Addon

The 'Attachment search' functionality is an addon feature and can be activated for customers on a demand basis. Contact customer support to activate this feature for your project.

What is Search attachments addon?

With the Search attachments addon, you can search for content inside PDF attachments in the knowledge base site. This feature is available on the home page and the knowledge base search bar. When a reader searches for a keyword in the knowledge base, two filter tabs appear in the search section:

  • Articles: Search results for the keyword in articles appear here
  • Attachments: Search results for the keyword in PDF attachments appears here

This ' Attachment search ' in the knowledge base site applies only to PDF files added as Attachments

You can perform a keyword search for the content inside PDF files on the Drive. This is handy when a particular file needs to be chosen, but the file name does not clearly state the search keyword. Without this addon, the same operation would involve manually downloading the PDF, opening it in a viewer, and searching for the keyword.
This functionality can be used in the Drive menu pages and when accessing Drive through the Insert file from the 'Documentation editor'.


Which PDF files can be indexed?

  • Only PDF files are applicable for file content search

  • The PDF files should be less than or equal to 10 MB in size

  • Currently, the cap for PDF files applicable for file content search is set at 1 GB. Post the limit, and new PDF files are not indexed for file content search

  • PDF files indexed for file content search can be identified by the 'File content search icon' right next to the file name on the Drive

How to purchase the Search attachments addon?

You can contact customer support to activate this addon feature for your project.


Adding the attachments filter in Search

Once activated, readers can enable or disable the search in attachment filter tab from the knowledge base portal.

2_Screenshot-Adding_the_attachments_filter_in_Search

  1. Go to Settings → Knowledge base site → Article settings & SEO → Article settings → Search settings

  2. Turn on the Show attachment tab in search toggle

Dependency

If the Show article attachments toggle is turned off, the Show attachment tab in search would become inaccessible. It is available under the 'Article right or bottom' section.

If the Show Attachements Tab in Search functionality is disabled, the search would work only for the article/category page elements (Title, slug, tags, content).


Use cases

Knowledge base site

7_ScreenGIF-Search_with_attachments_example_site

A reader searches for the keyword 'SharePoint' in the knowledge base site, and no search results message appears. When the Search attachments addon is available, the reader can navigate to the Attachments tab to view the search results of the PDF attachments content. If the desired result appears, the reader can click the desired search result and view the PDF attachment at the bottom of the article.


Knowledge base portal

4_Screenshot-Search_in_Knowledge_base_portal_Drive

A team account is searching for the keyword 'SharePoint' in the Drive, and if there is no PDF file name containing the keyword, 'Search attachments' goes through the PDF files' content (<10 MB), and if any keyword is found, the individual files appear in the search results.