Adding a search gadget

Improve the usability of your mobile app by configuring and enabling global search functionality. You can guarantee more meaningful search results and increase the speed of the search by limiting the scope of the search to specific case types.

For example, in your Expenses mobile app, apart from the expense reporting case type, you have a case type in which users submit requests for a per diem allowance. You can add both case types to the search configuration, and provide users with search results that the mobile app displays in categories. After configuring the search categories, you can add the Search action to the menu bar of your mobile app, to provide a convenient method of initiating the search.

Before you begin: Prepare the framework for the search gadget:
  • Create a mobile channel for your mobile app. For more information, see Setting up mobile apps.
  • Ensure that you have case types and instances that the mobile app can use as search categories. For example, create a case type that handles expense reporting and a case type that handles requests for per diem allowances. For more information, see Creating a top-level case type.
If you do not define any search categories, the mobile app searches all content and displays it as uncategorized results on one tab.
  1. Open your mobile channel:
    1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Channels.
    2. In the Current channel interfaces section, click the icon that represents a channel for your mobile app.
  2. On the mobile channel page, on the Content tab, click the Search category.
  3. In the Case types section, click Add case type, and then select the case type that you want to use as a search category.
    At run time, the name of the search category in the search results is the same as the name of the case type that you add.
  4. In the search case type configuration window, in the Data view field, enter the data page that you want to use as the source for the search category.
    Note: Offline-enabled mobile apps download all data for the search categories during the first startup after installation. Avoid adding data sources with a large amount of data, to decrease the startup time of an offline-enabled mobile app.
  5. Optional: To change the default icon of a search category, next to the current icon, click the Change button, and then select the icon that you want to use:
    1. In the icon selection modal dialog box, click the Show image viewer icon.
    2. In the Image catalog window, enter an image name, and then click Find.
    3. Select the image that you want to use as the default icon for the search category, click OK, and then click Submit.
      Important: Search category icons only support .png image types.
  6. In the search case type configuration window, in the List item information section, configure how the mobile app page displays the search results:
    1. In the Primary field, enter the property that you want to use to populate the label of the search result at run time.
    2. In the Secondary field, enter the property that you want to use to populate the secondary text of the search result at run time.
    For example: You can use the following field and property configuration to display the search results for expense reports:
    • For the Primary field, add the Label property that defines the expense report name.
    • For the Secondary field, add the Amount property that defines the total amount of the expense.
  7. Optional: To add more categories, repeat steps 3 through 6.
    Note: When you add two or more categories, the mobile app also displays the All category when users perform a search. This category displays all search results in a single tab.
  8. Click Submit, and then click Save.
    Note: Changes to the search configuration apply to all mobile channels in your application.
  9. Add the search action to the menu bar of your mobile app:
    1. On the mobile channel page, on the Content tab, click the Navigation category.
    2. In the Navigation section, click Add items > Actions > Search.
    3. Click Save.
Result: At run time, your mobile app now has a search icon on the menu bar that users can tap to start looking for information. The mobile app groups search results by the categories that you defined. Each result has a label and secondary text that help users choose the best search result. When a user taps a search result, the mobile app opens the relevant work item.