You can search for records, volumes, record folders, and
record categories. The search options that you can choose depend on
the search mode, which is Dynamic or Static. You can also access search
templates and stored searches.
For details about the search mode, see
Customizing your search page. After you select the search
type, you can refine your search by specifying the following types
of search criteria:
- Property-based search: Searches for entities based on property
values, such as Document Title, Creator, Content Retention Date, and
Current Phase Review Decision.
- Content-based search: Searches for records based on specific words
and phrases that appear in the content of the declared document or
in record properties (called metadata). Content searching is available
only for records.
- Parent entity-based search: Searches for records based on the
type and properties of the parent entity. For example, a record folder
might contain two volumes, Vol1 and Vol2, each of which contains a
distinct set of records. If you specify Vol1 in the parent type, only
records in this volume that match other criteria are displayed in
the search results.
You can modify default search criteria on each page. The
Search tab
includes a link to Search Templates and Stored Searches. Search designers
create these predesigned searches in
Application Engine or
Workplace XT, and mark them for use
by
IBM® Enterprise
Records. Search Templates
specify some of the search criteria and leave some fields editable
so that you can customize the search. A Stored Search is a search
that includes all search criteria that you cannot edit. When you click
the name of a stored search, you see only the results as if you had
opened a folder.
To define and run a search:
- Select the Search tab.
- Click the appropriate search link that is based on the
type of entity for which you want to search (record category, record
folder, volume, or record)
or select Search Templates and Stored Searches.
- For search templates and stored searches, click the name of the
search.
- For search templates, enter values for fields the template allows
you to change.
- For all other searches, complete the search criteria as appropriate
for your search.
- When you enter all the search criteria, click Search.
To specify the location of a search, use the Search in field
which shows the default location for the search. You can change it
as follows:
- Click Select Folder.
- Navigate to and select the category, subcategory, or
folder to which you want to limit the search. The end of the path
shows the currently selected folder.
- Click Accept.
- In the Filter by Class field,
you can limit returned results to include only the entities in a specific
class. For example, if you selected records as the entity type, you
can refine your search by specifying the class type (electronic, email,
marker, or another custom class).
- Click Select Class.
- Select the class type from the Select Filter
Class page.
- Click Select Filter Class to
select the class type.
- Select the Include subclasses check
box if you want to return entities that are in subclasses of the class
that you selected.
- In the Max Results field, enter
the maximum number of entities return in the results. (The range is
50 to 5000.) The Max Results field
is available only when the Search Mode is Static. For details, see Customizing your search page.
Specify properties
When defining the search criteria,
you can search for entities based on up to seven properties. You can
enter values for any or all of these properties. For classified records,
you can enter search criteria based on current or initial classification,
downgrade, upgrade, declassify dates or events, or supplemental markings.
You can also leave the property values blank, and search for the entity
on the basis of other search criteria.
To select the set of
properties:
- Click Change.
- In the Property Criteria Settings area,
select a property name from one or more of the Property
Name menus.
- Click the radio button for the one property on which you want
the results sorted.
- Select an operator. Available operators depend on the property.
- Click Accept Changes.
For more information about the settings on this page, see Customizing your search page.
Enter values and set
operators
For each operator that you want to include in a search,
you must specify a value by typing text, selecting a value from a
menu or another page, or selecting a date from a calendar. Only properties
that have values will be used in a search.
- Check the operator for each property. You can select an operator
from the menu or accept the default.
- Enter a value for each property that you want to use.
- Select AND or OR to
indicate the relationship between two properties. The AND operator
returns results only when both values are true. The OR operator
returns results if either of the property values are true. For example,
if you have a multi-valued property called Human Resources, and want
to search for Payroll or Recruitments, enter the following criteria:
Human Resources = Payroll OR
Human Resources = Recruitments
You can also enter the search
criteria as:Humsn Resources = Payroll, Recruitments
Important: If you use the Initial Classification property
on a DoD Classified data model, the classification input field is
a string field. All comparisons that use operators, such as greater
than (>) or less than or equal to (< or =), are based on the
text that you enter. So, Unclassified is greater than Classified because
U is the seventeenth letter in the English alphabet and C is the third
letter.
Specify content
If you are searching for a
record, you can specify a word or phrase that is in the content of
the declared document (in the Record Object Store) or the text of
the record properties (metadata in the File Plan Object Store). Your
site administrator must configure the search engine to index properties.
You can combine a property search with a content search by using the AND or
the OR operator.
If the search mode is
Static and you use the OR operator, the search
processes the property search first. If the number of results that
is returned equals or exceeds the Max Results value,
the search stops and does not search for content. Therefore, the results
might not include any documents with the requested content. For details
about the search mode, see Customizing your search page.
When the search mode is Dynamic, that mode still processes the contents
search first followed by the property search, and Dynamic mode returns
everything.
