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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

AI Search query language

Learn how to construct search queries using terms, phrases, and AI Search query operators.

Search query terms and phrases

Specify terms and quoted phrases in the search query to find records that contain the same terms or phrases.

Search query termsDescription
`conference`Single-term search. Finds records that contain the term conference.Note: Search terms don't match substrings of indexed terms. As an example, searching for exam finds records that contain the term exam, but not records that contain the term example. To search for substring matches, you can use the % or * wildcard matching operators.
`conference room`Conjunctive multi-term search. Finds records that contain both of the terms conference and room (an intersection of sets). The search terms can appear in any order or proximity in the record and may appear in different fields.Note: If you set the Boolean search operator to use when a search query includes multiple terms (glide.ais.query.search_operator) system property to OR query, this search finds records that contain either of the terms conference or room (a union of sets).
`"conference room"`Quoted phrase search. Finds records that contain the term conference followed immediately by the term room. The search terms must appear in this order and in the same field. Note: Quoting a phrase doesn't disable linguistic features (such as normalization, synonym expansion, and stop word removal) or wildcard operators. For example, a search for the quoted phrase "email acc*" expands the wildcard operator normally to find records that contain email account and email access.

AI Search ignores letter case for search query terms and phrases. For example, searching for PIN finds records containing PIN and pin.

Note: When processing search query terms, AI Search automatically strips out HTML and XML content by removing strings that start with < and end with >. As an example, if you enter user <beth.anglin@example.com> as your search terms, AI Search only searches for user. If you search for <abel.tuter@example.com>, AI Search treats the search as empty and returns no results. This behavior isn't configurable.

Boolean search operators

Separate query terms and phrases with Boolean operators to override the default matching logic for the search query.

OperatorDescription
`OR`

Boolean disjunction operator. Finds records that contain any of the terms or phrases separated by OR. For example, searching for "conference room" OR suite finds records that contain the phrase conference room and records that contain the term suite.

Note: If you set the Boolean search operator to use when a search query includes multiple terms (glide.ais.query.search_operator) system property to OR query, this operator has no effect because search already treats all query terms and phrases as though separated by the OR operator.

hyphen \(`-`\)Boolean negation operator. Excludes records containing the term or phrase that immediately follows the hyphen. For example, searching for `email -"email signature"` finds records that contain the term `email` but don't contain the phrase `email signature`.

Wildcard matching operators

Use wildcard operators to find records that contain indexed terms matching a wildcard pattern.

OperatorDescription
`%`

Single-character wildcard operator. Include % in a search query term to match any one character in an indexed term. As an example, searching for the%e finds results containing wildcard matches such as theme, there, or these.

AI Search also evaluates the search with the wildcard operator ignored, to look for literal matches. The non-wildcard operator parts of the search term are treated as a phrase, meaning that they must appear in the same order in the result as they do in the search. As an example, a search for 5000%000 returns results that contain 5000 followed by 000 as well as results that contain wildcard matches like 50007000.

Note: The % operator must follow a string of three or more non-wildcard characters. For search query terms that don't satisfy this condition, AI Search only returns literal matches. As an example, if you search for 99%, with only two non-wildcard characters preceding the % operator, AI Search only returns results with literal matches for 99.

`*`

String wildcard operator. Include * in a search query term to match any string of zero or more characters in an indexed term. As an example, searching for acc* finds results containing wildcard matches such as access, account, accrue, accumulate, and accuracy.

AI Search also evaluates the search with the wildcard operator ignored, to look for literal matches. The non-wildcard operator parts of the search term are treated as a phrase, meaning that they must appear in the same order in the result as they do in the search. As an example, a search for 753*268 returns results that contain 753 followed by 268 as well as results that contain wildcard matches like 7539268.

Note: The * operator must follow a string of three or more non-wildcard characters. For search query terms that don't satisfy this condition, AI Search only returns literal matches. As an example, if you search for ad*, with only two non-wildcard characters preceding the * wildcard operator, AI Search only returns results with literal matches for ad.

`***`Universal wildcard operator. Specify *** as a search query to find all indexed terms and thus all records.Note: AI Search doesn't apply relevancy ranking to *** queries. Results from *** queries appear in an unspecified order.

Note: When expanding search terms that contain % or * wildcard operators, AI Search ignores terms defined as stop words. For example, suppose you define the and their as stop words. A search for the* won't expand to match the or their, but will still match non-stop word terms such as there and these.

Parent Topic:Searching in AI Search