Freshdesk has a robust search box that helps agents and admins find information quickly across their tickets, customers, and self-service resources.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

How search works in Freshdesk

You can find the search box in the top-right and use it to search for any information to which you have access in your account.


Your search query is cross-checked against:

  • Tickets—subject lines, descriptions, notes, replies, ticket fields, tags, attachment names
  • Contacts—names, emails, phone numbers, contact fields
  • Solutions—Titles, descriptions, tags, attachment names
  • Forums—Titles, posts

When your query contains multiple words, an OR search is performed on the keywords. For example, if your search query is jet propulsion, the search is performed as follows:

  1. The first results are exact matches, i.e., items containing the phrase "jet propulsion".
  2. The next results are partial matches that contain each word, even if not together, i.e., items containing the words "jet" and "propulsion".
    • For example, an article that contains the sentence "Our private jet operates on a two-tier propulsion system" will show up as a result.
  3. The next results are partial matches that contain words that exactly start with the search terms, i.e., items containing words such as "jetpack", "Jetson", "propulsions", etc., but not words like "propel", "propellant", "aircraft", or "plane".

You can eliminate partial matches by enclosing your search query in double quotes. For example, "jet propulsion".


The following limitations apply to the search:

  1. Updates in tickets, contacts, etc., take a few minutes to be indexed. They will not show up in search results during those few minutes.
  2. The maximum indexable size for ticket descriptions is 64 KB.

Search preview

When you click in the search box, you can see filters for each sub-type, as well as recent search results. When you type a query, the recent results are replaced with a preview of new results. 


You can also click the Gear icon to adjust your ticket search settings.


Search results page

When you type a query and press Enter, the search results page displays the results in different categories. You can modify search preferences to narrow down your ticket search.

Note: By default, results are sorted by Relevance. You can choose to sort by Last Modified or Date Created.


In each result available, you can see the following information: 

CategoryInformation seen in the search results
TicketsTicket subject and description
Requester
Ticket created time
Assigned agent
Status and priority
SolutionsTitle of the article
The folder in which the article is created
Truncated content
Author of the article
Last published time
ForumsTopic name
Forum name
Post content
Topic creator
Topic created time
CustomersCompany name
Contact name


Filtered search on the search results page

When searching for tickets, you can use the Filter button to fine-tune your results with the exhaustive ticket property list, including custom ticket fields. For example, you can look for ‘console repair’ tickets received in the last 10 days, assigned to a specific Group, and given the Urgent priority.


Note: Filtered search is available from the Growth plan.


To use filtered search:

  1. Use the search bar to get an initial results page.
  2. On the search results page, click the Filters button.
  3. In the Filters panel, select the values to filter by and click Apply.
  4. You can also drill down on each filter to choose a negative modifier ("does not include").