Marketing Cloud has no search box that covers the whole account. To find a data extension you open Contact Builder and click through folders. To find an automation you switch to Automation Studio and do it again. If you do not remember where something lives, you check every studio and every folder until you find it.
The VeLens Chrome extension adds one search box that covers everything, and a map of how your objects connect. Both are free and need no setup. Here is what they do.
One search box for the whole business unit
On any Marketing Cloud page, click the VeLens floating bar and choose Search. Type part of a name. The search covers data extensions, journeys, automations, query activities, emails, templates, content blocks, lists, filters, SMS, CloudPages, and the activities inside Automation Studio.
Press Enter and the object opens in the right app. No folder tree.
Finding the object is only part of it. Each result carries the details you would otherwise open it to check. Click Show folder path and the folder appears in place. A data extension shows how many rows it holds. A journey shows its status and how many contacts are in it right now. An automation shows whether it is scheduled, paused or in error, when it last ran and when it runs next.
Read a query without pausing the automation
A short story about why this matters. I needed to see which data extension a query activity wrote to. Opening a query from inside a running automation means pausing the automation first. I paused it, read the SQL, got pulled into something else, and never set it back to run. A dozen other queries in that automation stopped running, and the data went stale for a day before anyone noticed.
Query activities in the search results have a SQL chip. Click it and the query shows inline with a Copy button. The automation keeps running.
See what depends on what
Before you edit a data extension or delete an email, you want to know what is downstream of it. Marketing Cloud spreads that answer across different apps. The Deps chip puts it in one place.
Every data extension, query, automation, filter, journey and email in the results has a Deps chip. Click it.
The map works from either end. Start at the journey and you see its entry source and the email it sends. Start at the email and you see the journeys that send it.
If no query reads or writes an object, you get a green line saying so.
What the map does not know
Emails are linked through journeys only. Triggered sends, user-initiated sends and email activities inside automations are not in the map. Data extension links come from query SQL, so a data extension filled by an import or an SSJS script shows no dependencies even though something uses it.
Treat the map as what can be proven from queries and journeys. For most everyday changes, that is enough to know before you click Save.
Works on any Marketing Cloud account
With nothing connected, the extension reads your account through the browser session you are already logged into, the same way the Marketing Cloud interface does. It stores no credentials and changes nothing in your account. There is no signup and no Installed Package. If you can log into an instance, it works there.
Find out what that data extension is connected to
Install the extension, open Marketing Cloud, click the floating bar and choose Search.
Add to Chrome, free