Looking For This? Symphony 2.0 Introduces Faster, More Intuitive Search Functions

February 19, 2021
Sin Jae Kim
Innovation

The ability to find information and the answer to any question at an instant is standard today. We’re accustomed to finding everything we want to know with one click, or a question to our virtual assistant. So how do we take that expectation and translate this to Symphony? The need for content discovery to work seamlessly and quickly while keeping our customer data secure at the same time is a tall order, but I am thrilled to say we’ve done that and more.

Most people visualize the concept of “search” in tech as a rectangular white box with a blinking cursor. Type a query, and the information you’re looking for will be among the results retrieved by the search engine. At Symphony, search includes this functionality, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Our definition of “search” encompasses both proactive and reactive content discovery: quick and advanced search of course, but also things like mentions, tagging, and more. In Symphony 2.0, we’ve enhanced all of these features based on user data and feedback. The end result is a more intuitive, contextual search experience that provides immediate results regardless of working style.

Proactive content discovery: Quick search, advanced search, and in-room search

The three main search tools in Symphony 2.0 are quick search, advanced search, and in-room search. In Symphony 2.0, these tools work together. Quick search is designed to help you quickly find the people and chats you’re looking for with convenient and ready access to frequent contacts, recently opened chats, and previous searches. Adding the ability to open search with a keyboard shortcut – CTRL + K for our PC users or CMD + K for those on Mac – makes navigating even easier.

Advanced search allows you to further refine the parameters of a search based on people, messages, or chat rooms. Here, you can filter results in order to find exactly what they need–for example, you can search within a specified date range, or only for messages that contain an attachment.

In-room search, which allows you to search content within a particular chat, is one of the most-used search features in Symphony 1.5 – so when it came time to update it for Symphony 2.0, we wanted to apply the principle of intuitiveness. As a result, the new in-room search features improved iconography, introduces keyboard shortcuts (i.e CTRL/CMD+F, just like searching a web page or document), and enables you to search for content across multiple rooms.

Reactive content discovery: Going beyond the traditional idea of search: mentions and tagging

As we mentioned before, our idea of search in Symphony 2.0 goes beyond the traditional features. We wanted to provide answers instead of more choices and filters, which means not only having a flawless search mechanism, but also creating ways to proactively receive information. Enter mentions and tagging.

Although mentions and tagging are not new to Symphony 2.0, we wanted to take all of their power to another level. We’ve changed the color of your own mentions so they stand out in a chat, which you have already told us you love. For tagging – previously known as Signals – we wanted to make it easier than ever to follow, track, apply, and jump to tags. In Symphony 2.0 you can easily view and manage the tags you follow with fewer steps, but also leverage keywords, which allows you to track certain words without needing a tag at any time. Now, any time a tracked tag or keyword is posted, you can easily stay on top of the latest.

Individually, these new search features and functionalities can help you more easily keep track of messages and locate the important information you need. Collectively, they play an important role in making the overall Symphony 2.0 experience faster and more intuitive. We hope they will make your searches simpler, swifter, and more productive.

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