DEV Community: Bernadet Goey

Expanding the backoffice search in Umbraco - Umbraco Features You Didn't Know You Needed

Bernadet Goey — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:53:14 +0000

Recently, I started using Erik-Jan Westerndorp's community package "Heading". on a project. It’s one of those packages that solves a very specific problem really neatly.

In this case, the client wanted editors to be able to choose the heading level for a title on an element. So, for example, one image block might need an H2, while another might need an H3, depending on where it sits on the page.

The package worked great for that.

But, as often happens, solving one problem uncovered another.

Not long after, the client came back with a new bit of feedback:

I can’t search for the custom title I’ve added.

And honestly, my first reaction was: surely that should just work?

So I gave it a try - and they were right. The backoffice document search was only finding results based on the page name, not on values stored in custom fields.

Searching by page name returns the page
Searching by page title returns no results

The first thing I did was check the internal index — and the title field was there, so that allowed me to cross off one possible issue.

So the content was being indexed - it just wasn’t being searched by the backoffice search.

I asked a few colleagues about it, and the general feeling was that this probably wasn’t something you could change. The assumption was that Umbraco backoffice search just searches a predefined set of fields and that was that.

Still, it felt like there had to be a way.

And there is.

The Missing Piece: UmbracoTreeSearcherFields

It turns out this is already supported and documented, but it was a feature I hadn’t come across before. Since I suspect I’m not the only one, it’s worth highlighting here:

Backoffice Search - A guide to customization of Backoffice Search

That article introduced me to UmbracoTreeSearcherFields, which controls the indexed fields used by backoffice search. By replacing it with a custom implementation, you can expand the list of searchable fields.

My first attempt looked like this:

public class CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields(ILanguageService languageService)
    : UmbracoTreeSearcherFields(languageService), IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields
{
    public new IEnumerable<string> GetBackOfficeDocumentFields()
    {
        return new List<string>(base.GetBackOfficeFields()) { "title" };
    }
}

I restarted my environment, tried again… and it still didn’t work.

Backoffice search could still only find the page by name.

The Catch: Variant Field Names

After taking a closer look at the index, the reason became clear: the field key wasn’t simply title. Because the property had language variants, the indexed field name includes the language ISO code.

So instead of hardcoding a single field name, I updated the implementation to generate the variant field names dynamically. That also makes it more future-proof — if new languages are added later, search continues to work without any code changes.

Here’s the updated version:

public class CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields(ILanguageService languageService)
    : UmbracoTreeSearcherFields(languageService), IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields
{
    private static readonly string TitleAlias = PublishedModelHelper.GetModelPropertyAlias((Page x) => x.Title);

    public override IEnumerable<string> GetBackOfficeDocumentFields()
    {
        return base.GetBackOfficeDocumentFields().Concat(GetVariantFieldNames(TitleAlias));
    }

    private IEnumerable<string> GetVariantFieldNames(string alias)
        => languageService.GetAllAsync().GetAwaiter().GetResult().Select(l => $"{alias}_{l.IsoCode.ToLowerInvariant()}");
}

And with that in place, the backoffice search started returning results based on the custom title value as well.

Why I’m sharing this

This is one of those things that’s probably obvious once you’ve worked with it before, but until then, it’s easy to assume backoffice search is less flexible than it actually is.

If you’ve got editors relying on custom fields it’s worth checking whether those fields are included in backoffice search. If they’re already indexed, you may only need to extend UmbracoTreeSearcherFields to make them searchable.

A small change, but a very useful one for editors.

Extending Tiptap in Umbraco – a real world list example

Bernadet Goey — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 07:37:36 +0000

If you've spent any time migrating editors or building rich-text features, you'll know Tiptap looks great on paper but sometimes feels a little... minimal compared to what TinyMCE shipped out of the box. At ilionx we've been moving a few large sites to Umbraco 17 and bumped into the same feedback: list style options. Nothing dramatic, just the ability to pick Roman numerals, different bullet shapes, that sort of thing, but enough to make editors ask for the old behavior back.

So we wrote a small TypeScript extension that adds back list-style variants. It gets built to App_Plugins with Vite, plugs into the UmbTiptapExtensionApiBase and wires up extra toolbar menu items. The actual extension is tiny, it just adds a listStyleType attribute to the list nodes and renders it as inline CSS, but the surrounding bits (icons, toolbar menus, wiring) make the UX feel polished.

Tiptap has solid docs on extending and creating extensions, and Umbraco documents how to register a Tiptap extension, but stitching everything together took a little trial and error. Below is the extension configuration we used. It looks like a lot for a simple feature, but a fair chunk of the files are just icons and small glue code.

