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5.5 Searching

5.5.1 Searching within Business Collaborator
5.5.2 Constructing a simple query
5.5.3 Interpreting search results
5.5.4 Constructing a complex query
5.5.5 Document contents searching
5.5.6 Searching for a user


5.5.1 Searching within Business Collaborator

Business Collaborator enables you to search for documents, folders and other items within the Business Collaborator server. You can

  • find objects (folders, documents, discussions, databases etc.) in your folders or workspaces
  • search for documents read or written by particular individuals
  • search for objects altered between specific dates or in a given time period
  • combine search criteria together to narrow your search
  • obtain someone's username (if they are listed in your address book)
  • optionally (depending on the configuration of your Business Collaborator server), search for text in the body of documents
  • optionally (depending on the configuration of your Business Collaborator server), search for user-defined metadata on the document.

Note that all results returned are filtered through the access rights set on these objects. For instance, if you do not normally have access to a folder you will not be able to locate it by running a search.

You have the following choices from the Search menu:

  •  Search  |  New Query  will bring up a new query form (with a single word search as its default) consisting of an empty search box.
  •  Search  |  Last Query  is used to edit the query for the last search you performed
  •  Search  |  Edit Query  is ideally used to edit a partially implemented query you were last working on. If you saved a partially configured query without running it, this query form will be returned by this action. If the last query you produced was saved and performed, then this option behaves the same as  Search  |  Last Query 
  •  Search  |  Last Results  will show you the objects found from the last search.(As it resubmits the query, the results produced will be up-to-date.)
  • If you want to search for a user in your address book, select  Search  |  New Query  from the search menu. On the next page select  Search  |  User Search  from this search menu. To return to the search for an object, select  Search  |  Object Search  from this search menu.

You can search for objects, not only by name, but also by the object's type, the metadata associated with it such as author (or user-defined metadata if it is available on your Business Collaborator server) and by the type of events which have taken place on it.
(User-defined metadata can be used to ensure consistency of information retrieval across an organisation. By defining metadata for different types of documents, organisations can add a great deal of value to the documents they store in Business Collaborator. For instance, metadata could be used to indicate the person or department responsible for the document, the date on which a document’s next revision is due, classification of the document into its type, e.g. agenda, minutes, proposal, report, memo etc. See Section 13 - Metadata for more information).


5.5.2 Constructing a simple query

5.5.2.1 Setting the search criteria
5.5.2.2 Further details about the Search form


5.5.2.1 Setting the search criteria

The default search, obtained by clicking on  Search  |  New Query , looks for objects by keyword, where the name may be in the object's name or description. (Note that searching for text within a document is optional functionality which may not be provided on your server - see section 5.5.5 for further details) .
If you previously constructed a complex query, you can return to the simple keyword search form by clicking on the "Reset Query" button. From this search form (see Figure 5.5-1), you should:

  1. Specify the scope of your search, i.e. where you want to search within. The possible options are shown below:
    • The whole system
    • Your bag (see section 3.6.2)
    • Your current location
    • Your Homehome page
    • Last used: the workspace or folder you last used the search from
    • Your mail area (see section 7.2.2).
    • The parent workspace of the current folder you are searching from
    • Your waste bin (see section 3.6.3)

    2. Note that the availability of these options is dependent on the location you are searching from.

  2. Limit how many objects appear on each page of search results. This is useful in keeping the size of search results pages manageable. The default is to limit each page to 25 objects.
  3. For documents under version control, choose whether the search results should show only the latest version of the document (see section 3.7.4), should display together all revisions of a document which match the search criteria (as they are usually shown in a folder view - see Figure 3.7-1 or should show any versions of the document which match the search criteria as completely distinct documents. (Previous versions of documents can easily be identified by the fact that their document version number appears greyed out as this was fixed when the document was superceded -see Figure 3.7-1.)
  4. From the drop-down list in the search box, choose whether you wish to search for an object by its description, name, URL address (web link) or by any one of these fields. Searching in any of these fields is the default.
  5. You then have the option of specifying whether you want the search to find any/all of the words you type into the search box and whether the results should match the whole word or should simply contain, as a partial match, the word which is being sought. The default is to search for any of the desired words, with partial matching. Specifying "all" and "whole" word restrictions will restrict the results returned and so are good methods for refining a search containing a large number of results.
  6. Now type in the word, or words, which you are trying to find.
  7. Finally, click on the "Run Search" button to look for all objects matching your query.

