Community Manager Note: Even though Holly isn't part of the Community Team anymore, her helpful hints live on! Each week we'll spotlight one to help you get the most out of your community experience. Enjoy!

At least once a day I say: "I have so many questions." I like questions. I like learning. And I like being able to find answers.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to focus on how the community can help you find answers to your questions.  Today I'm going to talk about our global search.

The global search bar for the Blackbaud Community is found on the home page. This search bar searches everything in the entire Blackbaud Community. Every product, every area, everything. So while there are times (that I'll talk about in a minute) where this is useful, be prepared to engage some filters on your search results.

Here's an example:
Let's say I am interested in learning more about peer-to-peer fundraising. I can type that into the search bar (hint: if you want that specific phrase, use quotation marks around the phrase, otherwise search will return any result that has any of those terms in it). Now you are on our search results page. My search returned 140 entries. The number of results may vary, based on your permissions in the community.
In this case, 140 entries still feels like a lot of information. So I'm going to employ some filters.

First, I'm going to sort my results so I see the most relevant results first. Now you will see content with your search phrase in their titles at the top of the page. This is helpful as you assess what type(s) of content are available.
But using the sort feature doesn't help whittle down the number of returned entries. That's what filters are for. I can tell the filters to only show me certain types of content (in this case, I asked for blogs and resources) and only content that has been posted in the past week.
By using filters and sort, I'm able to narrow my initial 140 results to three (3), which is much more convenient and relevant.

Admittedly, I chose a simple search for today's example. If you type something much more generic, like "fundraising," into the search bar, the number of results would become overwhelming very quickly and you may want to be able to filter by product. This is another type of search and I'll cover it in next week's edition of "Holly's Helpful Hints."

In the meantime, take a minute to check out our global search tool on the home page and let us know what you think in the comments below.

And, as always, if you have ideas for future helpful hints, share them in the comments as well!