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Searching

Yontrack searches everything it knows by name or identifier from one place: the command palette. Open it, type, and pick a result with the keyboard — or go through all the results on the search page.

The command palette

Open it from any page of the desktop UI:

  • press ⌘K on a Mac, or Ctrl+K elsewhere — this works even while you are typing in a field;
  • press / when you are not typing in a field;
  • or click the Search… button of the navigation bar.

Before you type

The palette lists the last 10 projects, branches and builds you visited, the most recent first, so that going back to where you just were is two keys away. The list is kept by your browser: another browser, or another device, has its own.

As you type

  • Pages of the user menu whose name matches what you typed — Settings, Notifications, Auto-versioning audit… — are listed first. You only see the ones your rights give you access to, as in the menu itself. Every word you type must match the name of the page or of its menu group: config lists every configuration page.
  • From 2 characters on, the palette searches: it shows the 3 best results of each type — projects, branches, builds, releases, build links, Git branches, commits, issues, SCM catalog entries, security findings — grouped by type. Each group says how many results its type has in total.
  • The last entry, See all results, opens the search page with every result of your text.

While the search index is being built — after an upgrade, for example — the palette says so, and shows what has been indexed so far.

Keyboard

Key What it does
⌘K / Ctrl+K Opens the palette, from anywhere
/ Opens the palette, when not typing in a field
↑ ↓ Moves to the previous or next entry
Enter Opens the entry
⌘Enter / Ctrl+Enter Opens the entry in a new tab
Esc Closes the palette

A click opens an entry too — and a ⌘ or Ctrl click opens it in a new tab.

The palette is not available in the mobile UI, which has no global search.

The search page

The search page, /search, lists every result of a text, best first, 20 per page. It opens from the See all results entry of the palette.

Each result shows its type, its title linking to its page, where it is — in its project — and, when its text matches, an excerpt of that text around the matching words.

  • Highlighting — the words you searched for are highlighted in the titles, and in the excerpts of the text: a description, a commit message.
  • Filters — above the results, one button per type having results, with its count: All (42), Build (30), SCM Commit (12)… Pressing a type shows its results only, the counts of the other types staying there to go to them; All shows every type again.
  • Pages — below the results, once there are more than 20 of them.
  • Searching again — the search field at the top of the page runs another search, keeping the type filter.

The text, the type and the page are all in the address of the page — /search?q=billing&type=build&page=2 — so a page of results can be bookmarked or shared, and the browser's back and forward buttons move between your searches, filters and pages. The person you share it with sees the results their own rights allow.

While the search index is being built, the search page says so, like the palette.

The search page is not available in the mobile UI either.

How results are matched

The search looks at the names and identifiers of what it indexes — project, branch and build names, display names, release labels, commit hashes, issue keys, finding identifiers — and at their text, such as descriptions and commit messages. It ignores the case.

A result matches in one of four ways, the strongest first:

  1. Exact — an identifier is exactly what you typed: 1.2.3, release/4.1, a full commit hash, CVE-2021-44228.
  2. Prefix — an identifier or a name starts with what you typed: rel finds release/4.1, a few characters of a hash find the commit.
  3. Full text — the words you typed are in the text: a word of a commit message, of a description.
  4. Similar — close enough to what you typed, to forgive a typo. This one starts at 3 characters, and applies to a type only when it has fewer than 20 results of the three stronger kinds: a word with plenty of real matches does not bring in the ones merely similar to it. A type's results and count are then the same on every page, and in the palette.

Results are ranked by how they match, then by how well within the same kind of match. Between equally good results, the most recently updated comes first — the latest build before an older one with the same name. No type of result is preferred to another: an exact build name comes before a vague project match.

You only ever find what you are allowed to see: results in projects you cannot view are not counted, nor listed.

Counts

Each type counts its results up to 1000. Past that, its count is shown as 1000+ — Commits (1000+) in the palette, Build (1000+) among the filters of the search page — and the totals made of it too: All (3000+), 3000+ results. The pages of the search page go as far as the counted results: 50 pages for a type counting 1000+.

Past 1000 results of a type, the ones ranked are the 1000 which match in the strongest way, the most recently updated first among those matching the same way. An older result which would have ranked higher is then not shown: type more of what you are looking for to narrow the search down.

The administrators can change the cap with the ontrack.config.search.count-cap setting (see the search index).