the system itself was slow or
unavailable on that search: every external source has a shared 4-second window
to answer, and one that misses it becomes a labelled section rather than a
failed page. Try the search again. If a source keeps failing for everyone for
more than 15 minutes, admins get an Inbox notice within the hour, which usually
means a rotated secret or a changed host.
“People who can help didn’t list the person who wrote the document”
“People who can help” lists up to six people and puts content owners first when
the search sounds like a question about ownership — words like “who wrote” or
“who owns”. Otherwise people matched on skills, job title, department or office
lead. Three things keep someone off the list: you are never shown as your own
expert, people already listed in the People section are not repeated, and only
current, unexpired skill records count.
“Why did the AI overview cite something from SharePoint?”
Because the overview reads whatever the page reached. When external sources
returned results for that search, the overview searches them again as you and
may cite an external document alongside your MangoApps documents; its label then
reads “from company knowledge and” the source’s name, and an external citation
opens in a new tab. An overview that used only company knowledge is remembered
for 10 minutes per person, so reloading the page does not rerun it; an overview
that used external sources is never remembered, because those results are never
stored.
Licensing and limits
Does Search need a licence, and who turns it on?
Search is included with every paid plan and needs no admin opt-in — the results
page runs for every signed-in person regardless. External sources are the one
part gated separately: they need the Enterprise platform tier. Sample data can
be loaded and removed from Search → Settings without touching real activity.
Are there limits I should know about?
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Search length | 2 to 200 characters |
| Rows shown per group | 5, then Show N more |
| Top results | 4 across the whole page, at most 2 from any one group |
| People who can help | 6 people, showing up to 3 current skills each |
| “For you” on the page before you type | 3 rows per kind; tasks and shifts within the next 7 days |
| External sources | all answer within one shared 4-second window; 10 results per source per search |
| Saved searches | 30 per person; alerts are No alerts, Daily or Weekly; each alert lists 8 rows then “…and N more” |
| Promoted results | up to 20 terms per promotion; title up to 200 characters; link up to 500 |
| Synonyms | each term up to 120 characters |
| Analytics | 7, 30 or 90 days; top 15 searches and top 15 zero-result searches |
| Search as | 5 titles per area; business admins always, Search app admins only if switched on in Settings |
| Search activity retention | 30, 90, 180 days or 1 year — 90 days by default |
Search API (GET /api/v1/search) |
20 results by default, 50 at most; read-only |
Two more worth knowing. The “people here open this” ranking signal reads the
last 90 days of clicks in your company only. The weekly admin nudge lists the
top 5 searches that at least two different people ran five or more times in
the last 30 days and nobody opened anything for — and an admin can switch it off
in Search → Settings → Notifications.
More help
- Search Overview — what Search is, how
the pieces fit together, and the settings an admin owns - Press Cmd K on a Mac or Ctrl K elsewhere to jump to the search box from any
page - Ask AI — the assistant answers Search questions from these articles