New in Breeze: search that actually finds things

Why search needed the work

The old search was a small dropdown under the magnifier in the top bar. It worked, in the sense that it returned rows. But it was slow enough that you learned not to trust it mid-thought, it showed you a handful of results and then handed you off to a separate results page, and it had no idea what page you were standing on.

That last part is the one that quietly cost the most time. Every board in Breeze can be narrowed by owner, list, tag, status and swimlane, but never by a word. If you knew a task existed and you knew roughly what it was called, your options were to scroll, or to leave the board, search, and come back.

One box, everything in it

Click the magnifier in the top bar and the search opens over the page. On a board you can also just press /, or Cmd+K on a Mac and Ctrl+K on Windows, alongside the rest of the keyboard shortcuts.

Start typing after two characters and results come back ranked in a single list rather than sorted into buckets by type. This matters more than it sounds. Grouped results make you scan nine short lists to find the one good hit; a single ranked list puts the thing you meant at the top, whether it happens to be a task, a comment somebody left on it, or the file attached to it.

Every row shows the matching words highlighted in context, and underneath it, where the thing lives - the project first, then the swimlane and list. So a result is readable without opening it, which is usually enough to tell the right "Website redesign" from the other two.

Arrow keys move through the results and enter opens the highlighted one. Enter with nothing highlighted takes you to the full results page. Escape closes the whole thing. If there are more results than fit, the list keeps loading as you scroll.

Typing a number finds that task

If what you type is just a number, Breeze treats it as a task ID and shows you that task. Handy when a teammate pastes a bare number into chat, or when you are following up on something from a report. It ignores any filters you have set, deliberately - you asked for one specific task, not for a search to be narrowed.

Narrowing without leaving the box

The overlay carries the same filters as the full results page: projects, people, lists, tags, swimlanes, statuses, custom fields, a date range on when things were last updated, and a switch to include archived work. The Filter button shows a count when any of them are on, and clears them all in one click.

One change here is worth explaining, because it makes the result count go down. A filter used to be ignored by any result type that could not honour it. Filter by the tag "urgent" and every matching note, message and project still came back, because notes, messages and projects do not have tags - so they were never actually tested against your filter, and they sat in the list looking like they had passed it.

Now a type that cannot honour an active filter drops out instead. Fewer rows, but every row in front of you genuinely matches what you asked for. The results page and the search box also now agree on this, which they did not before.

It is quick enough to type into

The old search ran a separate ranked query per result type, each one ranking every matching row in the table before throwing nearly all of it away. On a database with a couple of million tasks that is exactly as slow as it sounds - a single type that found nothing could take over two seconds.

The new one asks for all nine types in a single query, with the ranking and the limits inside it, so the database can stop as soon as it has enough. In our testing against a full-size database that took a few tens of milliseconds rather than a few hundred to a few thousand. In practice it means results keep up with your typing instead of arriving after you have stopped.

Searching the page you are already on

This is the part we would point at first. There is now a round magnifier in the toolbar of your project board, your calendar, and both views of your task list. Click it and it expands into a one-line box that filters what is already in front of you by task name and description.

The view keeps its shape. The board stays a board, with its lists and swimlanes; the calendar stays a calendar with everything on the right day. There is just less on it.

A few details that came out of using it:

• It stays open while it holds a search. The box only collapses back to an icon when it is empty. A view showing you a third of its tasks should say so somewhere on screen, and an open box with a word in it is that.
• It searches names and descriptions. Which is why the word you half-remember from a brief works, not only the words in the title. Two words find tasks carrying both of them, so "design system" matches a task named for the design work with the system named in its description.
• It stacks with your filters. If the board is already filtered to one person and one tag, the search narrows that, rather than replacing it. Your saved board filter is left alone - searching never overwrites it, and it is still there when you clear the search.
• Show more stays filtered. Paging into a long list brings in more matching tasks, not more tasks.
• It is temporary, and it is yours. Nothing is saved and nobody else's board changes. Clear the box, or reload the page, and the view is back to normal.

What drops out while you are searching

Because a search matches task names and descriptions, things that are not tasks cannot match, and they step aside until you clear it. On the calendar that means to-dos, estimates and the project bars across the top; on the task list it means the to-do rows. They all come back the moment the box is empty.

And when nothing matches at all, you get a plain "No results" with the word you typed, instead of an empty board that reads like something broke.

What has not changed

• Permissions. Search only ever returns what you could already open. Tasks and comments hidden from clients and observers stay hidden from them in search, and nothing crosses between teams.
• Your boards. No layout moved, no filter was reset, no setting needs turning on. If you never open a search box, your day is identical.
• The results page. The full search page is still there for when you want room to work through a long list, and enter in the search box still takes you to it.

Try it on the board you know best

The global search is the bigger piece of work, but the page search is the one that changes a habit. Open the busiest board you have, click the magnifier in the toolbar, and type the word you would have scrolled for.

If it saves you the scroll, it will keep saving you the scroll. And if you are the sort of person who keeps a dozen tabs of Breeze open, the slash key is worth learning first.