It is recommended that you begin with an open search choosing the default options of "any single field", "any" and "all" - to improve the chances that at least some results are returned. Following this, you may restrict your search progressively by adding more words to the search, only searching within object names, insisting on whole word matching only etc. Further methods for restricting the number of results returned by a search are described in section 5.5.4.

Separating words in the Keywords text box using a space, . (dot) or _ (underscore) character has the same effect. Words separated by any of these characters will be treated as distinct words by the Business Collaborator search.



Figure 5.5-1: A simple keyword search.




5.5.2.2 Further details about the Search form

If a search term is not selected (by checking the tick-box in the Select column, as shown in Figure 5.5.1) when a search is run, it will be ignored. Only objects matching the other search terms will be reported and, the next time the search is run, the unchecked term will be removed from the form. To remove a search term from the search form without running the search, deselect it (uncheck the checkbox) and click "Update Query".

Note that clicking "Run Search" not only submits the search to be run but also updates the query as described above. Thus, this search query will be returned when  Search  |  Edit Query  is next used.

To remove all but a single "Keywords" search term - the default search term - click "Reset Query". All search terms apart from a single "Keywords" term will be removed, irrespective of whether they were checked or not.

To save a search for later reuse, click on "Save As...". Full details of saving and rerunning queries are given in Section 14 - Reusable searches.


5.5.3 Interpreting search results

A typical page of search results, SearchBag , is shown in Figure 5.5-2 Above the results table you have a link which will take you back to the workspace/folder you were using prior to the search. The link name indicates the actual name of the workspace/folder. The number of objects matching the criteria of the query is shown just on the following line. The table of results displays the objects type, name, confidence level for the match, the location of the object, the events, owner and last modified date for each object that matched the search criteria.

By default, the search results are ordered by confidence level. This confidence level is intended as a guide to how closely each object matches the search criteria specified. Exact matches will score more highly than approximate matches. Those results which are estimated to match the search criteria most closely appear at the top of the page. The list may be sorted by Type, Name, Confidence level, Owner and last Modified date by clicking on the appropriate column heading. (If the column headings are not clickable, you should check your preferences - see section 5.7.2.) If you reorder the results for a particular search, this will become your default ordering for subsequent searches.

If there are more results than will fit on one page, other pages can be accessed by clicking on any available link in the line beginning "Showing 1 to n" where n is the upper limit on the number of objects to be displayed per page. By default, 25 results are displayed per page but this can be specified by the user.

The object’s name is a web link to the object, the location allows you to move directly to any of the folders/workspaces containing the located object and the owner column contains a link to the page giving more details about the object's creator.

The icon    to the left of the object's name allows you to view more information about the object or set notification on that object (see Section 12 - Event notification for more information on notification). In addition, it is possible to lock documents from this menu - see section 6.2. For a complete action list of available actions on the returned objects, it is necessary to move to the location where the objects were found.

Figure 5.5-2: A typical page of search results.

Note 1
The information page for the search results displays the scope, number of results per page and search terms used to produce the search results plus an access details table for this object.
Note 2
In order to limit the number of objects matching the query, you should always be specific about what you are searching for. You could, for instance, do this by restricting the scope of the search (by moving into a folder or workspace where you believe the document to be located) or specifying the type of objects or events you wish to find (see section 5.5.1).
Note 3
A special action available on the search results page is:
 Search  |  Redo Search  - repeats the query as originally specified in case additional objects which match the search criteria have been added to the server since the search was last run. Details of how to save the search criteria for reuse at a later date are given in Section 14 - Reusable searches.


5.5.4 Constructing a complex query

5.5.4.1 Additional search criteria
5.5.4.2 Details of event searching
5.5.4.3 Details of issuing searching
5.5.4.4 Details of metadata searching


5.5.4.1 Additional Search Criteria

In addition to searching for certain keywords, you can narrow down your query by specifying:

  • Document contents - Optionally, the contents of documents can be searched if this functionality is provided on the particular Business Collaborator server (see section 5.5.5).
  • Events - Event-related information - e.g. all change events triggered by UserX. This could also specify a time range during which events should have occurred - either between two calendar dates or within a range such as "between 3 and 6 weeks ago". Further details of this type of searching are given in section 5.5.4.2.
  • Keywords - Additional keyword search criteria
  • Issuing - search for objects related to issues (see section 15) according to a number of issue-related criteria. Further details of this type of searching are given in section 5.5.4.3.
  • MIME Type - The MIME type (file format) of an object - e.g. MS Word, AutoCAD, HTML etc.
  • Metadata - project-specific metadata fields (see Section 13), e.g. project manager, review date, task number. Further details of this type of searching are given in section 5.5.4.4.
  • Object type - The Business Collaborator type of object - e.g. workspace, folder, discussion, relational database or web site object


5.5.4.2 Details of event searching

One of the most powerful methods of searching is to look for events performed in the system, by particular individuals, in a specified time range.

