Global Find enables you to search the candidate configuration on a firewall or on Panorama for a particular string, such as an IP address, object name, policy rule name, threat ID, UUID, or application name. In addition to searching for configuration objects and settings, you can search by job ID or job type for manual commits that administrators performed or auto-commits that the firewall or Panorama performed. You can also use Global Find to search for IP addresses within external dynamic lists. The search results are grouped by category and provide links to the configuration location in the web interface, so that you can easily find all of the places where the string is referenced. The search results also help you identify other objects that depend on or make reference to the search term or string. For example, when deprecating a security profile enter the profile name in Global Find to locate all instances of the profile and then click each instance to navigate to the configuration page and make the necessary change. After all references are removed, you can then delete the profile. You can do this for any configuration item that has dependencies.

With (12.1.2 and later releases) Global Find is optimized to provide a more targeted and enhanced search experience. It significantly improves responsiveness when searching for a large database or configuration, and when multiple administrators work simultaneously on the system.

The Optimized Search prioritizes and searches for the most relevant records based on admin-usage patterns. The new usage-based search returns results in batches, preventing the user interface from freezing during intensive searches. This substantially reduces search times across large configurations. You can also choose to exclusively search for UUIDs or Template References by selecting the Search UUIDs and Include Template References options respectively.