In September 2018, we launched the public preview of global search, a feature that enables users to easily search across all the content they have access to within their organization. Since its release, we’ve seen tens of thousands of users leverage this feature to discover and navigate to their data. However, the current experience of performing a search is not that intuitive in the Power BI service; it always requires users to first navigate to Home and then use the search box. Starting today, that will no longer be the case.
I’m excited to announce that we’re rolling out a new, revamped search experience that allows users to search for reports, dashboards, apps, and workspaces from any page in the product! That’s right – we’re making the global search truly global. 🙂
Pretty neat, right? Read on to learn more about what’s new with this release.
Feature Overview
Going forward, global search will be located in the top header of the Power BI service. By default, the search box will be in minimized state and will only expand when you click or tab inside the box.
Zero-query: Recent
When expanding the search box for the first time, you will see your last five most recently visited artifacts. This is known as the “zero-query” experience. Once you type in a keyword and navigate to a search result, that result will now become your most recent item. The feature provides you with a quick way navigate to content that you searched for before.
More relevant results
We have also supercharged our search algorithm to suggest results based on your previous activity in the Power BI service. Global search will personalized to you; surfacing the content that you care about the most in the top results.
Search results page
Lastly, if you want to see more results for your keyword term, we’ve added a new search results page! On this page, you will a list of the content that matches the keyword term and additional metadata such as type and owner. These results will also ordered by relevance.
Next steps
- Try out the feature! Head on over to Power BI service and use the new global search experience to search for your favorite report.
- In the long term, we are also looking into incorporating Q&A results into this experience.
- Have any feedback? We’d love to hear it! Please leave comments below or in the Power BI community forums.