Typeahead Search widget
Summarize
Summary of Typeahead Search widget
The Typeahead Search widget provides a predictive search experience by displaying suggested words as users type in the search field. It can be used directly in your Service Portal or cloned and customized to meet specific business requirements. This widget enhances user navigation by offering quick, relevant search suggestions and results.
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Instance Options
The widget includes configurable instance options to control its appearance and behavior within a portal page:
- Presentation Title: Text displayed in the search field before typing begins (e.g., "search" or "what are you looking for").
- Color: Determines if the search button beside the field is filled or outlined.
- Glyph: Icon displayed beside the widget, defaulting to a search icon but customizable by entering icon names.
- Size: Controls the font size and height of the widget with options: xs, sm, md, lg.
- Behavior Limit: Sets the maximum number of suggestion or typeahead entries shown, defaulting to 15. This varies based on whether search suggestions are enabled.
- Contextual Search Sources: Restricts search results to specific configured sources (e.g., Service Catalog only), enabling contextualized search results.
- AI Search Application: Allows overriding the portal’s default search engine settings, including limits on results and suggestions, if AI Search is enabled.
- Search Results Configuration: Defines how search results are presented post-search, with options to override portal-wide settings at the widget level.
- Disable All Suggestions: Option to turn off search suggestions entirely.
- Placeholder: Customizable text shown in the search box before input; defaults to "Search".
- AI Search Source Filter: Defines which tables or external data sources portal users can search against.
Note: AI Search-specific options apply only if AI Search is enabled in your portal.
Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers
By configuring this widget, ServiceNow customers can:
- Enhance search usability and speed by providing predictive suggestions and contextual search results tailored to their portal's content.
- Customize the widget's look and feel to align with portal branding and user experience preferences.
- Control the scope of searchable content to improve relevance and reduce noise in search results.
- Leverage AI Search capabilities where enabled for advanced search experiences and fine-tuning search application behavior.
- Disable suggestions if a simpler search experience is preferred.
Next Steps
- Create and edit portal pages using the Service Portal Designer to incorporate this widget.
- Configure widget instances to tailor the search behavior and appearance.
- Clone the widget to develop custom versions aligned with specific business needs.
Predictive search feature that shows words as users type. You can use this base system widget as-is in your portal or clone it to suit your own business needs.
Instance options
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Presentation | |
| Title | The name or words that appear in the search field before a user starts typing. For example, search or what are you looking for |
| Color | Whether the search button beside the search field is filled in or not |
| glyph | The icon that appears in the search field beside the widget. The search icon is the default. To use a different icon, type the name of the icon in the field, for example search-plus. For a list of icons to choose from, open the instance options for the Icon Link widget. |
| Size | Determines the font size and height of the widget. Choose from xs, sm, md, and lg. |
| Behavior | |
| Limit | If search suggestions is enabled, enter the number of suggestion entries you want to display. If search suggestions is disabled, enter the number of typeahead entries you want to display. The default is 15. See Enable and disable search suggestions. |
| Contextual Search Sources | Limit the results available in the typeahead search by only configuring specific search sources. For example, users searching in the Service Catalog only see results for the Service Catalog when that search sources is configure. For more information on contextual search, see Configure Search Sources available on a page |
| AI Search | |
| Search Application | Defines search experience settings for the widget, such as the search engine, search results limit, and suggestions limit. By default, the widget uses the same search application configuration as the portal, but you can override this configuration at the widget level. For more information on defining a search application configuration, see Defining search application configurations. |
| Search Results Configuration | Defines how search results are displayed after using the widget. By default, the widget uses the same search results configuration as the portal, but you can override this configuration at the widget level. For more information on defining a search results configuration, see Define a composite dataset. |
| Disable All Suggestions | Option to disable search suggestions. |
| Placeholder | Text that appears in the search box before the user enters anything. By default, the placeholder text is Search. |
| AI Search Source Filter | Content that portal users can search on, including tables in your instance or external data sources. For more information, see Defining search sources. |