Improve Search Results for Multiple Keywords

Sometime around 9/13 the board search box stopped returning results for multiple keywords. This completely degrades the functionality of the search box. For example, if I want to find the pulse titled “Black Skull T-Shirts” in the board search box, in the past I used to be able to search for ‘Black T-Shirts’ and get the pulse ‘Black Skull T-Shirts’ returned in my results. Since whatever upgrade happened around 9/13, I have to search for the pulse name using only one search term, then scroll through unnecessary results. The search box is only returning exact matches, rather than searching keywords.

Anyone else having this issue?

I came here looking for just this topic. This is a killer for us. The this change, search also let us search across multiple columns quickly and easily. Just type a keyword from each column. Very powerful for us. Now it’s exact matches only. If this is a bug that will be fixed, I get it and will be patient. If this was an intended change, then it needs to be an option. Monday has a habit of these little surprises.

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Unfortunately it seems intentional. Here is the response I received today -

I can read you were experiencing issues with the search feature. When you try to search two or more words you don’t get any result, is that correct? If so, let me tell you that in the past, it was possible to search for random words together (e.g., “test” + “monday”), and the search will show all the items with one or all of those words, but now it will only search for the entire phrase, meaning that it will only bring results that match all the words typed. That’s why you don’t get anything when you search for different words related to different items.

This is one of our latest updates that will improve the customer experience on the platform. But if this is not your case we would love to hear your feedback. So, in the future, we can implement a feature that can do the same but with better results.
Hopefully, this information will clarify your questions. Please, let us know what you think about it. If you have any doubts feel free to ask. We’re here to help you.

I suggest you write support with your issue so we can get our difficulties logged. I don’t understand the update - if you want a specific phrase to be returned, search for that phrase and you’ll still get those exclusive results. If this is an update they insist on, maybe they can give us a dropdown next to the search box - ‘search by phrase’ or ‘search by keywords’.

I just got the same reply from Support. It’s a significant hit to the productivity of all our employees who use Monday. Basically, they crippled search intentionally and call it an improvement.

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I must agree 100%! This does not “improve the customer experience”. In fact, quite the opposite. This is hindering my productivity significantly as it is taking me significantly longer to find search results now.

Monday likely made this change based on feedback from limited individuals and did not think about the greater good. @GoWest you are correct - Monday needs to provide an option of searching by Exact Phrase or Keywords. I emailed support to express my disappointment and offer this suggestion also. Thanks!

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Thanks Charlie - the more that we can get people to nudge them, the better. Even though we’re using the ‘search everything’ tool as a workaround, it is still a hinderance. It is misleading because the point of a search box is to search keywords, and that is what the world is used to getting with search engines. If you search for ‘War in Ukraine’ anywhere else on the web, you expect to get results that include either of those keywords, not the exact phrase. I’ve never used a ‘search box’ that only returns phrases.

@GoWest @Ferghus After some back and forth with Support via email, it seems their Developers are taking feedback via this form:

Please share your feelings about the change with the developers and let others know to do the same.

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Charlie, thank you for this link! I’ll make sure everyone on our team fills it out. Thanks for the legwork that you’ve done to get them to create this form.

Yeah, this is an awful change – it reduces efficiency. I have hundreds of pulses for individual clients and I need to be able to search quickly for the client and then drill down to a specific project. I do this multiple times per hour. Now I’m stuck scrolling forever to find specific projects. And the "Search Everything’ is slower and takes longer to access and you can’t batch select pulses in that mode. It’s not a good alternative.

@bpdesign , I agree, and we’re in the same boat. If you haven’t already, please click on the form that @charlieg posted above, and share it with our staff. I forwarded the link to our entire staff to fill out their opinions about the change. I don’t know who would request this feature - in the past, you could search by keyword OR phrase. The new search logic has removed the option to search by keyword, which is how all search boxes in every other app and program are known to function.

Please fill out that form and hopefully they can step back this functionality.

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Done – just submitted the form.

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Thank you for this! Just submitted form.

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Has anyone found a temporary solution to this issue?

Hi Mackenzie - you can use the ‘search everything’ feature, which is the magnifying glass above your profile picture in the bottom left of the screen. that’s the only solution at this time. If you haven’t yet, can you please fill out the form posted by Charlie Gilbert above? That feedback goes directly to the developers and I don’t think they’ll fix this issue unless enough people complain. thank you.

As a solution, Support suggested to use Filtering. But only Advanced filtering will come anywhere close. Considering this is a simple thing that our people use hundreds of times a day in a variety of combinations, think of all the lost productivity. That equals real money. All I’ve been told is that they’re looking at the feedback with no commitment to restore the functionality. My takeaway was that the change was made to optimize searching for a small number of customers with massive boards, at the expense of everyone else.

I have an idea for those small number of customers with massive boards…Use Filtering.

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Agree with the lost productivity. I just timed it – using a filter takes about 15 seconds longer than it used to take me to do the same search with a couple keywords in the search box. Multiply that by the 200-300 keyword searches I do every day. It’s painful – so much lost time. I get angry every time I go to search for something and then remember that I can’t. It’s like someone cut off one of my hands.

@bpdesign I hear you, Beth - we’re losing productivity as well. The best solution to appease all parties is to allow a selection in front of the searchbox, maybe a radio button. ‘Search by Keywords’ or ‘Search by Phrase’. Please keep emailing them, I am asking them for an update about twice a week.

Yeah, I emailed again, too. I’ll probably do it regularly. I like the radio button idea, especially if your choice would stay selected unless you changed it. Or even in your preferences – just a choice for a default search behavior – phrases or keywords.

My suggestion was even simpler. If you surround the search phrase in quotes, do an exact match search. Otherwise, do a keyword search. Pretty much the exact way Google does it.