Let’s start with the actual extension definitions in Umbraco-package.json, where we define 4 extensions:

"extensions": [
  {
    "type": "icons",
    "alias": "My.Icons.TiptapListStyle",
    "js": "/App_Plugins/My.TiptapListStyle/list-style-icons.js"
  },
  {
    "type": "tiptapExtension",
    "alias": "My.Tiptap.ListStyle",
    "api": "/App_Plugins/My.TiptapListStyle/list-style.tiptap-api.js",
    "meta": {
      "icon": "icon-ordered-list",
      "label": "List style type",
      "group": "#tiptap_extGroup_formatting"
    }
  },
  {
    "type": "tiptapToolbarExtension",
    "kind": "menu",
    "alias": "My.Tiptap.Toolbar.OrderedList",
    "overwrites": "Umb.Tiptap.Toolbar.OrderedList",
    "api": "/App_Plugins/ My.TiptapListStyle/ordered-list-menu.tiptap-toolbar-api.js",
    "forExtensions": ["My.Tiptap.ListStyle", " My.Tiptap.OrderedList"],
    "items": [
      {
        "label": "Numbered list",
        "data": null,
        "appearance": { "icon": "icon-ordered-list" }
      },
      {
        "label": "Numbered list: i, ii, iii",
        "data": "lower-roman",
        "appearance": { "icon": "icon-list-style-lower-roman" }
      },
      // add other style definitions here
    ] 
  },
  {
    "type": "tiptapToolbarExtension",
    "kind": "menu",
    "alias": " My.Tiptap.Toolbar.BulletList",
    "overwrites": "Umb.Tiptap.Toolbar.BulletList",
    "api": "/App_Plugins/My.TiptapListStyle/bullet-list-menu.tiptap-toolbar-api.js",
    "forExtensions": ["My.Tiptap.ListStyle", "Umb.Tiptap.BulletList"],
    "items": [
      {
        "label": "Bullet list",
        "data": null,
        "appearance": { "icon": "icon-bulleted-list" }
      },
      {
        "label": "Bullet list: circle",
        "data": "circle",
        "appearance": { "icon": "icon-list-style-bullet-circle" }
      },
      // add other style definitions here
    ]
  }
]

Here’s what we register:

an icon set (a bunch of tiny SVGs showing what each list style looks like)
one Tiptap extension which carries the list-style attribute
two toolbar extensions that replace the ordered/bulleted list buttons with menus that expose the variants.

The icon set

The icons are trivial: I asked an AI to generate SVGs for different list markers and put each one in a tiny TypeScript file that exports the SVG string.

/** Ordered list with lower-roman markers (i, ii, iii). */
export default `<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="1.75"><text x="1" y="7.5" font-size="4.5" fill="currentColor" stroke="none" font-family="serif" font-style="italic">i.</text><path d="M9 6h12"/><text x="1" y="13.5" font-size="4.5" fill="currentColor" stroke="none" font-family="serif" font-style="italic">ii.</text><path d="M9 12h12"/><text x="1" y="19.5" font-size="4.5" fill="currentColor" stroke="none" font-family="serif" font-style="italic">iii.</text><path d="M9 18h12"/></svg>`;

And a small registry file maps the icon names to those files:

export default [
  {
    name: 'icon-list-style-lower-roman',
    path: () => import('./icons/svg-ordered-list-lower-roman.js'),
  },
    //...
];

These images are purely to make the toolbar menus readable — a little UX polish so editors instantly recognise the option they’re picking.

The Tiptap extension

The extension itself is surprisingly compact. It adds a listStyleType attribute to the built-in orderedList and bulletList nodes and serialises it as inline list-style-type style so the HTML stays portable and renders the same in the backoffice and on the front end.

import { Extension, UmbTiptapExtensionApiBase } from '@umbraco-cms/backoffice/tiptap';

/**
 * Extends the built-in orderedList and bulletList nodes with a `listStyleType`
 * attribute that maps to the CSS `list-style-type` property.
 *
 * The attribute is serialised as an inline style so the stored HTML is portable
 * and renders correctly both in the backoffice editor and on the front end.
 */
const ListStyleExtension = Extension.create({
  name: 'listStyle',

  addGlobalAttributes() {
    return [
      {
        types: ['orderedList', 'bulletList'],
        attributes: {
          listStyleType: {
            default: null,
            parseHTML: (element) => element.style.listStyleType || null,
            renderHTML: (attributes) => {
              if (!attributes['listStyleType']) return {};
              return { style: `list-style-type: ${attributes['listStyleType']}` };
            },
          },
        },
      },
    ];
  },
});

export default class ListStyleTiptapExtensionApi extends UmbTiptapExtensionApiBase {
  constructor(...args: ConstructorParameters<typeof UmbTiptapExtensionApiBase>) {
    super(...args);
    this.getTiptapExtensions = () => [ListStyleExtension];
  }
}

That’s it, the extension maps an attribute to CSS and makes sure works in both front- and backoffice. Nothing scary.

