Simply AskingDocs

Advanced Search Techniques

Master voice search, filters, graph-enriched results, and multi-mode research to find exactly what you need every time.

This guide is for everyone who uses the platform. Whether you are searching daily or doing deep research, these techniques will help you find exactly what you need. If you have not yet run your first search, complete the Your First Search and Question guide first.

Master voice search, filters, graph-enriched results, and multi-mode research to find exactly what you need every time. By the end, you will know how to use every search feature the platform offers and how to combine Search with Ask for deep research workflows.

Filters narrow your results so you spend less time scanning and more time reading. Combine multiple filters for precision.

Department filterNarrow results to a specific team's content. Useful when you know which team owns the information.
Date filterFind recent documents or search within a specific time range. Helpful for locating the latest version of a policy or report.
Document type filterLimit results to PDFs, DOCX files, URLs, written documents, or other formats.
Entity filterFind documents mentioning specific people, organizations, or concepts from the knowledge graph.
Tag filterSearch within specific topic tags that were applied during upload or extracted automatically.
Pro Tip: Combine filters for precision. For example, filter by the "Engineering" department and "PDF" document type to find only engineering specification documents.
1

Start with Search

Start with Search to find relevant documents on your topic.

2

Scan Promising Results

Open a few promising results to scan their content and confirm relevance.

3

Switch to Ask

Switch to Ask to synthesize insights across those documents. Ask a specific question to get a grounded answer with citations.

4

Deep-Dive with Document-Focused Mode

Use Document-Focused mode to deep-dive into a single document when you need detailed analysis of one source.

5

Save the Best Answers

Save the best answers to your knowledge base for future reference, so the next person who asks the same question finds it immediately.

Pro Tip: When search returns too many results, add an entity filter. Instead of searching "budget", search "budget" filtered by the "Q4 2025" entity. The graph makes precise filtering possible.

You now have the full toolkit for finding information in your knowledge base. Next, learn how to access your knowledge graph programmatically through the API to build custom integrations and automated workflows.

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