🙌 AI-Generated Expert Search is HowNow Pro Plan feature. To upgrade Plans, your workspace Admin must speak to your organisation's CSM. 🙌
Knowledge needs to be shared, and undoubtedly, every organisation has a wide range of experts ready to share everything they know, thanks to the skills they hold. This is where Expert Search comes in!
The following steps will allow the most knowledgeable Users to help their team members improve their learning abilities and upskill for performance. To get started...
Turning on/off Expert Search
All Admins can control the Expert Search visibility, from the Settings page of the workspace.
Towards the bottom of the page, toggle on the Expert Search section.
Choose from two options:
Global Expert Search: allows all Experts to appear in search for all Users.
Great for Experts who hold Skills that are universal across teams, e.g., Empathy or Public Speaking.
Group Expert Search: only allows Experts to appear for Users they share a Group with.
Great for Experts who hold Skills specific to their team/department, e.g., Machine Learning or Figma.
Remember❗: Expert Search requires some time to activate, as our system prepares your workspace to make the feature accessible to your Users. This means:
Switching it on - About half-a-day is needed for the feature to be present for your Users, so it's recommended to switch it on one day before you want to make it available.
Switching on Global and Group options - This may take up to 5 mins to become available to your Users, whether activated for the first time, or when switching between the options.
Once switched on, click the Save button, at the top of the Settings page to confirm, then, Users will be able to begin their search, using the following areas for results…
Workspace Search
Expert Users are chosen automatically, based on their competency level. In order to become an Expert, Users must have at least one Skill in their Profile that is a level of 3 or higher. In the image below, we see Lorraine has a Level 4 in Emotional Intelligence, so her expertise would be useful via the Global Expert Search option (she could advise Managers of multiple teams, on how to empathise with stressed team members).
Using search terms based on Skills or themes will result in the relevant Experts appearing within the search drop-down. This includes Experts who hold Skills where the search terms still exist within a broader Skill description or name. For example…
User searches for “Negotiating”.
Expert John Smith will appear with “Negotiating” next to his name or any other Skill featuring that word within it (“Business Negotiating”, “Negotiating Deals”).
The Skill “Negotiating” was tagged to John Smith months before, and he has achieved at least a Level 3, to date.
Note✨: Two points to consider here include...
The Experts section within the drop-down will always appear first, before the other content-based sections (Courses, Nuggets, Channels, etc.).
If a User has a Skill with no rating (by themselves or via an endorsement), then that Skill won't be considered in the Expert search results, and said User won't be shown.
In the image below, the User is searching for any Expert in “Communications”.
Once the User has clicked on an Expert, they are taken to the Search Results page, and Experts tab. A slide screen will automatically open revealing the expert’s details, which include…
Expert in: shows the top 10 Skills the Expert is most competent in, starting with the highest level (e.g., Onboarding may be a Competency Level 5). More Skills can be seen, by expanding this section’s view.
Contributes to Channels: shows the top 10 Channels the Expert has contributed to so far (e.g., 200 published content items in the New Starters Channel, but only 10 or less in each of the others). More can be seen when expanding the view.
Achievements: shows the top Certificates and Badges earned by the Expert. Hovering over them displays the name and date achieved.
The slide screen will also display their Job Role, and two ways to contact them:
By Slack: Only if the Expert has integrated their Slack account, will the icon be shown, allowing Users to open a direct chat from within the app. The User will also need to make sure they’ve integrated from their Profile too.
By MS Teams: Users who have MS Teams must have interacted with the HowNow app on Teams, before the messaging icon becomes visible on the Expert’s card.
By Email: Users can either copy the Expert’s email address, or be redirected to their email provider’s inbox to compose a message to them.
Multiple Experts will be shown on the Search Results Page > Experts tab, as long as there is more than one User in the organisation, who has that same Skill, Level 3 or above.
For example…
User searches for “Customer Journey Mapping”.
Search Results Page may show 4 Users, each with Customer Journey Mapping as a Skill.
The User can select the same actions on the Expert’s card, as is shown in the slide screen.
Browser Extension
Users can also search on the HowNow Browser Extension to find an Expert.
The top 3 Experts (those with the highest Competency Levels) will be shown. The Show More option redirects to the Experts tab on the Search results Page, to display the full list of relevant names.
Note✨: If the Group Expert Search option is switched on by an Admin, Users will only see Experts in the same Group(s) as themselves. For example…
John is an Expert of Design, and is in the Design Group with the User, Ella.
Kim is also an Expert of Design, but is not in any Groups with Ella.
Ella searches for “Design”
Only John’s Expert profile will appear
The Everyone Group is not included in the criteria, due to it acting as a default Group to house all Users who join the workspace, and isn’t a Group in the traditional sense.
Check out our video tutorial for a walk-through...