Documentation
Intro to Community Search
Community Search empowers your community members & product users to find everything they need from a single search. That includes documentation and community conversations on channels like GitHub, Discord, Discourse, and more. The search uses data thatβs already in your Orbit workspace, so itβs easy to get up and running with. Read more about the motivation behind Community Search in the introductory blog post.
Try it now: Click the search box in the navbar π and type a few queries to see how Community Search works. Youβll notice results coming from different places like the Orbit documentation, Discord, GitHub, and Twitter.
Why is Community Search Important?
A strong search benefits everyone: members, the community team, and the entire organization behind the community. Community members have quick access to the shared knowledge, driving faster product adoption and higher satisfaction with your brand. Support load drops when members can quickly find answers to their own questions and find other members who can help them. Intelligent search results can also help users and prospects discover relevant features they didnβt know about.
What can I do with Community Search?
Create a Community Search Widget
Create and configure your own embeddable search widget, right in the Orbit App.
Embed Community Search
Learn the ins-and-outs of embedding Community Search on your own web pages.
Moderate Community Search
Learn how to remove conversations from being searchable
Additional Resources
Blog Posts:
- Your communityβs knowledge: now searchable!
- Get in the Lβ»βΊP: a modern framework for Developer Enablement and Support
FAQ
Do I have to pay for Community Search?
No, the basic version of Community Search is free! This includes a search for up to 3 documentation + community sources. The search can be embedded in as many places that you like, including the standalone search page. This also includes manual content moderation. If you would additional AI features including automatic content moderation / translation / summarization, as well as more sources for your search, youβd be a great fit for one of our premium plans. If that interests you, get in touch.
Can I use Community Search to add or replace a search bar?
Yes! To add a search bar to a page, use the searchBoxContainer
option described above. To replace or βtake overβ a search bar, you can listen for click events on the search bar and open Community Search instead. This is a good option when you donβt want to change the appearance of the search bar. Hereβs a example:
document.querySelector("#search-box").addEventListener("click", function() {
window.CommunitySearch.toggleWidget();
});
How does Community Search rank search results?
For documentation results, we look at the best textual match, starting in headings and working our way down into the content. For example, a search for βauthenticationβ will first match a page with an h1 containing the word βauthenticationβ. Lower results will include the word βauthenticationβ inside of smaller headers like h2, h3, h4, h5, and eventually inside of paragraph tags or general text.
For conversation results, we look at the best textual match and sort the results by date. Textual matches in the original post count for more than matches in the replies and conversations with more recent activity appear above conversations with older activity.
These ranking strategies apply to all Community Search users. On top of that, paying Community Search users also benefit from the ranking enhancements described in the Advanced Features section above.
How do I get started?
To get started with Community Search, please email us at [email protected]. Provide us with information about your workspace, any exceptions you don't want to be part of the search, and any documentation sites you'd like included. We'll then provision your search and provide you with a link to your widget. Once you've tested and are satisfied with the search, you can deploy it anywhere you need. Please note that a self-service option and self-serve management controls are coming early next year. Thank you!
- Intro to Community Search
- Why is Community Search Important?
- What can I do with Community Search?
- Create a Community Search Widget
- Embed Community Search
- Moderate Community Search
- Additional Resources
- Blog Posts:
- FAQ
- Do I have to pay for Community Search?
- Can I use Community Search to add or replace a search bar?
- How does Community Search rank search results?
- How do I get started?