searching and initial browsing is successful, but unhelpful when needing to reauthenticate

Summary

When using the search functionality scoped to my company's top level group but my SAML session is expired, the search window returns successfully, but says 0 results are found.

Similarly I am able to navigate to the top-level group and see the immediate children without triggering a reauthentication.

It is only when I try to go into one of the subgroups that I trigger the reauthentication. If I then search for the exact same terms and scope, I am able to see real results returned.

My expectation would be for the search page to trigger the reauthentication workflow and show the results directly without me having to navigate somewhere else to trigger the reauth.

Steps to reproduce

  • have an expired session, we use SAML setup with Entra
  • search using url 'https://gitlab.com/search?group=XYZ&group_id=55555&scope=projects&search=%s' (I have this set as a custom search engine shortcut in Chrome)
  • see 0 results returned
  • navigate to subgroup within my company's tenant to trigger reauthentication
  • search using the same url as step 2 above
  • see actual results returned

What is the current bug behavior?

Search incorrectly / unintuitively reports no hits found.

What is the expected correct behavior?

Search page triggers reauthentication workflow when necessary.

Relevant logs and/or screenshots

Screenshot_2025-04-04_at_2.37.09_PM

Screenshot_2025-04-04_at_2.39.47_PM

Output of checks

This bug happens on GitLab.com