How to Find Anything in Grafite Search, Fast

Search That Understands What Kind of Thing You Are Looking For

A plain keyword box gets you most of the way to finding something, until the word you remember shows up in twenty unrelated places. Grafite's search goes further: you can narrow results to a specific kind of record, like just the people or just the companies matching your words, and combine that with a topic lookup through Explore for questions that are really about a subject rather than a specific meeting. This is a step by step walkthrough of how to actually use it.

Where to Start

Open Search from the app (or press the shortcut to jump to it from anywhere) and you land on the advanced search page. There is a keyword field at the top, and below it, a row of filters: record type, date range, and sort order. Nothing here requires setup or configuration beforehand. The filters simply narrow whatever you are already searching for.

Filtering by Record Type

The type filter is a set of toggles: Notes, People, Events, Companies, Folders, Tasks, Chats, and Documents. By default every type is selected, so a keyword search returns everything that matches across your whole account. Narrowing to one or two types is how you cut through noise when you know what kind of thing you are looking for.

Example: finding a person. Type a name, or a distinctive word you associate with someone, into the keyword field. Then in the filters, deselect everything except People. Instead of getting that person's name buried among a dozen notes that happen to mention them, you get their contact record directly, and from there you can see every meeting connected to them.

Example: finding a company. Same idea, but select only Companies. Searching a company name with only the Companies filter active takes you straight to the company record rather than a pile of notes and calendar events that reference it in passing. From the company record you can see every contact there and every meeting tied to the account.

Example: narrowing by both a person and a keyword. Search "Sarah budget" with People selected and you will find Sarah's contact record if her name matches; leave People deselected and add Notes back in, and the same search finds notes where both "Sarah" and "budget" appear together, not notes that only mention one or the other.

Search Is Strict About Your Words

This part matters for getting good results: search requires every word in your query to be present, not just any one of them. A search for "docusign demo" only matches records where both "docusign" and "demo" actually appear, not records that happen to contain just one of those words. This used to work differently and produced a lot of noise: single-word matches were outranking results that actually matched your full query. It is fixed now, which means a longer, more specific query is a better idea than a short vague one. Two or three well-chosen words beats one word you hope is unique enough.

Date Range and Sort

Below the type filters, a date range narrows results to a specific window, useful when you remember roughly when something happened but not the exact wording. There are presets (today, past week, past month, three months, past year) alongside custom from and to dates. Sort order defaults to relevance, but you can switch to newest or oldest first when you care more about recency than match quality, for instance scanning everything recent about a company regardless of how strong the keyword match is.

Finding Something by Topic

Search's type filters do not include a dedicated "topic" category, because topics live in a different, purpose-built view: Explore's Topics table, covered in more depth in the Explore and Map post. If your question is really "what has come up about renewals across all my accounts" rather than "find this specific note," Explore is the better tool. Type the topic name into the Topics table's search box, and it filters the table as you type, down to the topic (and its activity, the people and companies connected to it) you are actually after. Click into that topic and you get every note and meeting where it appeared, which people were involved, and which companies.

The practical difference: use Search when you are trying to relocate something specific, a note, a person, a company, an event, or a document you remember existed. Use the Topics table when the question is about a subject across your whole history rather than one particular record.

A Few Real Searches Worth Trying

• Search a client's company name with only Companies selected, to jump straight to their record instead of scrolling through every note that mentions them in passing.
• Search a colleague's first name plus a project word ("Marcus onboarding") with People and Notes both selected, to find both their contact card and the notes where that project came up together with them.
• Search a distinctive phrase from a document you attached, like a clause or a product name, with only Documents selected, to jump straight to the file rather than the note it is attached to.
• Use a date range plus a broad keyword when you remember the timeframe clearly but not the exact wording, letting sort by newest-first do some of the narrowing for you.

Combine, Don't Just Filter

The type filters and keyword search are meant to work together, not as separate tools. A single well-chosen keyword with every type selected gets you a broad first pass. Once you can see what kind of record you actually want, narrowing the type filter and re-running the same keywords turns a scroll through mixed results into a short, specific list. That two-step habit (search broad, then narrow by type) is usually faster than trying to write the perfect query on the first attempt.

Try a Real Search

The best way to get a feel for this is to search something you actually remember imperfectly: a person's first name and a rough topic, or a company you have not talked to in a while. See how narrowing the type filter changes what comes back, and where the strict, all-words matching either helps or tells you to try different words. For a broader look at asking questions rather than searching for records, see how conversational search works. Get started with Grafite and put your own history to the test.

Two Small Conveniences Worth Knowing About

The search box remembers your recent queries, stored locally in your browser, and offers them back as you start typing again, so a search you ran last week and want to rerun is a couple of characters away instead of a full retype. You can clear any single one, or clear the whole list, if you would rather it stay empty.

You can also speak a search instead of typing it, useful when you are moving between tasks and want to search without switching to a keyboard. Tap the microphone, say what you are looking for, and it fills the keyword field the same as if you had typed it, ready to combine with the type filters exactly the same way.