Search and activity overview

Search, Activity, and Starred solve different memory problems

ALLO gives you several ways to get back to work because people remember work in different ways. Sometimes you remember a title or keyword. Sometimes you remember that someone changed something yesterday. Sometimes you know the work is important and want it one click away every day.

Use Search when you know words. Use Activity when you remember motion: who changed something, when it changed, or where work happened. Use Starred when you want a personal shortcut to work you return to often.

These tools overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Search finds accessible work by terms and suggestions. Activity explains recent changes. Starred is your own organized shortcut list. Choosing the right tool saves time and avoids the false conclusion that something is missing.

Where these tools appear

Search is available from the Search button in the top bar. Keyboard shortcuts can open it quickly, usually Command+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux. Some surfaces may also provide local search for that area, such as Files search, All canvases search, or project filters.

Activity can appear as a Home preview, a workspace or global activity view, and scoped activity inside areas like projects, canvases, tasks, OKR work, or dashboards. The scope matters: canvas activity answers what happened on that canvas; workspace activity can cover a wider set of work you can access.

Starred appears in the Home sidebar as your personal list of important work. You can organize it into sections, reorder items, and remove items when they stop being useful. Its docs live under Home because the sidebar is where people actually use it.

Pick the right tool

For deep canvas browsing, see All canvases overview. For files, see Files overview. For deleted work, see How Trash works.

Search is for finding by text and suggestions

Global Search helps you find work across ALLO from one place. When opened without a query, it can show helpful commands, recent searches, and suggested resources. As you type, it can suggest matching items and show search results organized by resource type.

Search respects access. If you cannot open a project, canvas, file, dashboard, or person profile in the current workspace, Search should not treat it like ordinary accessible work. If a teammate can find something you cannot, compare workspace, account, role, and share permission before assuming Search is broken.

Search is not the same as every local browser. Files search is better for file rows. All canvases search is better when you are already browsing canvases and want canvas-specific sort, filter, or view controls. Project filters are better inside a project. See Search across ALLO and When search misses a result.

Activity is for understanding what happened

Activity helps answer “what changed?” It can show recent events with enough context to open the original work. Use it when you remember that someone edited a canvas, added a comment, updated a project, changed a dashboard, or moved work forward but you do not remember the exact title.

Activity is not a full audit export or a promise that every hidden system detail appears. It is a user-facing feed for understanding visible work changes. The entries you see depend on the surface, the current scope, your access, and what activity types ALLO shows there.

See Review activity for examples and troubleshooting.

Starred is for your personal shortcuts

Starred keeps important work easy to reopen. You can star canvases, projects, dashboards, OKR items, channels, people, and other supported resource types depending on the features your workspace uses. Starred is personal: your Starred list does not automatically become someone else’s list.

Use Starred for ongoing projects, recurring dashboards, team channels, goal sessions, important collaborators, and work you need during a meeting. Do not rely on Starred as the only place a team can find shared work; important team work should still have clear names, owners, project locations, and links.

See Use Starred and Organize Starred.

Permissions affect all three tools

Search, Activity, and Starred all respect access. A starred item can disappear or fail to open if you lose permission. An activity entry can be missing because you cannot access the underlying work. A search result can be hidden because the item is in another workspace, deleted, private, or shared with another account.

Guests and external collaborators may see narrower results than workspace members. Shared work can be visible through Shared with me without granting broad workspace search visibility.

If the issue smells like access, start with Can't access work, Fix shared access, and Members, guests, and external collaborators.

Common workflows

If you know a title, press Command+K or Ctrl+K, type the title, and open the result. If you cannot find it, clear filters, try fewer words, and check When search misses a result.

If you only remember that a teammate changed something yesterday, open Activity, scan recent entries, and open the original canvas or project from the entry. If the activity is scoped to the wrong place, move up to a broader activity view.

If you open the same dashboard every morning, star it and put it in a Starred section. If the dashboard later moves or changes name, Starred should help keep the shortcut updated when you still have access.

If you need to recover deleted work, skip Search and open Trash. Deleted work may not appear in normal search results.

Avoid false negatives

Do not conclude “ALLO lost it” just because one tool does not find it. Search can miss work because of access, workspace, filters, spelling, name changes, timing, or deletion. Activity can miss work because the event is outside the current scope. Starred can lose an item because you unstarred it, moved it to another section, or lost access.

Use the tool that matches the clue you have. If none of them finds the work, gather the workspace name, item type, likely title, owner, last known location, and what you already checked before contacting support.