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Search Hero 2 Pn
Available on Professional and Enterprise plans

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Overview

Dovetail’s search helps you quickly find answers, content, and navigation across your workspace. Use Quick Search to search with keywords, ask questions in natural language, and move directly to the pages and insights you need. Search is designed to help you move from query to insight with minimal friction. To open Quick Search, click the search bar or press ⌘ K or Ctrl K on your keyboard, then enter your query. Quick Search displays relevant Dovetail objects such as projects, folders, insights, notes, and key navigation items.

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Search behavior

Quick Search adapts based on how you search:
  • Question-style queries automatically trigger a Magic Summary.
  • Keyword searches take you directly to the best matching result.
When a Magic Summary is loading, pressing Enter opens the summary first. You can press Enter again to jump to the top result. For keyword searches, pressing Enter immediately opens the best match.

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Exact matching

Add quotation marks to return exact matches. For example: “customer onboarding” Without quotes, search may include similar terms.
Longer, more specific queries usually return more accurate results. You can search using natural language, such as “reasons for customer churn” or “feedback about mobile app performance”.

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Get answers with Magic Summary

When your search looks like a question, Dovetail automatically generates a Magic Summary to surface relevant evidence and insights. Magic Summaries help you understand patterns and themes before opening individual results.
Magic Summaries are generated using the most relevant results for your query.

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Continue in Chat

From a Magic Summary, you can open the result in Chat to keep exploring your question. Your original query carries over, so you can ask follow-up questions without starting again. Quick Search also helps you move around Dovetail. Key navigation items, such as settings pages, now appear directly in search results. This lets you access important pages without leaving the search menu.

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Refine your search results

Search supports a range of filters to help you narrow results:
  • Anything – Any Dovetail object such as themes, data, and insights.
  • Anywhere – Restrict results to specific channels, projects, or folders.
  • Anyone – Content created or contributed by a specific person.
  • Anytime – Filter by time range.
  • Title only – Search only within titles.
  • More – Additional filters for fields, tags, published content, archived content, and more.
By default, search excludes contacts, tags, highlights, and themes to keep results focused on core content.
Available filters may vary depending on what you’re searching. Some filters are only supported for certain object types.

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Sort your results

Results are sorted by Relevance by default. You can also sort by:
  • Created
  • Updated
  • Name
Use the sorting controls in the filter bar to change the order.

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Ask questions with Chat

Contextual chat is available in beta for workspaces on a paid plan. Admins can enable chat in Settings.
Chat lets you ask questions across your workspace and explore results in more depth. It automatically applies context based on where you are, so you can zoom in on specific projects or expand to your entire workspace. Learn how to use chat in your workspace today →

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Ask questions via Teams and Slack

Querying in Slack and Teams is available only for Enterprise workspaces. Learn more →
You can also ask questions about Dovetail data directly from Slack and Teams using integrated search and summaries. With the Ask add-on, users can:
  • Ask questions in Slack or Teams and receive summarized answers with source references.
  • Receive scheduled text or audio digests with key insights and customer quotes.