To search for content:
- In the Content Contains text box, enter
the text to include in the search.
- For the in value, select either Metadata to
find the text in the properties or Content to
find the text in the declared document. When you specify Content in
your search, the search results page includes a Rankings column that
shows a percentage that is relevant to your search criteria. Rankings
is the default sorting column and is initially sorted in descending
order. The Rankings column is available only when the Search Mode
is Dynamic.
- Set the operator to AND to specify that
the entity must contain the text that you entered and the properties
must also be true. Set the operator to OR if
either the content or the property conditions must be true.
Attention: - When you enter a word, the content search looks for all forms
of the word in the text of the document. If you search for text in
properties (metadata), only exact matches are returned. Thus, if you
enter month when you search document content,
you receive documents that contain month, months, and monthly. If
you enter month on a property search, you receive
only those documents that have a property value of month.
- When you enter more than one word, all of the words must be found
in the document. For example, if you enter monthly report, only
documents that contain both monthly and report are returned.
- To search for a phrase with words in a specific order, surround
the phrase with quotation marks. For example, "right hand" returns
only documents that contain the phrase right hand.
- Use quotation marks to search for specific capitalization or spelling.
For example, "star" returns star, but not starship
or Star.
- Use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character
zero or more letters, numbers, or underscore ( _ ) characters. For
example, wo*d returns wooden, word, World,
wordsmith, and would. Use a (?) to stand for
a single alphanumeric character as in ?an,
which returns ran, pan, can, and ban.
- If your system uses Oracle, the search is case-sensitive, unless
your administrator changed this as described in Setting search case sensitivity.
- When you search an MS SQL database with the LIKE operator
and your search criteria contains the left-bracket ([) character,
you must place the [ character within it own set of brackets. for
example, you need to enter [[] into the field.
This is an MS SQL vendor issue. Please consult MS SQL documentation
for more information.
- When you are doing a property search with the OR operator
with full text search in Dynamic mode, the default order of the result
set is sorted by ranking. You need to be aware that the result set
might have duplicate entries. For example, one item might display
twice in the result set, once from the search by property and the
another from the full text or content based retrieval search. Further,
when you click on a different column in the result set to sort the
results, such as sorting by Document Title instead of ranking, the
initial duplication might get filtered out. This results in the total
number of records being different in the search sorted by Document
Title when compared to the total number of records returned when sorted
by ranking. If you need to know the relevancy of the search results,
then you should sort by the ranking, which is the default. If it is
important for you to eliminate the possible duplicate entries, sort
by metadata.
Filter by parent type
You can search for a record
that is based on the type and properties of its parent entity. To
select the parent entity:
- Click Select to the right of And
filter by parent type.
- Select the type of parent in which the record must be found.
- Click Accept to return to the search page.
- Enter an operator and value or click Change to
specify other properties. Any changes to the search criteria of the
parent entity are reflected in the My Search page
of that entity type. For example, if you select record folder as the
parent, and you change the set of properties here, the same property
values will be set for record folders the next time you are searching
for them directly.
After you finish specifying the search criteria, click Search.
Search
Results
If the search mode is Static, the number of results
returned are limited by the Max Results value. If the search mode
is Dynamic, the results returned are not subject to the Max
Results value. For information about Max Results and Search
Mode, see Customizing your search page.
The
search results include the name of the entity and all the property
values that you specified in the search criteria. If a property such
as
Supplemental Marking has multiple values,
a
Show Details link is displayed in that column.
When you click this link, all of the values of that property display.
You can do the following operations on the search results:
- Generate a printable version.
- Select multiple entities and click Multi-Select Actions to
choose an action to apply to the selected entities.
- View an entity's Information page by clicking the Get
Info icon.
- Browse through the results by clicking a page number or Next.
Important: The List View Page Size value
(General Settings in Application Engine or Workplace XT User Preferences) determines
the number of entities that the Search Results display on each page.
If there are 100 entities in the search results, and the List
View Page Size value is 20, then the search results will
consist of 5 pages of 20 entities.
- Sort the results by clicking on a column. Depending on how you
define the search defaults, you can dynamically refresh the search
and sort the results. For more details, see the description of the Search
Mode field in Customizing your search page.
- Sort the results by relevance by clicking on the Rankings column.
- View all of the values of Multiple Value properties. For more
details, see the description of the Multivalue Property field
in Customizing your search page.
If you click the Get Info icon
of a subcategory and you do not have access permission to the parent
category, IBM Enterprise
Recordsdisplays
an error.
Search errors
If your file plan
hierarchy contains a large number of record categories, record folders,
and records, the Search could result in errors, including timeout
errors. For settings that you can modify to eliminate these errors,
see the IBM FileNet® P8 Troubleshooting Guide.