Set Search Designer options

Before starting to create a search, select Options from the Tools menu to set the following options:

Your options remain in effect until you set new ones, open a search with different options, or close Search Designer.

Opening a search that uses different settings changes the options. If you want to create new searches with certain options, set the options, then create all the searches before opening old searches that might use different options.

NOTE  One option (AND/OR default within each grid) is not saved with a search, so it won't change like other options.

When you first open Search Designer, the following default options are in effect.

General Options

  • Merge subclasses & properties from multiple object stores using  This option determines which properties from multiple object stores appear in the Property drop-down list of the Search Criteria property grid. By default, Search Designer compiles a unique list of all searchable properties on all selected object stores. This option is called Union. If you want the program to only use the searchable properties that are common to all selected object stores, change this option to Intersection.

    For example, suppose you select two object stores, A and B. Each object store has the following user-defined properties:

    Object Store A

    Object Store B

    Added By User  

    Checked in By User

    Checkin Date

    Checkin Date

    Checked in By Group

    Availability Status

    Approval Status

    Archive Date

    • If you choose Union, you will be able to choose from all of the above properties.
    • If you choose Intersection, the property list will display only “Checkin Date.”
  • Rank Content  Select this option to sort results of content searches so that the most relevant results are at the top of the list. Users will also see an extra column that displays the percentage rank of each item in the results.

    If you use this option in conjunction with sorting of property columns, ranking has top priority in Workplace. Thus, the property columns will be sorted within each rank level. In Workplace XT, the property columns sorting is ignored entirely. See How is ranking implemented in the sidebar.

  • Include Document Summaries with Search Results (for Content Search Only) Select this option if you want to view summaries of the documents that appear in your search results. The summaries appear with search results only if Document is the only selected object type and the search criteria contain some content searching conditions. See more information to consider if you select this option.

    NOTE  Any properties set in Format Results is ignored if you select this option. The summaries and magazine view uses a fixed format for displaying search results.

    Enable Version Selection  When selected, you can choose between the Current Version, the Released Version, or All Versions of documents. (Versions do not apply to folders or custom objects.) The current version can be a minor revision, only available to certain authors. The released version is a major version intended to be the official version available to most users. (The current version could also be a major version if no minor versions have been checked in.) Use All Versions if you want more than one version of the same document to be returned in the search results.

    To include all versions in the search results, you must not limit the search to certain folders because earlier versions of a document do not reside in a particular folder. Since selecting a folder limits documents to just the folder, earlier versions cannot be found. When Search Designer detects this combination, it displays a warning message: "Searching for all versions with subfolders is not supported."

    When Enable Version Selection is not selected, the search results could include some objects that are useful only to advanced users or programmers. For example, you can search for reservation objects if you do not select this option. But you must also define search criteria that specifies the Version Status property or Is Reserved property. These two properties ensure your search results contain reservation objects.

    If users click on these objects, they will get an error. If you do not select the Enable Version Selection option, be sure to file these searches in a folder with security appropriate for users who know how to deal with the extra objects that could be returned.

Criteria Options

Default within each Grid  By default, the relationship between two contiguous rows in either the property or content grids is AND. This option allows you to choose either AND or OR as the default for the current work session.

Search Template Options

These options apply only to search templates.

  • Show Operators  If this option is selected, the user who runs the search will see the operators used (e.g., is equal to, is greater than, etc.).

  • Show ANDs and ORs  If this option is selected, the user who runs the search can see the relationship between conditions (AND or OR). This option does not apply to the relationship (AND/OR) between the Property criteria grid and the Content criteria grid. You cannot disable this display if the search contains both Property and Content criteria.

  • Show Maximum Returned  If this option is selected, the user who runs the search can see and change the maximum number of items returned in the results list.

How is ranking implemented?

In content searches, the more search criteria matches in a given object, the higher the ranking score. If your Autonomy administrator has configured your search engine differently (so that sentence and paragraph are used), then the score is determined by the number of matches relative to the length of the document. Therefore, a smaller document with fewer matches can get a higher ranking than a larger document with more matches.

Keep in mind that the Near operator ranks the results depending on the proximity of the words. The closer the words, the higher the ranking.

If you change from Union to Intersection (or vice versa) with an unsaved search open, a new list of properties must be created. Before doing that, Search Designer will remind you that this action will clear your selections and ask if you want to save.

Yes saves the search or checks it in (provided it is a complete search).

No clears search criteria or cancels the checkout.

In both cases, the option is changed.

Cancel does nothing. It is as if you never changed the option.

If your search does not return documents that you know are in the object store, check the version types. For example, the default when checking in a document is to use a minor (current) version. The default option in Search Designer is to search for major (released) versions.

Information to consider when determining the best way users see document summary information when using searches you design

When using a search template, the format of the results returned adheres to any options set when the search template was created. However, Workplace or Workplace XT overrides this behavior for stored searches if the user or site preferences setting for using Magazine view is set because stored searches are treated like folders. Workplace or Workplace XT does not override the behavior for search templates.

If the Magazine view Site or User preference is set, then when a user uses a stored search, the documents are returned along with summary information. If the Magazine view Site or User preference is not set, then even if the search was saved with this Include Document Summaries with Search Results (for Content Search Only) option, the search only returns a list of items that satisfy the search criteria.