IBM Enterprise Records, Version 5.1.+            

Defining and running a search

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: 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:

  1. Select the Search tab.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:
    1. Click Select Folder.
    2. 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.
    3. Click Accept.
    4. 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).
    5. Click Select Class.
    6. Select the class type from the Select Filter Class page.
    7. Click Select Filter Class to select the class type.
    8. Select the Include subclasses check box if you want to return entities that are in subclasses of the class that you selected.
    9. 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:

  1. Click Change.
  2. In the Property Criteria Settings area, select a property name from one or more of the Property Name menus.
  3. Click the radio button for the one property on which you want the results sorted.
  4. Select an operator. Available operators depend on the property.
  5. 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.

  1. Check the operator for each property. You can select an operator from the menu or accept the default.
  2. Enter a value for each property that you want to use.
  3. 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:

  1. In the Content Contains text box, enter the text to include in the search.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

  1. Click Select to the right of And filter by parent type.
  2. Select the type of parent in which the record must be found.
  3. Click Accept to return to the search page.
  4. 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.



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Last updated: August 2011
define_and_execute_adhoc_search.htm

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