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IBM WebSphere Portal 8.5: User assistance for administrators |
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Search Center
Use the Search Center to search for documents.
You can use the Search Center to search and retrieve internal documents. Depending on what your administrator has set, you might also be able to search documents from intranet sources of your organization or from additional sources.
Searching for content
To
submit your search query, use the Search box that is available at
the side of the portal theme bar.
Note: Depending on your installation
and its customization, search might be available by other than the
default means.
- Click the arrow near Search text input field, and select a scope to search from the drop-down list of available scopes. The Search field displays the name of scope you picked. If you do not pick a scope, All Sources (the default) will be searched. For details about search scopes refer to Searching by scopes.
- To enter a search query, type your search string over the name of the selected scope in the entry field. For details about the search syntax refer to Search syntax.
- Click the Search icon (magnifying glass) to launch your query. Search displays the items that match your search terms on the Search Center tab page. The information about the search results appears grouped by columns for relevance, title, owner, and date. For details refer to Search result list details.
- Change or refine your search using one of the following methods:
- Refine your search by typing additional words in the Search text entry field. For details about the search syntax refer to Search syntax.
- Launch a search to a different content location by selecting the search scope as required. For details refer to Searching by scopes.
- Optional: if your administrator has enabled search on metadata, you can narrow your search by specifying metadata of the searched documents. For example, you can search for documents by their title or description.
- Click Close Search to leave the search results.
Searching by scopes
- Scope
- Search scopes are used to group or limit searches to one or multiple content locations or document types or a combination of both. You can select scopes from the pull-down list next to the search text entry field.
| Search collection | Contents of Result List |
|---|---|
| All Sources | Documents from Managed Web Content, from any indexed content that you have access to, and from any custom third-party links that have been configured by an administrator display in the same list. This does not pertain to external search services. |
| Managed Web Content | Documents originating from the Managed Web Content source. This scope is available only if you have a Managed Web Content site. |
| Custom links | Custom links are displayed in the pull-down selection list next to the search text entry field. They are typically third-party search facilities configured by your administrator |
Search syntax
To improve
the effectiveness of your search queries, follow these guidelines:
- Use more than one word in your search queries.
The search engine employs a free-text ranking mechanism to locate the best matches for your query. Documents containing more query terms and in close proximity to each other, will receive a higher score.
- Use quotation marks (" ") to retrieve an exact match for your
search string.When you use quotation marks, Search checks the position of words in the quoted phrase to make sure they are next to each other and in the order entered, for example:
- Entering the phrase stock discount can be less precise since it will find results with the word stock or the word discount.
- Entering the phrase "stock discount" returns results where this phrase appears exactly as you entered it.
When using quotation marks, the following rules apply:- If you forget to use the closing quotation mark, Portal Search supplements the closing quotation mark and treats your search as a phrase search.
- If you search for strings with special query characters, such as a blank or a colon ( : ), you must enclose the whole search string within the quotation marks.
- Single quotation marks (') are not valid operators. Always use double quotation marks (").
- Use the plus sign (+) or minus sign (-) symbolic operators to
help narrow the search. A plus sign (+) in front of a term guarantees
that every document contains that term. A minus sign (-) in front
of a term ensures that every document returned excludes that term,
for example: "status reports" -weekly +monthly.The minus sign eliminates or rejects the weekly status reports from the returned result set while the plus sign narrows the search to monthly reports.Note: Do not use the minus sign (-) symbolic operator with a one-word search query alone. The minus sign (-) works only in combination with other search terms. For example, the following queries return the same results:
- -weekly +monthly
- -weekly monthly
- +monthly -weekly
- monthly -weekly
- Use an asterisk (*) as a trailing wildcard at the end of a search term, in the format wildcar*, but not *ildcard or wil*card.
- You can search documents by date and date
ranges. The used date formats can be changed by the Portal administrator.
Dates can be specified by using the format yyy-MM-dd.
You can also specify the time as well as the date by using the format yyy-MM-dd,hh:mm.
The following search terms are supported:
- update_date:"yyyy-MM-dd"
- Finds all documents that were updated on the specified day.
- update_date:"yyyy-MM-dd,hh:mm"
- Finds all documents that were updated in the specified minute on the specified day. By default, the hour and minute are specified in the 24-hour format. For instance, the number 18 specifies 6 PM. However, you can specify a custom format that uses the 12-hour time format instead.
- #update_date::>=yyyy-MM-dd<yyyy-MM-dd
- Finds all documents that were updated between the two specified
dates. For instance, if you used the following search term #update_date::>=2014-10-14<2014-10-19,
documents that were updated between October 14, 2014 and October 19,
2014 would be returned. Range queries support the following characters:
- >
- >=
- <
- <=
- The Did You Mean? feature is now included in WebSphere® Portal v8.5 or later. If your search query has a typographical error, the Did You Mean? feature suggests different search results other than the search terms that you entered. The Did You Mean? feature works by recognizing and retrieving similar terms that are used in the indexed data. Since the Did You Mean? feature is based on indexed terms, the use of "AND" in your search query might return fewer suggested search results.
Search has the following limitations:
- Search is not case-sensitive.
For example, if you search for content about the country China, the result set might include other documents associated with china (of the pottery kind) unless you include or exclude certain words using symbolic operators. For example, +china -pottery +asia.
- Search ignores punctuation, such as periods or commas, unless they are enclosed in a quoted phrase.
- Search does not support the use of the logical operators AND, OR, and NOT.
- The less than ( < ) and greater than ( > ) symbols are special HTML characters that Search cannot handle.
Search result list details
The following additional information about the search results is shown:| Data | Description |
|---|---|
| Relevance | A graphical representation indicates the relevance rank of each item returned in the result set. |
| Title | This displays the item title. Results typically display the file type icon, or the source icon, if the result is not a file, with the returned result title as a link. Clicking the result title leaves Search and takes you to that search result. |
| Person | This shows the name of the person most recently associated with the result, such as owner, contributor, sender, or directory listing. |
| Date | This shows when an item was last updated. |
| Summary | This shows a summary of a returned result item if one has been created by the owner of the returned item. |