Documents
Finding a document
What the library search box actually searches, which filters to use, and where to go when you need to find text inside a document.
The search box only searches file names
The search box at the top of the library matches file names and nothing else. It does not look inside documents, and it does not search company names, document types or labels.
Searching for a clause, an amount, a manager's name or a company name returns nothing, even though Spyral has read every word of every document.
Nothing on screen says this, and it is the single most common reason people think a document is missing.
Use it the way you would use a file browser: type part of the file name and it narrows the list as you type.
To search inside documents, ask the assistant
Content search lives in the assistant, listed in the sidebar as AI Assistant. Ask it a question in plain English and it answers from the documents you have access to, quoting the passages it used.
Use it for:
- "What is the share capital of Alpha S.à r.l.?"
- "Which companies have a domiciliation agreement expiring this year?"
- "Find the clause about early termination in the services agreement."
A document can only be answered on once it has finished processing. See Uploading documents.
The two filter panels
The library has two separate filter panels with similar names. They behave differently, so it is worth knowing which one you are in.
Filters opens a bar across the top. These filters live in the page address, which means they survive a page reload and you can bookmark or send a filtered view to a colleague.
Quick filters opens the panel down the left side. These are faster to click but they reset when you reload the page and cannot be bookmarked.
The Clear filters button on the empty state only clears the left hand quick filters. Anything set in the top Filters bar stays active, so the list can still look empty after you have apparently cleared everything.
Use Clear all inside the Filters bar to clear those.
The Filters bar
- Type. Choose one or more Luxembourg document types, grouped by family. This is the most reliable way to narrow a large library.
- Company. Type a company name and pick it. Selections show as removable chips.
- Upload From and Upload To. The date the document was added to Spyral.
- Doc From and Doc To. The date on the document itself, which is usually what you want when you are looking for last year's accounts.
- Needs Review. The documents Spyral was least confident about. See How Spyral classifies documents.
A document whose date could not be read is silently left out of any Doc From or Doc To filter. If you are hunting for something you know exists, clear those two dates before concluding it is not there.
The quick filters panel
Down the left side you get, with a count next to each option:
- Document Type, near the top, filtering on the automatic labels rather than on the Luxembourg document type. This is why it offers entries like "Meeting Notes" or "Spreadsheet".
- Year, based on when the document was uploaded. The number shown next to each year is often 0 even though the filter works.
- Company, listing every company that has documents.
- Access Level, splitting the library into documents everyone can see, documents limited to a project, and documents limited to a role.
- Projects, which only appears once you have chosen project level access.
- Document Type again, further down. This second section is the real one, listing the Luxembourg document types actually present in your library, colour coded by family. It is the same filter as Type in the top bar.
Two sections share the heading Document Type and filter on different things. The lower one, with the coloured chips, is the one that matches what you see on the document rows.
Active filters appear as removable chips above the list, so you can always see what is narrowing the view.
Sorting and grouping
The View menu holds three things.
Layout switches between List and Grid. List is the default, and the choice is not remembered. Every fresh visit to the library starts in List.
Sort by offers Most recent, Name, File size and Most viewed.
"Most viewed" does not sort by how often a document has been opened. It sorts on something unrelated to views, so the order it produces is not meaningful. Use Most recent or Name instead.
Group by offers None, File type and Upload date. "File type" does not group by PDF, Word and Excel. It groups on the automatic labels, so most documents land in a bucket called "Other". Upload date works as expected, grouping into Today, Yesterday, This Week, This Month, Last 3 months and Older.
Stars, Favorites and Recent
The Favorites and Recent buttons at the top of the quick filters panel do nothing. Clicking them has no effect on the list.
The star on a document row does turn yellow and is remembered, but only in the browser you are using. It is not shared with colleagues, it does not follow you to another computer, and there is no way to see only starred documents.
Do not rely on stars to keep track of your work.
Practical advice
- Name files properly at upload time. The search box matches names, and so does classification. A name that includes the company and the document type makes a document findable in one search for the rest of its life.
- Filter by Type, then by Company when you are working through a client file.
- Ask the assistant whenever the thing you remember is a fact inside a document rather than the name of the file.
- There is no way to link straight to one document. You cannot bookmark or send a colleague the address of a single document. Send them a filtered library view instead, using the top Filters bar.