Essentials: The 'Custom User Search' macro

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Custom User Search

Find the users you've been looking for!

With the Custom User Search macro you are able to configure a customized search and control the look of the results.

To embed a Custom User Search macro into a page, select it from the list of available macros. A configuration window will open and offer you several options to customize your search.

Please note that this macro only displays users who logged in to your system at least once.

Freshly created users who never logged in to the system won't be displayed since they are not indexed within the system yet.

Configuration

User group(s)

Leave blank to search in all user groups. If you want to restrict the search to specific user groups, you can enter their names here. You could, for example, restrict the search to "confluence-administrators" only. Or any other group or groups. You get the idea.

Profile fields to search

If you leave this field blank, all existing profile fields will be searched (for example: e-mail, department, skills, hobbies and so on). In many cases this leads to too many irrelevant search results. It might be useful to limit the search to specific profile fields.

Use case example: Limit the search to username and department. This can help to find out more about:

a) an admin you know the name of & b) the responsible admin of a specific department.

Set placeholder text

The placeholder text is displayed on the left side. You can enter whatever you want to act as the placeholder. We advise to enter instructions here (for example: Enter any search term here).

Displayed profile fields

Here you can decide which profile fields will be displayed in search results. Enter the profile fields which you wish to display.

By default, the results will be display vertically. Enter "column breaks" (entered with the pipe key/vertical bar key "|" or chosen from the drop down menu) to display the profile fields horizontally.

Please note that the profile picture and the profile fields e-mail and full name are always displayed, no matter the configuration.

Default display

Display with help of "column breaks"

Profile fields for filtering

Sometimes a search will result in a long list of entries. In this case you can offer your users additional filters. Users can apply those filters to their search and narrow it down.

Select the profile fields you want to offer as filters.

Search operators

The Custom User Search supports some special operators to enhance the search.

Operator	Search string	Description	Possible results
Space between words	Berlin Washington	A profile field contains any search term (in this case Berlin or Washington).	Any user working in Berlin and/or Washington
AND	Berlin AND Washington	A profile field contains all search terms.	Any user working both in Berlin AND in Washington.
* (asterisk)	Wash*	A profile field starts with "Wash". The asterisk replaces any available string of characters.	Washington, Washer, Washing etc.
? (question mark)	Wash?ngton	A profile field with any character between "Wash" and "ngton". The question mark will be replaced with any available single character.	Washington, Washongton, Washxngton etc.

"Did you know about logical operators and wildcards? Click here to find how to include those."

How to search for languages

Since version 2.12 of Linchpin User Profiles, the language search is easier than it was initially.

To search for a language, enter the name of the language into the search box. You can enter the language term in multiple languages and still receive the same results.