Smart Search finds content in your Bid Library using natural language rather than exact keywords. You can ask for what you need in a full sentence, and BidScript retrieves the documents whose meaning matches.
Knowing which parts of BidScript match on meaning and which match on exact words makes a real difference to how you search - so this article covers both.
Where to find it
Open the Bid Library.
Use the search bar at the top of any Bid Library page.
How Bid Library search works
A Bid Library search runs two things at once, and shows them as separate sections in your results rather than merging them into a single ranked list.
Content search | Matches on meaning. Your query is compared against the meaning of your documents, so it finds relevant content even when the wording differs from yours. |
File name search | Matches on exact words, against document file names only. |
The distinction that matters most: the keyword side searches file names, not the text inside documents. Searching for an exact phrase will only return a document if that phrase is in its file name.
To find a phrase buried inside a document, describe what it is about and let content search do the work.
What you can search for
Folders - locate the folder holding what you need.
Documents - by title or metadata.
Document content - by meaning, across the text of your vectorised documents.
Examples
"What is our social value policy?"
"Find the reservoir case study."
Treat it like asking a knowledgeable colleague: be specific, and include the key phrases that describe what you are looking for.
Searching the Q&A Store
The Q&A Store works differently. It uses full-text keyword search, so you can find previous answers by the exact terms used in them.
This makes it the better place to go when you remember specific wording - a phrase from a past answer, a product name, a standard - and the Bid Library the better place when you know the subject but not the words.
How BidBot retrieves content when drafting
When BidBot drafts answers from your library, tenders, feedback and past lessons, that retrieval works on meaning rather than keywords.
It also navigates your library's structure rather than only matching flat results: BidBot can reason from folder to document, then narrow to the specific passages within a document once it has identified where the relevant material sits.
This is why folder organisation and naming matter for draft quality, not just for people. A logically organised library is one BidBot can navigate; a flat dump of files is one it can only search.
Getting better results
Use complete sentences or meaningful phrases rather than single words.
Avoid vague queries such as "policy" or "environment" — they describe a category, not a need.
Confirm documents are vectorised. Content search only covers vectorised documents.
When you have several libraries, select the relevant one to focus the search.
Name files descriptively. File names are the only thing exact-keyword matching has to work with.
Related articles
Bid Library: Overview — vectorisation, and why it has to finish before search works.
Creating & Managing Libraries — folder structure and naming.
Categories and labels — narrowing what BidBot draws on when generating drafts.
Navigating & Managing Q&A Store — working with saved answers.