Groups of similar events can be searched for - such as any change event. In addition, particular events can be specified.

The user who carried out the action can be specified. For reusable search queries (see Section 14 - Reusable searches), it is often useful to search for events carried out by whoever is running the search (the current user) or by any user who is a member of the current area (the members of the current location).

The time range can be left unspecified (the default), defined to be within a range of days, weeks, months or years, or specified to be between two calendar dates. When defining a range, "between 0 days and 1 day" corresponds to "today and yesterday" etc.

Note
No search results will be returned until some search criteria have been specified.
For instance, searching for any kind of event by any user without specifying a date range could lead to a huge number of results being reported and is highly inefficient.


5.5.4.3 Details of issuing searching

Note that this is in addition to the searching which can be conducted specifically within a collection - see section 16.4 - which can be seen simply as a mechanism for filtering the contents of a collection.
You may need to use a standard search to locate a document, issue or review if the object in question is stored in a standard folder hierarchy instead of a collection. However, the details of the standard search fields can be found in section 16.4 since they offer the same functionality as those on a collection search page.
When carrying out Issue-related searching, the first thing to determine is whether you are searching for a Document or an Issue or Review. The following additional search criteria may be specified:

  • Reason for issue
  • Whether there are outstanding actions on the object
  • Where the issue is in one of its standard states
  • Where the due date of the issue (if any) is within a specified date range
  • Where the due date of the issue (if any) is between given dates
  • Where the sender of the issue is a particular user
  • Where the recipient of the issue can be selected


5.5.4.4 Details of metadata searching

The available fields and the values displayed in the drop-down lists on this page are dictated by the metadata schema (see section 13.2.1) which applies to the current workspace. Figure 5.5-3 shows a search page within a workspace using a schema which defines a number of folder, document and issue types (see section 13).
The first drop-down list in the metadata section of the page lists the metadata types defined by this schema, e.g. a document type (see section 13.2.5) called note. The second offers all of the metadata field sets (see section 13.2.11) specified for this metadata schema. (These are used in the issuing process to determine the reason for issuing documents to particular individuals.) The third drop-down allows the user to distinguish between objects with valid or invalid metadata. When metadata is allocated to an object, its value may be invalid, e.g. a blank entry in a required field. Depending on the metadata validity policy which applies to the current workspace, restrictions may be placed on objects with invalid metadata - see section 13.2.3 for further details.

Figure 5.5-3: Example of a search page within a workspace using a schema

The remaining fields which are displayed are the metadata fields which are used by the current workspace's metadata schema. The first text box allows the user to search in any of the available metadata fields (see section 13.2.8) and the others allow the user to search for particular values within specific metadata fields.

Note
No search results will be returned until some search criteria have been specified. Using the default settings of Any Type of object with Any Field Set and either valid or invalid metadata could lead to a huge number of results being reported and is highly inefficient.


5.5.5 Document contents searching (optional)

Depending on the configuration of the Business Collaborator server which you are using, it may also be possible to carry out searches for words or phrases inside the body of documents stored within Business Collaborator. If this option is available on your server, you will see a "Document Contents" option in the drop-down list in the lower half of the standard search form, along with Events, Object type etc.

By selecting this term, you may specify in the text box which words and phrases you wish to look for within documents. Document types which can be searched typically include Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files. For further details of document contents searching on your server, please contact your system administrator.


5.5.6 Searching for a user

Business Collaborator lets you search for users in your address book or, whilst you are in a workspace, for members of that same workspace. You cannot search through the member lists of all the workspaces you are a member of in one go.

Users can be searched for by stipulating their email address or by information about them, such as their full name or the name of their organisation. These details are the main fields from the 'User Details' form (see section 5.6). As not all users will have completed this page, the only information that may be known for a user is 'user name' and 'email address' - the minimum information possible. By default, the scope of the search is all user-related information.

Like other search queries, user queries can be constructed to look for whole words or parts of words. Additional search terms, such as email address, can be added to the criteria included in the search form in the usual way.

For the results returned, clicking on the returned object - user name or email address - will display further information about this object. The available actions on the objects allow you to view the information page or email the user. To email several users, select their name(s) and click on  Selected  |  Email 

To return to searching on Business Collaborator objects, click on  Search  |  Object Search 

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