Performing Advanced Searches

Searching for Information

Metamation provides a variety of methods for searching for documents and data. Depending on the level of searching required, the following search options are available:

• Item Specific Searching allows a specific area of information to be searched by simply entering a search term. Item specific searches can be applied to just documents, data, alerts, or lists of information displayed on screen (such as lists of users, document classes etc)
• Quick Searching allows searching across all documents and data available to you, for a specific search term. For quick searching, only the description of items are searched, and the results ranked in the order of most likely match.
• Advanced Searching allows a range of search options to be specified. Advanced searching allows searching of more areas of the repository including the contents of documents, data within tables, and filtering of creation date, owners etc.
  

Performing Advanced Searches

Within Metamation, data, documents, storage areas and actions can be searched for in the following ways:

• Context Searching
• Quick Searching
• Advanced Searching

The advanced search option allows a key word or phrase to be entered for the search, together with a range of options to narrow the search down to particular items of criteria. Advanced searches are available to all users, and appear under the main home page Navigation Menu on the far left of the display. When selected, the advanced search window is displayed.

Within the Advanced search, the following options are available:

Search String: This is the search string to be located.
See below on the options available for entering search strings.
Search Synopsis?: By default, only the items reference code and description will be searched. By selecting this option, the items synopsis is also searched
Include Deleted?: By default, only active items will be searched. By selecting this option, documents, tables, nodes etc which are marked as hidden or deactivated will also be searched.
Created Between: By selecting a user from the drop down list, the items searched are restricted to those owned (last updated) by the specified user. By entering a range of dates (by enter or using the pop-up calendar controls), the items search are restricted to items created within the specified range of dates.
Search Documents: Indicates if the search should include documents within the repository.
Search nodes: Indicates if the search should include node definitions within the repository.
Search Tables: Indicates if the search should include table definitions within the repository.
Search Data: Indicates if the search should include data held within tables within the repository (note, this does not require the table search to be selected to search the actual data content).

When entering the Search String to be found, the following search options can be entered:

Text in quotes - will search for the exact match of the phrase as entered

+ (plus) before word - will only return entries where the specified word is found

- (minus) before word - will only return entries where the specified word is not found

Search terms specified are not case specific.

Examples:

Project plan for Anywhere council - This will return all entries that contain ANY of the words, and rank them in order. Common words such as "for, and, the, on, of, etc" are automatically stripped out.

"Project plan" for Anywhere Council - This will return all entries that contain ANY of the words, and rank them in order, but will treat the phrase "Project plan" as a single word in the searching. Common words such as "for, and, the, on, of, etc" are automatically stripped out.

"Project plan for Anywhere Council" - This will return only those entries where the phrase "Project plan for Anywhere Council" and rank them in order. Common words such as "for, and, the, on, of, etc" are NOT automatically stripped out of phrases.

+"Project Plan" for +Anywhere council - This will return all entries that contain the optional word "council", but the entries MUST contain the mandatory phrase "Project Plan" and Anywhere. Common words such as "for, and, the, on, of, etc" are automatically stripped out.

-Rejected +"Project Plan" for +Anywhere council - This will return all entries that contain the optional word "council", but the entries MUST contain the mandatory phrase "Project Plan" and Anywhere. In addition, any documents or data where the word Rejected is found will not be included in the listed results.