Search
The box in the centre of the top bar, on every staff page.
It searches people, devices, loans, repairs and products at once. Type two or more characters and results appear grouped by kind. Pick one to jump straight to it.
Why there is no People tab
Section titled “Why there is no People tab”Because search is the way in. A person is found by typing their name, not by opening a directory and filtering it.
Pressing Enter on a person opens the full results at /people, which is the
closest thing to a people list. But the fast path is the search box, and it is
worth teaching your team to use it rather than navigating.
What you can type
Section titled “What you can type”| Type | Finds |
|---|---|
| A name | People, matched on first, last or display name |
| A username | People |
| A serial number | Devices, and the repairs and loans against them |
| A loan number | The loan device and who has it |
| A submission number | The repair |
| A product name | Stock items |
Partial matches work. Typing broo finds Riley Brooks.
From search to work
Section titled “From search to work”The reason search is central rather than decorative: almost every job at a service desk starts with identifying a person or a device.
- A student at the counter says their laptop is broken. Type their name, open their profile, see their devices, raise a repair against the right one.
- A serial number is on a device on the bench with no note. Type it, and you have the owner and any open repair.
- Somebody asks who has loan 14. Type
14.
The assistant does this too
Section titled “The assistant does this too”The assistant answers the same questions in sentences, and can act on the answer. “Open repairs for Riley Brooks” gets you a clickable table rather than a search result you then have to filter.
Use search when you know what you are looking for. Use the assistant when you have a question.
What search does not cover
Section titled “What search does not cover”Audit log entries. The logs page has its own search, because the questions you ask of an audit log are different.
Knowledge base articles. Those are searched on the help centre by the people reading them.
Ticket bodies. The tickets page has its own filtering.
Permissions
Section titled “Permissions”Search only returns what you are allowed to see. A user without client.view
does not get people results, and one without loan.view does not get loans.
That is not a filter applied after the fact; the query itself is scoped, so a result you cannot open is never shown.