New Search UI now generally available

Lekshmi Unnithan

Hi Community, 

You now have access to the new and improved Search UI.

Previously, Search’s old UI was complex and had the potential to display inaccurate search results. We redesigned the look and improved the performance of Search in Smartsheet. 

Now, Search not only has a modern UI, but it’s also more scalable and has better result accuracy. This will help customers find their Smartsheet items or work more efficiently. Additionally, customers using the Smartsheet Public API for search queries will also benefit from better result accuracy, and they do not have to modify any code to continue to receive search results.

P.S. if you’re not able to see the new Search UI, please refresh your Smartsheet page.

This new update is available to licensed users on all plan types and Trial users in the commercial US and EU instances of Smartsheet. Learn more about Search tips to find your Smartsheet items.

You can also stay informed by Subscribe to receive product release updates for curated news of recently released product capabilities and enhancements for the platform of your choosing, delivered to your inbox. As new releases occur, you will receive a daily email with news of what's released. (Emails will only send daily, Monday-Friday, as new releases are available).

Cheers,

Lekshmi Unnithan

Senior Product Marketing Manager

In-product screenshot:

Lekshmi Unnithan

Hello everyone,

We thank you for your patience while we iron out some of the kinks with the new Search UI. We've released two updates today that resolve some of the concerns raised here.

1. If you are searching for a numeric or alphanumeric term, you will get an exact match of the search term you entered, thereby resolving some of the previous search relevance concerns.
2. When clicking on a search result, you will go directly to that result instead of the top of the sheet containing that result. However, if you only want to go to the sheet containing the search result, click the icon to the right of the sheet name.

We'll keep you updated with any new improvements to the Search experience.

Kervin Vizcarra

Do we have any option to go back to the old search UI ?

aolim

The old search was great. Global by default, gave extra context per result, showed exact matches on top and got fuzzier, simple checkboxes to restrict search domains on the left. It was truly a great search engine. My organization is already complaining about the new UI being "within this sheet" by default and fuzzy by default unless the search is wrapped in quotes.

Smarty

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K Clements

This new Search UI is terrible. The old search feature was wonderful and actually pulled up all data that contained the information entered in the search bar. With the new search UI, I only get a fraction of the matching data. I can enter data in the search from the sheet I am looking at and it still will not pull it up. I also do not like that it no longer takes you to the exact location of the data you searched for. It will take you to the sheet, but not the cell. Very annoying when you have to search through 300 rows of data to find what you have asked the COMPUTER to find. Is there a way to go back to the old search?

Aaron Manley

Honestly, having attended ENGAGE and hearing about the inspiration behind the new search function I have been pretty excited about it. So I'm a little surprised there hasn't been any positive comments yet.

I certainly think there may be improvements that could be made, but overall I do like the new search UI (maybe I'm alone in this). For example as others I think have alluded to it doesn't seem to find everything, at least not cell-links for some reason. Try searching a control center summary sheet and see if any cell link pulls up. I'm getting nothing.

Otherwise, when I search for something it does seem to pull up everything for me (outside of cell-links 😕) and even searches for individual words. I can even gather search terms in "quotes" to search for exact phrases and everything works well for me. I do like that you can clearly see what all the object types are and have the ability to select certain objects depending on what you're looking for (as well as when it was modified). I also like that you are able to click the pencil and edit a row without even being in the sheet! I feel like this is a huge improvement as in our company there are many times that we just need to change one thing and now we can edit it quickly without having to dig through workspaces, folders, sheets, and rows.

As far as the search function not pulling up a specific cell, I don't see an issue with that for us. Because the new search allows us to make edits to the row from within the search, it makes sense that the row would be the default. However, if you go to a sheet and click anywhere in the sheet and do Ctrl + F it pulls up a find/replace box that when searching for something will take you to that exact cell.

The only thing I would mention is that when in the desktop app (EAP) the search does seem to automatically select the "current sheet" filter when searching in a sheet, whereas the normal web interface does not seem to automatically select the filter if in a sheet. Could be something to look into, otherwise I do like the new search UI and can see a lot of value in it.

Karen Talbott

The new search function is cumbersome and has a loss of functionality. I use this frequently. Can we get the old version back?

KBoutonCyber

Terrible and now useless! Is there an option to revert back to the old version?

Lekshmi Unnithan

Hi everyone. Thank you for trying out the new Search UI and sharing your feedback. I'm sharing this with the Product and Engineering teams to discuss potential future enhancements.

I did have some updates to share in the meantime:

1. Previously, the Location filter in the new Search UI defaulted to "Current Sheet." Now, it defaults to "Anywhere."
2. We are working on improving the accuracy of exact matching and optimizing the display order of the search results.
3. We are also fixing the current issue with search results taking users to the top of the sheet rather than the specific cell.

Alex Argumedo

for an IT technician it makes perfect sense, quotes for exact match, wildcards for open searches, partial matches kind of working.

But for my end users, common folks with no deep computer knowledge all this is too much and complicated to learn and master, most of them use tablets where quoting, asterisks and other forms are a hassle and inconvenient.

Change is a serious issue when you only need one thing, search the sheet they need. I do agree that we should have the option to use the old search that used to do what it supposed to do. I urge the developers to stop thinking that SS population is only computer nerds and focus on the regular users experience.

artector

This is a joke! The new UI is worthless, and the search no longer works. I am searching for a very specific number within smartsheet. My search result should only come back with one single entry (like it did a thousand times in years past). Instead, it comes back with a ton of useless data that does not even match my search! Urgh!!!!

EstherM

This new update has completely impeded my Teams ability to effectively Search, and therefore work with Smartsheet - especially across multiple sheets. I am not familiar with the presentations about this tool or what the benefits should be, but Searching should be easy - and it was. I see they are fixing the issue of a Search taking you to the top of a sheet, that's great. What about when I click on the cell link and it takes me to a completely incorrect cell?

Please roll this back, or at least correct the many issues with it.

MRedding

While the results may be better long-term, almost all my end users are complaining of usage issues as well.

Lekshmi Unnithan

Hello everyone,

We thank you for your patience while we iron out some of the kinks with the new Search UI. We've released two updates today that resolve some of the concerns raised here.

1. If you are searching for a numeric or alphanumeric term, you will get an exact match of the search term you entered, thereby resolving some of the previous search relevance concerns.
2. When clicking on a search result, you will go directly to that result instead of the top of the sheet containing that result. However, if you only want to go to the sheet containing the search result, click the icon to the right of the sheet name.

We'll keep you updated with any new improvements to the Search experience.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Lekshmi Unnithan

Excellent! Thanks for the quick updates!

Be safe, and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

KBoutonCyber

I don't see any improvement on results from all sheets showing up. This particular issue is a real issue for our team.

Is this in the works to be addressed?