The toolbar extensions

Because ordered and unordered lists are separate toolbar buttons, we overwrite each one with a menu that exposes the style variants. To avoid duplicating logic we put the toolbar behaviour into a single helper and import it from the two small extension files.

Each toolbar menu has to do a few things:

create a list if the selection isn’t in one
switch between ordered and bullet lists
toggle or set a specific list-style-type and reflect the active state in the menu UI.

That last bit is where the logic concentrates, the UI needs to show which style is active and allow toggling back to the default behaviour.

The per-list-type extension files look like this:

import { createListStyleMenuToolbarApi } from './list-style-menu-toolbar-api.js';

export default createListStyleMenuToolbarApi('bulletList');

And the shared toolbar helper contains the actual implementation and state logic:

import type { Editor } from '@umbraco-cms/backoffice/tiptap';
import { UmbTiptapToolbarElementApiBase } from '@umbraco-cms/backoffice/tiptap';

type ListStyleMenuItem = { data?: string | null };

function getStyleType(item?: ListStyleMenuItem): string | null | undefined {
  return item?.data;
}

function applyListStyle(
  editor: Editor,
  listType: 'orderedList' | 'bulletList',
  styleType: string,
): void {
  if (editor.isActive(listType)) {
    const currentStyle = editor.getAttributes(listType)['listStyleType'] as string | null;
    const newStyle = currentStyle === styleType ? null : styleType;
    editor.chain().focus().updateAttributes(listType, { listStyleType: newStyle }).run();
    return;
  }

  if (listType === 'orderedList') {
    editor
      .chain()
      .focus()
      .toggleOrderedList()
      .updateAttributes('orderedList', { listStyleType: styleType })
      .run();
  } else {
    editor
      .chain()
      .focus()
      .toggleBulletList()
      .updateAttributes('bulletList', { listStyleType: styleType })
      .run();
  }
}

function applyDefaultList(editor: Editor, listType: 'orderedList' | 'bulletList'): void {
  if (editor.isActive(listType)) {
    const currentStyle = editor.getAttributes(listType)['listStyleType'] as string | null;
    if (currentStyle) {
      editor.chain().focus().updateAttributes(listType, { listStyleType: null }).run();
      return;
    }
    if (listType === 'orderedList') {
      editor.chain().focus().toggleOrderedList().run();
    } else {
      editor.chain().focus().toggleBulletList().run();
    }
    return;
  }

  if (listType === 'orderedList') {
    editor.chain().focus().toggleOrderedList().run();
  } else {
    editor.chain().focus().toggleBulletList().run();
  }
}

/**
 * Toolbar menu API for ordered/bullet list buttons with list-style-type variants.
 */
export function createListStyleMenuToolbarApi(listType: 'orderedList' | 'bulletList') {
  return class extends UmbTiptapToolbarElementApiBase {
    override isActive(editor?: Editor, item?: ListStyleMenuItem): boolean {
      if (!editor) return false;

      const styleType = getStyleType(item);
      if (styleType === undefined) {
        return editor.isActive(listType);
      }

      if (styleType === null) {
        const currentStyle = editor.getAttributes(listType)['listStyleType'] as string | null;
        return editor.isActive(listType) && currentStyle === null;
      }

      return editor.isActive(listType, { listStyleType: styleType });
    }

    override execute(editor?: Editor, item?: ListStyleMenuItem): void {
      if (!editor) return;

      const styleType = getStyleType(item);
      if (styleType === undefined || styleType === null) {
        applyDefaultList(editor, listType);
        return;
      }

      applyListStyle(editor, listType, styleType);
    }
  };
}

TODO / caveats

I’m still getting comfortable with TypeScript, so this isn't a 100%-polished extension. One known quirk: clicking a custom style button after setting a style will clear the style but not fully remove the list node the way the stock ordered/bullet button does. It's a small UX edge-case and likely fixable by tweaking the toggle logic, but I haven't had time for it yet.

If you want to copy this approach, the important bits are:

expose a listStyleType attribute on the list nodes,
serialize it in a way that works in both editor and front end (inline style is the simplest)
replace the toolbar buttons with menus that set/update that attribute.

Hopefully this saves you a few hours of experimentation. The overall idea is small, but the payoff for editors is surprisingly nice.