Search

Audience: Low-code Engineers

Skill Prerequisites: Actions, Tokens, Search

The Search actions work with the index of a Plant an App search behavior. They start indexing on demand, index the rows of one database indexing rule straight away, run a search and return the results as JSON, and remove records from the index. Use them to keep the index in step with your data, and to build your own search on a form or an API endpoint.

The behaviors, content sources and database indexing rules themselves are set up on the Search configuration page. See Set Up Search Behaviors.

note

These actions require the Search feature (Standard) to be licensed. If it isn't, they fail with a message that the feature is unlicensed. Index Rule also needs the Data Integration feature. Without it, Index Rule does nothing and doesn't report an error.

Choosing an action

Action	What it does	Use it to
Index Behavior	Starts indexing all content sources of a behavior, incrementally or as a full reindex. It returns right away and indexes in the background.	Index new content after an import, or rebuild a behavior's index after changing its settings.
Index Rule	Runs one database indexing rule and adds or updates its rows in the index before it finishes.	Update the index right after a record is saved.
Perform Search	Searches a behavior's index and stores one page of results as JSON in a token.	Build a lookup on a form, or return search results from an API.
Remove Records	Deletes the records that match your filters from a behavior's index. Without filters, it deletes every record.	Remove a record from search right after it's deleted from its table.

Keeping the index up to date

• After a record is saved, run Index Rule for the rule that indexes that table. It only reads the rows that changed when the rule has a Last Modified Date Column or Created Date Column.
• After a record is deleted, run Remove Records with the record's search key in the Id filter, for example avtsb.Customers-42. If you soft-delete rows, the rule's Is Deleted Column removes them on the next Index Rule run instead.
• After a large import or a settings change, run Index Behavior once. Each run reads every content source of the behavior, so don't run it for every record or in a loop.
• To rebuild a whole index, use Index Behavior with Full Reindex. Searches return few or no results until it finishes.

Index Behavior returns before the work is done, and the new content is written to the index in batches, so allow some time before it can be found. Index Rule finishes indexing before the next action runs, so the user waits while the query runs. On a form, put it in Execute Actions Asynchronously.

Behaviors, records and filters

• Every action needs a Behavior ID. Pick the behavior from the list, or pass its numeric ID. A non-numeric or unknown ID fails the action.
• Records from database indexing rules have the search key avtsb.<Rule Name>-<ID>, and their SubType is the rule name. Use these in the Id and SubType filters.
• Perform Search and Remove Records use the same filters. Different names must all match, and several values for one name go on separate lines. Run Perform Search with an empty search term and the same filters to see what Remove Records would delete.
• The results are JSON. Turn them into tokens or a list with Parse JSON Into Tokens and Create List from JSON.

Security

• Who runs the action matters. Perform Search only returns the records the current user may see, based on the roles stored when each record was indexed. Remove Records with filters only deletes records the current user could find. For database indexing rules, those roles come from the rule's settings. See Search Index Rules.
• Automation jobs aren't trimmed. In workflows and scheduled jobs there's no web request, so Perform Search returns every matching record. Check the results before you pass them to users.
• Guard Remove Records against empty filters. A filter with an empty value, for example from an empty token, is skipped, so the action can delete far more than you expect. Add a condition such as [CustomerId] != "".
• Web farms. Only the server that holds the index writer, usually the master server, can write to the index. See the Search Dashboard Tab.

To crawl other websites and save their pages for indexing, see the Web Crawler actions.

Revised 10/02/2026