Tips & Tricks

• With OneSearch, you have you the power to scale the efficiency vs. functionality of each Searcher to suit your environment. Things like logging, background refresh, and dynamic searching require resources, but they also provide benefits. Determine the appropriate settings for your environment based on your priorities. Don’t just automatically enable everything. In the Docs & Settings, Searchers, and Sections modules, you’ll find opportunities to granularly tune the behavior of OneSearch. If you experience performance issues, it’s usually due to a very large/busy instance or very broad queries. You can reduce the query load on your instance by unchecking ‘Background refresh counts’ or ‘Background refresh results’ on your Searcher form. Raising the 'Debounce (ms)' value can also reduce the number of queries instantiated, thus improving overall performance.

• OneSearch can be used on any form, workspace, or catalog item in your ServiceNow instance (not just Incident). Many customers apply it to HR Cases, SecOps, Customer Support Cases, and more. In addition, you can implement it anywhere you like on the Service Portal. There are instructions on how to place OneSearch on Forms, Workspaces, and Catalog Items within the Form/Catalog/Workspace link in the left nav. We've included some additional documentation for adding OneSearch to a Workspace Record page or a Service Operations Workspace. For Service Portal, there are 3 widgets included:

  • YDS Search Input

  • YDS Search Results

  • YDS Search Full (Search input & Search results combined)

  Combining these allow you to place a search input anywhere on the page with results anywhere else (using #1 and #2), or just a simple stacked display with input above results (using #3).

• The sample Searchers provided honor access controls, domain separation, entitlements, and Simple Data Separation rules for segregation of data. If you follow those examples, your new Searchers will, too. Always be sure to test.

• If you have a great Section that you want to reuse, you can add that Section into multiple Searchers. If you have an entire Searcher that you want to reuse, use the Copy Searcher button on the Searcher form. We recommend copying the sample Searchers and Sections as you start to build your own so that you can keep our examples around for reference.

• If you want to add OneSearch to a new form, catalog item, or workspace, visit YDS OneSearch->Form/Catalog/Workspace and follow instructions on the form.

• Reuse the configuration/code included with the sample searchers to piece together exactly what you need. Don’t reinvent the wheel, unless you have a better wheel in mind.

• OneSearch includes extensive logs and analytics. OneSearch captures logs of all searches, clicks, actions, and abandons, which can provide a wealth of data to help improve your Knowledge Management process. Knowing what folks are searching for, which answers they use the most, and which searches are abandoned (with no knowledge clicked) can be invaluable to informing where you focus your Knowledge generation efforts. Once OneSearch has been in use for a short period of time, you’ll earn a wealth of information to help you understand user behavior, KB quality, and areas for improvement. Start by visiting the YDS OneSearch->Analytics dashboard, and then dig into the Search Logs to get more granular.