Using the Global search

The article explains how to use the Global Search feature on a school site to quickly find students, guardians, staff, and pages. It details the permissions required for searching, the types of information that can be searched, and how to filter results. It also provides keyboard shortcuts and tips for effective searching.

Whether looking for a student, guardian, staff member or a certain page, the quickest way to find them (if you know their name) is by using the search box at the top right of your school site.

Click into the search bar, or use these keyboard keys:

• Mac: ⌘ + K
• PC: Ctrl + K

Permissions

To be able to search for a field using the Global Search, you need to have the right permission. If you can't see a result you're expecting to see in the search box, ask your admin team to check your permissions. They can follow these instructions.

Students:

• Student Profile: Name: View All/My Students - Student legal name, preferred name, initials
• Student Profile: Identity: View All/My Students - Student date of birth, UPN, UCI, ULN
• Student Profile: Contact Details: View All/My Students - Student phone number, email address, postcode

Guardians

• Student Profile: Guardians: View All/My Students - Guardian legal name, preferred name, phone number, email address, postcode

Staff

• Staff Profile: All Staff: View Basic Details - Staff legal name, preferred name, former name, abbreviation
• Staff Profile: Contact Details: View - Phone number, email address, postcode

Other fields

• School: Pastoral Structure: View - Registration form, house, year group
• School: Academic Structure: View or School: Teaching: View - Courses

For pages from the top menu, you can only see the pages in the search bar that you can access from the top menu.

For reports in the Custom Report Writer, you must have either created the report, had the report shared with you, or be a Superuser. You can see how this works here: Who can access Custom Report Writer reports and fields?

What can I search for using the Global search?

You can search for:

• Pages accessible from the top menu e.g Students > Attendance.
• Legal or preferred name - type in at least 3 characters to search in the first or last name
• Staff former name - type in at least 3 characters to search in the first or last name
• Student initials - enter the full initials of their preferred name if they have one
• Staff abbreviation - type the full abbreviation (see a list here)
• Student date of birth - in full, format DD.MM.YYYY or D.M.YYYY
• Phone number - Should start with 0 or +44 plus 6 numbers, with no spaces between characters
• Email address - type in at least 4 characters
• Postcode - type in the full postcode with no spaces between characters (any case)
• UPN, UCI or ULN - type in the full number
• Registration form, house, year group or course this year and next academic year (if set up) - type in at least 2 characters
• Custom Report Writer or page - type in at least 3 characters
  

You can't search for:

• Programmes of Study
• Custom groups
• Clubs
• Trips
• Interventions
• Student Number
• Arbor ID
• Globally Unique ID

Using the search

Start to type into the search box, and Arbor will start to filter the results containing the letters you type.

We'll highlight the match in yellow, chosen for accessibility.

In the search box you'll see:

• Students - Currently enrolled, leavers, applicants and students with a future enrolment this year or next year. You won't see students who were unenrolled during the year before the last academic year or prior
• Guardians - Guardians of students who are currently enrolled or applicants. You won't see guardians of leavers
• Staff - Staff with an active contract are shown in the search bar with their contract name. Staff without a contract but who have a current or future business role are shown in the search bar as Staff. You won't see staff who have no business roles or contracts.
  
• Pages - Rather than having to navigate to a page such as Students > Attendance > Registers > Daily Attendance, you can just type Daily Attendance in the search bar to go to that page.
• Favourites - Any pages that you have favourited will also appear in your search results if they match the criteria that you are typing into the search bar.
• Custom Reports - The search bar will bring up any custom reports that you have the permission to view, so you can just type their name rather than searching for them in School > Custom Report Writer.
• Help Centre - You can find articles relevant to your search in the search bar, providing additional information to help you with your search.

Pressing the Enter button on your keyboard or clicking the View All Results button will take you to the full search which also includes for example unenrolled students.

As well as being able to search for people, you can also search for courses and classes and registration forms. Just type the name in the search box.

Find Arbor pages by typing in the name of any page in the top menus you have permission to access.

• You'll also see the menu navigation to get there.
• If there's more than one path to get to the same page, we'll show both.
• We'll show the top 8 results by default, click View All Results or scroll down the dropdown box.

Some pages will also show when you search for similar terms or synonyms. 

Hover over a result and click the icon to open the page or profile in a new browser tab.

Filtering your search results

The search bar now has the option to filter your searches so that you can just find the information relevant to you. There is also an option to search in our Help Centre using this filter, which will open the chosen article in a new tab when you click on a result.

Clicking Show All in your Help Centre results will open the Help Centre in a new tab with all of the results for your query.