The Search for Continuous Improvements

Implementing changes for a better product

At Lily, we are continuously building and improving our product. These new developments can be new or updates features, or system updates that make Lily a stronger and better platform for all users. Usually, these system updates happen in the background, having no effect on the users, however from time to time they cause effects that change the way you use Lily. This update is one of these, so we wanted to tell you what is changing and how it will affect you, the user.

So what is changing?

We are updating the email search function in email. It will look the same, but the way it performs will be different. Before the change, all searches in Lily went through a search engine called Elasticsearch. Now the search engine within email will run through Gmail. It will work exactly the same as if you searched for an email directly in Gmail: it is an exact word search. Any advanced search techniques that you use in Gmail will also work in Lily. For our current users, this might take some getting used to because Elasticsearch is a partial word search. For example, if you type the word “contact”, the old search would show emails with subjects and content containing “contact”, “contacted”, “contacts”, “contacting”, and any other variation. Now if you search for “contact” only emails containing the word “contact” will appear in the search.

Why are we changing search engines?

This change is happening as a stepping stone for future developments with email. These developments will limit the amount of user data that is stored in our database, thus making your email more secure. Security is a top priority for us, so changes that will help with that are necessary and welcome.

If you have any questions about what is changing or why we are changing it, please feel free to contact us via email or through the chat in Lily.