An Improved Documentation Search to Help You Find Relevant Content

[givenothingback (AlexA)]

Hi Creators,

A few months ago, we shared some preliminary updates to our documentation search. Now we’re back with a bigger overhaul!

From our testing, these changes led to a 17% increase in creators clicking a top search result.

Here’s what we improved:

1. Recently visited pages let you quickly jump back into docs you’ve looked at before.
2. Get top results by category, or search within one category for full results.
3. Icons and text highlighting make search results easier to scan.
4. “Ask Assistant” to start a conversation about your query.
5. Navigate search results with your keyboard!

Recently visited

See top results from all docs categories

Search within one category

What’s Next

We’re working to add more searchable content, like community-created guides from the Forum, to expand our knowledge base even further. We’ll also be further refining result ranking for new and popular content, so you can easily find the most relevant and up-to-date information.

Beyond just search improvements, keep an eye out for a new look for reference documentation in the coming months!

Please share any feedback with us below. Thank you!

[7eoeb (beoe7)]

Still can’t find Enum.UICornerSide

[Bestspyboy]

pretty good update in comparison to everything earlier today cough cough

although the roblox assistant has been locked down so much as to actively impede it

[metatablecatmaid (metatablecat)]

From my own usage, this has a tendency to show me external links. This should really prioritise things on the wiki rather than showing me external links.

Even if the external links are in their own divider, they should not appear above links on the site itself unless its 100% sure thats what you want.

[MightyDantheman (Fate)]

I have been enjoying this update, but I still have the same issues I had before:

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/feedback-on-our-developer-documentation-website-search/3668089/25

The DataStore limits aren’t visible unless I search specifically for them. Then, on the main DataStore page, the limits still aren’t shown there. I don’t even see them linked there. The guide for DataStores isn’t even showing in search results either, even if I add anything like guide, article, or tutorial, to the end of the search. But even with the limits article, it doesn’t even say “DataStore” in the title of it, it’s in the text description of the article.

[12mrcool (NorthernCanuck)]

Any ease of use for the documentation stuff is highly welcome, I personally find it difficult to navigate so many buttons to click into or names/titles are weird, and also find lots are no longer there, and especially example codes etc or tutorials, its all a model or place file, I would much rather and appreciate it more if it was also a write up on the site.

The older developer hub or documentation before this newer site I think was a lot more better, and a lot more useful stuff.

Also I am not a big fan of AI assistants, chatgpt is useful though but a lot of assistants on and off roblox can be annoying to use

[signal_zzz]

@7eoeb

Enum.UICornerSide

Can you share more? What docs page are you looking for and what query did you use?

[Nicant02 (Nicant)]

I love this search way better than the old one

[givenothingback (AlexA)]

@metatablecatmaid

Even if the external links are in their own divider, they should not appear above links on the site itself unless its 100% sure thats what you want.

This is great feedback - thank you! Just to make sure I’m understanding, by external links you mean Forum and YouTube results?

[givenothingback (AlexA)]

@MightyDantheman

The DataStore limits aren’t visible unless I search specifically for them. Then, on the main DataStore page, the limits still aren’t shown there. I don’t even see them linked there.

Thanks for all of your feedback (again and as always)! Linking to information about limits from the main datastore page seems like a pretty small and straightforward change - we’ll pass it along to the team.

[trigophi]

This is really cool! Am I allowed to ask how it was made? I’ve always admired search systems

[crusherfire]

Lol it’s sarcasm because we want to be able to select which corner(s) a UI corner renders on instead of all four.

[weakroblox35]

Awesome, now do the same for this.

Prioritize auto-fill by either alphabetically or "high-usage"

The auto-fill should be prioritized by either alphabetically or by high-usage if the user commonly selects a specific field. Autofill not having type of prioritization is annoying as I expect the same field to be at the top sometimes, like game, only for the result script to end up like this due to pressing enter. [image] [image]

[MightyDantheman (Fate)]

One other issue, that I’ve just been reminded of, is that the documentation doesn’t really link well together as it currently is. I already gave my example regarding DataStore and its information. But I’ve just discovered a different kind of example. When there are things that are related to each other, but from a different service.

For example, plugin:OpenScript() is now deprecated, and yet it fails to link the replacement, which is ScriptEditorService:OpenScriptDocumentAsync().

Additionally, I was unable to find this information in the search either:

The closest thing here was ScriptDocument in the second search, but that’s not actually what I’m looking for either.

---

There are many cases like this where there the API is spread far apart and not linked together. I can’t think of all of them off the top of my head right now, but it’s most common when things are moved to their own unique services. The different plugin features alone seem to have multiple different services that are completely outside of plugin itself.

Another example is Selection, instead of having it in plugin, which already has methods like SelectRibbonTool (which while not exactly the same, you might see the confusion). There should be central documentation for plugins, which links all of the different connected services that you would need to know about. The same should be done for any other group of API that are spread out across multiple different services.

I wish I had a full list of examples to make my point clear. Maybe others could add to this list if they can think of any.

Additionally, an easy and important thing to fix would be to look at everything that’s deprecated and making sure that it links to its replacement, if such a replacement exists.

---

I did also try the AI assistant for what the replacement was, but it gave me methods for creating new windows rather than what I specifically asked for. I tried ChatGPT and, while it didn’t give me the correct method, it did point me to the right service for it. While I’ve used this service before, it’s been a long time and I had forgotten about it. The documentation search wasn’t able to help me find what I was looking for. It didn’t even show the the deprecated version (which I can understand, but it didn’t show me the replacement for it either).

[stormxxxboy (StormXXBoy)]

It would be pretty simple to make a simple version of google where it actually suggests what other users went to when searching for some keywords.

[HealthyKarl]

I don’t like enableIAM2. It takes away the space of the actual content. I don’t know if this is part of this change.

[givenothingback (AlexA)]

Hi all,

We recently added another update to docs search, so that you can also find helpful posts from other creators shared here in the Forum! Posts in Community Resources and Tutorials now appear under the “Forum” category in docs search.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Thanks again for all the feedback shared here - we’re continuing to work through it and keep improving search for documentation and across Creator Hub.