Confluence search function complaints

[Jennifer Hemmens]

As the main Confluence administrator at our office, I often get complaints about the search function in Confluence. I always have to tell my colleagues that they must use the precise word/string they are looking for. The Confluence search syntax doesn't help much either, as most of our documentation concerns configuration/programming codes.

I have two questions:

1. Does anyone know if Atlassian has plans to improve their search function (I'm almost certain I read this in one of their articles, but I can't find it anymore)?
2. If not, does anyone have any tips regarding using the search function?

The main complaints I receive are very similar to this unassigned issue:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-36770

Thanks,

Jennifer

[Marcel Risberg]

The Confluence search engine is SO bad. I've lost so many hours due to it not finding things. Sadly the voting is offline.

"This typeform isn't accepting new responses"

[Shannon S]

Marcel,

Welcome to Atlassian Community, and thank you for following-up on this. I'm so sorry to hear that Confluence Search has also been affecting your productivity.

I'm not really sure what you mean when you say that voting is offline. Can you tell me where you were seeing that Typeform message?

Each of the feature requests I mentioned are still active and voting is possible:

• CONFCLOUD-36770 Confluence Cloud - Search results are unsatisfying - no google-style search provided
• CONFSERVER-36770 Confluence Server - Search results are unsatisfying - no google-style search provided
• CONFSERVER-14910 Confluence Server - Provide ability to override Lucene tokenisation and stemming and search for exact text (literal search)
• CONFSERVER-10412 Confluence Server - Support substring (partial) searches for terms used in Confluence: page title, attachment names, etc.

To vote, click Vote for this issue on the top right-hand corner of each of those feature requests. You'll need to make sure you're logged in first. Voting is not possible as an anonymous user.

Let me know if you have any trouble.

Shannon

[Philip Colmer]

Just wanted to add my thanks for the links. I'm getting a lot of flack over how poor search is in Confluence. Everyone seems to want "Google-like" abilities :(.

Are there any hints or tips on what to put into a page to help assist with search results?

Any way of seeing what people are searching for?

[Shannon S]

Philip,

You can try some of the various search add-ons to help Confluence search work for you.

In addition, you may be able to use some additional Confluence analytics add-ons to obtain more information about how people are using your Confluence instance.

Regards,

Shannon

[Shannon S]

Hi Jennifer,

If you're referring to Confluence server, then you want to follow this request instead:

• CONFSERVER-36770 Search results are unsatisfying - no google-style search provided

In addition, you may follow these requests:

• CONFSERVER-14910 Provide ability to override Lucene tokenisation and stemming and search for exact text (literal search)
• CONFSERVER-10412 Support substring (partial) searches for terms used in Confluence: page title, attachment names, etc.

On that last one especially, there's a comment from our Product Manager:

Thank you so much for your votes and comments on this suggestion. I’m sorry you haven’t heard from us sooner.

We’re currently investigating improvements we can make to search, and would love your input on how we can make it easier for you to find pages, spaces and people. If you’re happy to provide us with your thoughts, please fill out a quick survey: http://bit.ly/2vKGzQP

I would encourage you to complete the survey as well as comment on the threads with your feedback. Voting on the requests also helps us to properly triage the request and include it in any future roadmap should we choose to include it.

Regards,

Shannon

[Jennifer Hemmens]

Hi Sharon,

Thanks for your reply. I was indeed referring to the server - thanks for the link to the correct issue.

I've voted for and followed the requests, completed the survey, and shared everything with our Confluence users.

I hope you choose to include it in your roadmap in the near future, as this is one of the issues that made us hesitant to use Confluence in the first place. We have a substantial amount of documentation, meaning a good search function is essential for an optimal workability; and I'm sure many other Confluence subscribers/users feel the same.

Kind regards,

Jennifer

[Shannon S]

Hi Jennifer,

Thank you for confirming and thank you for your votes and feedback.

Take care and have a pleasant rest of your week.

Regards,

Shannon