Using unified search in the Amazon Web Services Management Console - Amazon Resource Explorer
Checking if unified search is enabledTurning on unified search
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Using unified search in the Amazon Web Services Management Console

The Amazon Web Services Management Console includes a search bar at the top of every Amazon console page. This search bar can search the Amazon Web Service documentation and blog topics, and take you directly to Amazon service console pages. It can also return the resources in your Amazon Web Services account, if you turn on the unified search feature by turning on the required Resource Explorer features.

With unified search, your users can search for resources from any Amazon Web Service console without having to first navigate to the Amazon Resource Explorer console.

Tip

When you want to use the unified search bar to search specifically for resources, begin your search query by typing /resources. This causes Amazon resources to be ranked higher in the search results than results that do not represent resources.

Important

Unified search automatically inserts a wildcard character (*) operator at the end of the first keyword in the string. This means that unified search results include resources that match any string that starts with the specified keyword.

The search performed by the Query text box on the Resource search page in the Resource Explorer console does not automatically append a wildcard character. You can insert a * manually after any term in the search string.

To see if unified search is enabled in your Amazon Web Services account, look at the top of the Settings page. Resource Explorer displays the current status of each requirement there. The requirements for unified search are as follows:

  • You must turn on Resource Explorer in at least one Amazon Web Services Region. Only resources in Regions with Resource Explorer indexes can appear in unified search results.

  • You must create an aggregator index in the Region of your choice. Searches performed in this Region return results from all registered Regions in the account.

  • You must create a default view in the Region that contains the aggregator index. All users who need to use unified search for resources must have permission to use this default view.

  • Users must have an Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions policy assigned to their IAM principal that grants permission to perform the resource-explorer-2:Get*, resource-explorer-2:List*, resource-explorer-2:Describe*,resource-explorer-2:Search actions. You can grant these permissions by using your own custom IAM policies. These permissions are already included as part of the following Amazon managed policies that are available for your use:

To enable including your account's resources in the search results for unified search from any Amazon console, you must complete the following steps:

  1. Activate Amazon Resource Explorer in one or more Amazon Web Services Regions in your account.

  2. Register one Region to contain the aggregator index.

  3. Create a default view in the Region with the aggregator index.