Help Desk search and filter

Tips on using search to find existing conversations and tickets via your Help Desk

Matthew Pelyhes avatar
Written by Matthew Pelyhes
Updated over a week ago

Searching the Help Desk is straightforward, you just type in your query and get your results. But with a few more tips, you can become an advanced user and find what you are looking for much faster!


Searching for keywords

To search for conversations or tickets, click the search icon on the top left of the Help Desk.

Then, start typing your keywords and conversations or tickets that match your search will automatically be shown.

Some basics

When you make a search, we return conversations and tickets that match your query.

  • We only return conversations or tickets that contain most of the words in your query, in any order.

  • We usually ignore punctuations in the search query.

  • We usually ignore some common words like a, an, the as these words are found in almost all the conversations and do not contribute to the relevance of a match.

  • Keyword searches are not case sensitive. For example, pdf and PDF will return the same results.

  • Searching for multiple keywords connected by AND/OR statements is not supported. For example, searching project AND deadlines can return matches containing either term, but not necessarily both terms.

  • It is possible to combine string and tag search terms e.g `Tag:some_tag AND some search term`

  • We look for words that match your query exactly, but we also return conversations with similar words. For example, if you search for running, we might conversations that also contain run.

Sometimes, this similarity matching is not required, and you want to return conversations or tickets that match your query exactly. For these cases, you can wrap your query in double quotes (like "I enjoy running") which will only return results where there is an exact match.

Your search results will appear in the order of most relevant conversations first. To view the oldest, or newest conversations first, use the dropdown on the right:

Keyword search is currently optimized for English. If you’d like to see better support for other languages, let us know in the Messenger.


Using filters in your searches

Here are the available filters when searching in the Help Desk:

  • Teammate assigned.

  • Team assigned.

  • Conversation tag.

  • User (allows you to search for the specific Lead/User who started the conversation).

  • Company.

  • Created.

  • Status.

  • Topic.

  • Created by.

  • Conversation Data Attributes.

  • Tickets and Ticket Attributes.

To find something more specific, like mentions of a topic within a certain date range, or all conversations with a specific tag, you can add filters to your search. For example, if you’re trying to gauge interest in a new reporting feature, you could search for all conversations with the keyword “Report” that also have the tag “Feature Requests”.

You can also search without any keywords, using only filters to find relevant conversations.

Example: “Tag: Beta feature, Date: Last 30 days”.

To add filters to your search, type any keywords you’d like to include, then select one of the filters below the search bar, such as Tag.

Note: You can also add keywords after choosing your filters.

Next, start typing the name of the tag you’d like to filter by, and select the right one.

This will return all conversations containing that keyword, with that tag applied.

If you want to further refine your search, you can add more filters in the same way as above, like Date.

Then, select the value you’d like to filter by.

Using filters to search for data attributes

You can also search the Inbox and filter by Conversation Data Attributes or Ticket Attributes. Simply use the + filters button to choose the filter you need for your search term.

Note:

  • All filters are combined using And logic. Only conversations that match all of the filters and keywords will be returned. It’s not currently possible to filter your conversations with Or logic.

  • If you filter for multiple users, you will see only group conversations where all of the users are participants. You won’t see conversations with individual users.

To remove a filter for a broader search, click on the filter and then hit Clear.


Searching for a Conversation ID

Search for a number and filter by Conversations. We will return the conversation that has the same ID as the number. We will also return all conversations that contain that number, as usual.


Searching for a Ticket ID

Search for a number and filter by Tickets. We will return the ticket that has the same ID as the number. We will also return all tickets that contain that number, as usual.


Searching by email address

You can search by users simply typing in their email address. There is no need to select the User filter option first.

If you type in bob@example.com you’ll find all conversations with users with that email address. You can surround the email with quotes if you want to search for the email in the text of the conversation, ie. "bob@example.com"

For clarity, here's a table which shows all of the possible ways of searching with an email:

Search term

Result

Searches for all conversations with users with that email

Searches messages containing that string


Searching by company

Conversations and tickets are associated with companies in different ways:

  • Conversations can be associated with multiple companies. They are associated with companies through the conversation participants. When you search by company, we will find all conversations that have at least one participant from that company.

  • Tickets can only be associated with one company. You can choose which company a ticket is associated with when it’s created and change it later in the Help Desk. We will find all tickets that have been explicitly associated with the company you selected.


Results sorting

We offer sorting the matching conversations/tickets in two ways:

  1. Relevance (default)

  2. Newest

When you search, we look at various factors and return the most relevant conversations and tickets first. Some of the factors that we take into account are:

  • How many of the search terms match the conversation or ticket?

  • How many times do the search terms appear in the conversation or ticket?

  • Do we have an exact match?

  • How recent is the conversation or ticket that matched?

We use the Relevance sort by default because it has a higher chance of surfacing the conversations and tickets you are looking for first. But sometimes this assumption can fail.

For example: sometimes you might be looking for the most recent conversation that matches your query, even though there are other better matches. For these cases, we suggest using the Newest sort that returns matching conversations based on when they were last updated.


Top Tips

If you are looking for a particular conversation or ticket, try to search for words that are present in the conversation/ticket but are otherwise uncommon. For example, if you are looking for a conversation containing: Hey, help needed! How do I make cookie dough?. If you search for help needed, you might also find other conversations where people are asking for help. A better search here could be cookie dough.

Adding more words that exist in the conversation or ticket you are looking for will help you find your conversation faster. In the previous example, searching for cookie help needed is better than help needed.

Use double quotes when you know the exact phrase you are looking for. For example, searching for "make cookie dough" will return only those conversations that contain exactly these three words in the same order.

Find conversations participated in by a specific teammate

The Help Desk search will allow you to search for all conversations currently assigned to a specific teammate and you can also search by the conversation state:

You can also create a Help Desk View to easily access these conversations.

However these options will not show conversations they participated in that are not currently assigned to the teammate. If you wish to find all conversations participated in, you will need to create a Custom Report and use the "view conversations" option.

Find conversations or tickets created by you

The Created by you inbox shows items created by the teammate who's logged in, so it's a quick way of finding conversations and tickets you've created, even when they’re assigned to someone else.

This includes:

  • Outbound conversations

  • Tracker tickets

  • Back-office tickets

  • Customer tickets

Conversations or tickets that were created by a customer won't be included. If a Customer ticket is created from an outbound conversation, the "creator" will remain as the teammate who created the outbound conversation.

The inbox counter shows the number of open items that were created by the teammate who's logged in. The counter will automatically update when new items are created or when an item changes status (i.e. closing a conversation will reduce the counter).

See who created a conversation or ticket

Using table layout – A "Created by" column is also available in table view. You can access it by scrolling to the right until you reach the end of the table, then click the + icon in the table heading and select "Created by".

Using the details sidebar – You can also check who created an outbound conversation or Customer ticket in the "Conversation attributes" section of the Details sidebar.

Filter by creator

In search – Filter Help Desk search results with the "Created by" filter. To do this, open the search page, click + filters and select "Created by". Once added, select a teammate.

In views – Use the "Creator" filter when creating views. To do this, open the view modal by either editing or creating a view. Click + Add filter and select "Creator". Once added, you are able to select is, is not, is unknown, and has any value. You can then search for teammates and select one.

Don't have access to Inbox?

If you do not have a subscription that includes the Inbox, all inbound conversations can still be found in the Contacts > Conversations section. You can reply to these conversations from that page 👇


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