How do I search my board?

How do I search?

Two ways to search, both scoped to your own board:

• Press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux) from anywhere in BoardTools to open a quick search palette. Type, then use the arrow keys and Enter to jump straight to a result — or Escape to close it.
• Open the Search page for the same search as a full, shareable page — useful when you want to send a teammate a link to a specific search.

Both search across meetings, decisions, minutes, documents, tasks, members, discussions, committees, projects, and surveys at once, with results grouped by type. Typing enough to get more results than fit on screen? The palette's last row, "See all results", jumps to the full Search page for that same query.

The full Search page shows 40 matches at a time, ranked by relevance, and tells you the real number it found: "Showing 1–40 of 137 results". If your search matched more than fits on one page, Previous page / Next page links at the bottom walk through the rest — nothing is out of reach, so a result that ranked 41st is one click away rather than lost behind a cap. Paging keeps whatever type filter you have on, the page you're on is part of the address (so it's shareable, and your browser's Back button returns you to the page you came from), and it all works with JavaScript turned off.

A broad term — a single common word — can still match hundreds of things. If you'd rather not page through them, narrowing the search term (a more specific word or phrase) or picking one of the type chips below the count gets you there faster.

Discussion results match both a thread's title and the text of its posts, and always take you straight to the thread. You'll only ever see discussions from spaces you're actually in — a private committee or custom space's threads never show up in another member's search, even if they type the exact same words.

Committee results match a committee's name, purpose, and charter text, and take you straight to that committee's page. Archived committees never show up in search.

Member results match a member's name, bio, and email, and take you straight to that member's profile page — the same page you'd reach by clicking their name in the directory or on a committee roster.

Project results match a project's name and its description, and take you straight to that project's page — projects of every status, including completed and cancelled ones, so search stays a way to answer "what did we call that piece of work?"

Survey results match a survey's title and description and take you to the survey's page. Because a board self-assessment's results are confidential to whoever commissioned it, surveys only appear in search for members who can manage surveys (board admins and the chair). If you can't open the surveys management page, you won't see surveys in your search results at all — not even their titles. Surveys you've been asked to answer are on Surveys → My surveys, and in the emailed link you were sent. Individual answers and responses are never searchable by anyone, on any survey.

Good governance tip: search is a fast way to answer "have we dealt with this before?" — try it on a topic before opening a brand-new motion or task for something your board may have already decided.

Narrowing to one kind of result

On the full Search page, a row of chips above the results — one per entity type that has a hit anywhere in your search, plus All — lets you narrow a broad search down to just the kind you're after. Every chip's count is the type's true total, even for a type that isn't showing on the current, unfiltered page — a common term can easily fill the unfiltered page's first 40 results with one or two heavily-matched types, but every other type that has a hit still gets its own chip with an accurate count. Selecting Documents, for example, runs that same search scoped to just documents, and pages through all of them — not only the documents that happened to also rank near the top of the unfiltered search. Select All, or the Clear filter link next to the count, to bring every type back.

Each chip is a normal link, so the filter is part of the page's address — share it, bookmark it, or use your browser's back button exactly as you would any other page.

Once you've picked a type, the search box keeps that filter: typing a better word and pressing Search again searches within the type you chose, rather than quietly widening back out to everything. Use All or Clear filter when you do want to search across every type again. Changing the search term always takes you back to the first page of the new results.

Why didn't my search find anything?

Search matches whole words, so try the singular form of a word, or a distinctive keyword from the title rather than a full sentence.

Quick actions and recent items

Open the palette (⌘K / Ctrl+K) without typing anything and it shows two more things instead of search results:

• Quick actions — one-click jumps to the most common "do something" spots: scheduling a meeting, adding a member, and uploading a document. Only the actions your role can actually perform show up; for example, a director who can't manage the roster won't see "Add member" in their palette.
• Recent — the last few results you opened from the palette, so re-finding something you looked at a few minutes ago is a single ⌘K + Enter rather than retyping the same search. This list is kept on your own device (not synced to your account), so it's specific to the browser you're using.

Arrow keys and Enter work exactly the same way here as they do over search results.