Troubleshooting Service Portal Search

Overview

Service Portal Search is extended for ServiceNow Text Search with a few minor differences. This article provides ways to isolate and troubleshoot issues if you have been searching for something and the record is not showing up.

Text search

If you are searching for the name of knowledge article, for instance, and you don’t find the article in the search results, the first method of troubleshooting is to use global search inside the instance. If the article does not show up in text search as well, this could be because the article is not indexed:

1. Apply keyword search at the table level
2. Check Auto Stop Words and Stop Words.
3. Check the Search group and make sure the article meets the filter conditions defined there.
4. Regenerate the text index.
   
   

Portal definition

The search results also depend on the portal configuration. If the search term is showing results on text search inside the instance but not in Service Portal, check the portal confirmation for the portal you are searching in.

Make sure the catalog item or Knowledge article belongs to the Service Catalog or Knowledge Base configured in Portal record (sp_portal)

Portal search source

In addition, the search source can also be used to configure the results. These records can be found under the portal Related List or by directly going to https://<yourInstance>.service-now.com/sp_search_source_list.do.

Other possibilities

Finally, these components can also affect the search results. Other possibilities:

1. User criteria
2. Before query Business rule
3. ACLs
4. Customized Service Portal search widget

For more information

• Define a search source product documentation topic

• Zing removes stop words from queries product documentation topic, which provides information about the types of stop words

• Regenerate a text index for a table product documentation topic

• Search groups filter search results by table product documentation topic

• Introduction to Search Sources in Service Portal – Community article on how to set the search source