Getting Started (Part 2) - How to Search the Forum? 🔍

You are currently reading Part 2 of our Getting Started Guide
Part 1: Setting up your Profiles
Part 2: How to Search the Community? :mag:
Part 3: How to Ask the Community? :speech_balloon:
Part 4: How to Get Solutions from the Community? :white_check_mark:
Part 5: What are Trust Levels? :medal_sports:
Part 6: Get recognized for your contribution with the Kudos Board! :trophy:
Part 7: Badges - Gotta catch 'em all! :sparkles:
Part 8: Katalon Community Sitemap :world_map:



Hi Community newcomers! :wave:

In this guide, we’ll show you how to search for existing topics before posting your questions.

Why do I need to Search before asking the community?

Every now and then, we often get duplicated questions or similar topics asking about the same problems here and there in the Community.

Searching before you ask is a great way to check if your issues has been reported and solved by another member or our team. And if not, you can continue the discussion and provide more insight for us to help you.

Ways to search for topics

1. Using the Search Banner

Simply type in your search query in the central search bar on the homepage and hit Enter. Please note that the search banner will not appear on your Profile page, Leaderboard page, and within topics.

2. Using the top header search bar

The top header’s search bar behaves exactly like the one in the search banner, and it will appear where the one in the search banner does not. You can also press / to bring up the search bar.

3. Searching within a topic

When you’re in a topic, you can search for a specific words/phrase within a topic itself, similar to using Ctrl/Cmd + F in your search browser.

4. Using Advance Search

This is a power-user feature on our site that allows you to filter topics not only by their keywords, but also by their assigned categories, tags, date of publishing, and much more.

Step 1: Select the search icon on the header (or hit ‘/’ on the keyboard), and then click on the 'filter’ button to open Advanced Search.

Step 2: Type in your keyword(s) if needed, make sure that ‘Topics/posts’ is selected.

Step 3: Choose an appropriate category’ under Categorized

Step 4: Under Where topics, choose 'open’ to display a list of

Step 5: Under Tagged, first type in either bugs-report or feature-request, followed by your corresponding products e.g. katalon-studio, katalon-testops, etc.

Step 6: You can further refine your search results by:

  • Entering username under Posted by
  • Choose a criteria under Only return topics/posts …
  • Choosing whether the topics were created either before or after [date/time]
  • Choose whoever the topic was assigned to under Assigned to (you could also choose your own username)
  • Define the minimum and maximum number of posts & views

Other ways to browse for topics

1. Using the Breadcrumbs

Just beneath the search banner, you’ll find the Top menu which contains breadcrumbs buttons and other hot links that’ll take you to other areas of the site.

  • The first button all categories allows you to cycle through different categories.
  • The second button all tags allows you to cycle through different tags.

breadcrumbs

Note: When you are in categories that contain subcategories, a third button all will appear between the abovementioned buttons that allows you to cycle through different subcategories WITHIN the current parent category that you’re in.

2. Using Hot Links

By default, the three hot links available on the Top Menu are “Latest”, “New”, “Categories” and “Newcomers’ Corner”, with more available in the Hamburger Menu

Below is a brief description of their functionality

Hot Links Description
Latest Display topics which has been recently replied to or which contain other interaction (reactions, bumped, edit, etc.) (regardless of their date of creation)
New Display newly created topics
Categories Display an overview of all the categories available on site (see our sitemap for more information)
Newcomers’ Corner Useful topics for new Community members which are appended with the new-users tags
Unread Topics which you haven’t read through
Top Topics with the highest number of Replies or Views over a given period

:pushpin: Up next: Part 3: How to Ask the Community? :speech_balloon:


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