Blackbaud Pro Tips #3 – Search the Online Help Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger!

Derek Nichols

Yes, you music fans out there may have noticed that I totally made a Daft Punk reference with this blog post. While I’m not one half of the French DJ Duo, I can offer a few suggestions to make your online help searching experience even better.

So, here are a few handy tips to help you search Harder, Better, Faster, and Stronger while using the online help system.

1. One of the biggest issues we see is that the search terms are too specific, which limited the amount of results that appear. Try a short phrase rather than entering the search criteria in the form of a question or remove a term if you’re not seeing the results you expect.
2. The other big component of bad search results happens when user defined, school defined, or school specific terms are used.
   1. For example, instead of golf or lacrosse, try sport or athletic. In this case, a more generic term pays bigger dividends.
3. Another useful tip is to use a synonym or near synonym as search criteria. This helps limit issues that could arise where the word being searched may be different based on the official name or the term used by the provider.
   1. A great example of this is trying to search for the term “teacher” but the term is instead called employee or faculty instead.
4. Finally, (and yes this could be super obvious but is worth mentioning) you’ll want to double check the spelling of your search criteria. Thankfully, we’ve detailed some other, handy spelling tips in a previous blog.

With these search tips, perhaps you’ll Get Lucky and find what you need. We certainly hope so but if you’re constantly searching One More Time, then make sure to use the Was this helpful? option in the help to let us know. We’re constantly trying to improve our content and tools, so we take feedback very seriously.

Alright, alright, I'll cool it with the Daft Punk references. I couldn’t help myself. I am Human After All and I wanted to make sure you are all Doin’ It Right.

Thanks for stopping by this week to check out the blog. Make sure to leave us a like if you made it to the end of this post and leave us a comment below if you have any questions, comments, or just want to say ‘Hey!’

We’ll be back next week taking a look at the first of two May releases for the K-12 Products!