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I know this is old news, but I wanted to make sure I understood the limitations of Global Search before I go ranting on the IdeaXchange, because it still boggles my mind that you cannot actually search all objects within Salesforce.

My understanding is that you now need to know which objects your records resides in BEFORE you search. Which to me, defies half the purpose of searching in the first place.

Sure, SF will do a partial object search based on your 'Top Results', which is just a terrible guess that you only care about a handful of objects you recently interacted with.

What if, for example, there are multiple records across multiple objects all named the same (after a customer)? Do I really need to click through every. single. object in the search results list to see if there are any results for that object?

Am I wrong in thinking that a custom search component utilizing SOSL would be much more useful and less misleading than Salesforce's Global Search bar?

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Your bolded question lends itself to some opinion. Mainly, how you feel about the "Top Results" functionality. Some may find it captures the most used objects well enough whereas you do not. It's supposed to be based on your most frequently used objects

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=search_desktop_mobile_comp.htm&type=5

You see Top Results, which lists the top results for most frequently used objects. Change the object to see more results.

Results are sorted by relevance.

I'm sure that's dependent on your org, how many objects you have, how your data is spread out, etc.

I'd argue for not going the custom route for the following reasons:

  1. The overhead of maintaining or supporting your custom search component utilizing SOSL. If you can, I'd always avoid re-creating out-of-the-box feature unless what it's missing is truly deal-breaking.
  2. Global search is available in every page within the org. The option will most likely always be there and most users will still gravitate towards it by UX design.
  3. Should the records have some relation if they all have the customer names on them? Can they navigate through related list or start from a parent object? Training may be easier here and help you in the long run.
  4. Users can select an object before performing the search. That's an easier training tip than going a completely custom route. That might make the search too narrow, but I'd analyze what issue you're really trying to solve before trying to make a better version of what Salesforce provides.

The final point is that you may find the global search changing in future releases that it makes your custom work obsolete. This won't change immediately, but Salesforce is looking at opening up the ability to customize that "Top Results" panel similar to how Classic allowed users to pin the objects in Search results. You can see the idea has been prioritized and the estimated delivery is for Spring '21

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  • Honestly the removal of the 'search all' feature from classic to lightning is a regression IMO. As an admin I don't have a meaningful 'Top Results' list of objects - I need access to all of them, because you never know where you're going to need to troubleshoot.
    – smohyee
    Mar 11, 2020 at 16:37
  • I don't disagree, as an admin, considering you're touching more objects than the average end-user. If you're asking about just creating a tool for yourself/admins that's a different story and could be worth it. I was answering this with regards to making this readily available to all users.
    – Kris Goncalves
    Mar 11, 2020 at 20:23

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