Universal Search is a powerful tool that provides a central place to find not only information about a given topic but also links to relevant Kentik Detect portal areas and controls. The idea is to make the portal experience more efficient by minimizing the user’s effort and time while maximizing the accuracy and utility of search results.

Universal Search is super-easy to use (think of “Google in Kentik Detect”) and is available anywhere in the portal, either via the Search input field in the main portal navbar (indicated with a magnifying-glass icon) or by pressing “Shift + S.” As you enter a string in the field, the Universal Search modal (shown below) opens automatically and presents results grouped into categories (e.g. Alert Policies, Reports, Users, Devices, Interfaces, Documentation, etc.).

It takes just a few searches to begin to see the variety of useful results that Universal Search can return:

• If you search for “alerts” your results include Quick Nav buttons (Active Alerts, Mitigation Methods, Alert Silent Mode, etc.) that take you directly to the relevant page of the portal.
• If you search for “sampling” you’ll see documentation explaining Kentik’s recommended sample rate tiers.
• If you search for terms such as “transit” or “peer,” results will include interfaces, reports, and alerts where the term is part of the interface description.

How does Universal Search make your day-to-day usage of Kentik Detect more efficient? Here are just a few examples:

• If you’re configuring a portal Admin setting and you need to refer to the Knowledge Base, use Universal Search to return the most relevant help topics directly within the portal (no need to juggle back and forth between tabs).
• If you’d like to see a dashboard built by one of your coworkers, but you’re not sure of the exact dashboard name, enter the part that you remember (e.g. “EMEA sales report”) and Universal Search will find it for you.
• If you can’t remember which network device a given IP is configured on, enter the IP; Universal Search will show a link to the Admin » Interfaces page, filtered to show the interface with that IP.

Leveraging customer feedback, we plan to continue refining Universal Search and finding new ways to put it to work for our users. For additional information, please see the Universal Search topic in the Kentik Knowledge Base or contact our Customer Success team.