Global Search — Admin Setup & Configuration

Setup happens on two separate screens

These control different things and aren't near each other in the admin panel — worth stating explicitly so nobody assumes one screen does both:

Event Setup → Module Management → Frontend — turns Global Search on/off for the event, and sets whether it's open to everyone or sign-in only.

Website Builder → Header → Search tab — which categories are included, their order, and their labels.

The admin sets up, per event, which categories exist in the search selector at all, their order, and their labels — done once, in Website Builder (see below).
The end-user pick options from whatever list the admin set up, each time they search — the dropdown visitors see in the live header (e.g. "Exhibitors" vs "Products"). Visitors aren't configuring anything; they're choosing from the admin's menu. All permission and visibility rules are respected.

The same admin-configured list also drives Quick links on the Global Search results page and the "All categories" option itself.

The Frontend module list has a "Global Search" row alongside the other frontend modules (Sessions, Round Tables, Messages, Speakers, etc.), with a plain ON/OFF toggle. This is the global_search_fr flag. If off → the results page doesn't exist for the event (404).
When toggled ON, a second control appears next to it — a badge that reads "Open Access" (green) or "Signin Only" (red), matching the same open-access/sign-in-only pattern used elsewhere on this same Frontend module list (e.g. Exhibitors, Participants, Sessions, Speakers all have the same badge). This is the global_search_fr_singin flag. On Signin Only, anonymous visitors get a sign-in prompt instead of results.
This is purely an on/off + access-gate screen — it does not have any category selection on it. That's a separate screen entirely (below).

In the Website Builder's page editor, click the header section's settings, then the Search tab (alongside Colors / Buttons / General tabs). A master SEARCH toggle turns the header search field on/off, plus an icon color picker.
Below that is SEARCH CATEGORIES — "Choose which categories appear in the search selector" Users will only see categories they have access to based on page visibility and role settings.
Each category (Exhibitors, Products, Brands, Pavilions, News, and so on) is a row with:
- A checkbox — on/off
- A drag handle — reorder
- A pencil/edit icon — opens label editing (multi-language, 50-character limit)
Default selection: whichever enabled category comes first in the configured order is pre-selected when the header search loads.
All-off fallback: if every category is toggled off, no selector is shown at all. Search reverts to the pre-Global-Search behavior — redirects to Marketplace, applies the query to the last-visited tab or Exhibitors by default. This is normal fallback behavior, not an error state.
Role-based visibility stacks on top of the admin's config (see notice above) — For example Buyers, even if checked here, stays hidden from anyone not logged in as an Exhibitor or Team Member. So a category can be admin-enabled and still not appear for a given visitor.

If, after this setup plus role-based filtering, only one real category is available to a given visitor, they don't get an "All categories" option at all — just that one category's normal search.
Sponsored rail visibility (Exhibitors/Products) on the Global Search results page follows the event's existing sponsor setup — see Set Priority in the Sponsor search list for the admin side of that, which is unrelated to this selector and already documented.