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Full Text Searching in the Document Management System
The Full Text or Simple Search bar uses a "Google-like" toolbar to return full-text search results.
There are two locations where you will find the simple search screen:
- Click Search in the Library tree. The simple search form that appears allows users to search the contents of the entire documents management system using the full text search engine.
- The top right hand corner of the FileHold Desktop Application has a quick search bar.
General Usage / Tips
- Avoid searching for two (2) letter words alone; instead use three (3) letter words or simply use a wild card * before or after the 2 letters. Two letter word searches are not searchable for several technical reasons:
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The two letters you are searching for can appear in a portion of a word, or very commonly on their own, these if used in the search engine criteria, would greatly slow down and impede the performance of the FileHold search system.
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In addition, they can also affect the quality of search results because they can appear inside a larger word, or on their own with great frequency. This throws off search quality to unacceptable levels. Read the Stop Words section on this page for more examples of common 2 letter words that are specifically skipped by the search engine for performance and reliability reasons.
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For example, if you wish to search for "AT" when you are looking for a document that describes "AT Commands for communicating with a cellular phone or communication hardware device", then we recommend using AT* Commands in the search bar. Use the * wildcard right after AT and before Commands.
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Use whole words when searching for words inside of documents. Simple search acts like a "Google" search and partial words may not return the results you are looking for or may not return any results. If you need to use partial words, use a wildcard (*) with the search.
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If you use a very generic search term, then the search engine may time out. Try to look for unique words or terms or limit the search to a specific area in the Library.
How to use Boolean Operators when Performing Full Text Searches
The following operators and logics including: stemming, fuzzy, synonym and phonic can be used with full text search. Because the stemming, fuzzy, synonym and phonic search methods can impact search performance the ability to search using Fuzzy, Synonym and Phonic searching is a global setting configured by the Library Administrators. We do not recommend the usage of fuzzy search except for very specific requirements. Contact the Library Administrator to see if your document management system is configured to use these search features. More info How to Configure the FileHold search Engine.
We recommend you change these settings from defaults only when necessary, and change only 1 feature at a time, and then carefully test search output.
| Operator | What it does | Examples of use |
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AND Note: AND must be in all caps |
Finds files located in the document management system that include both search terms. By default words that are separated with a space will be automatically joined by an AND operator. | To search for London and Paris users would enter the search phrase “London AND Paris" |
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OR Note: OR must be in all caps |
Finds files that include either of two search terms | To search for files that contain either golf or tennis users would enter the search phrase “golf OR tennis” |
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NOT Note: NOT must be in all caps |
Finds files that have contain a certain search term or phrase while excluding others | To search for files that contain the words Invoice but not the phrase “paid in full” users would enter the search as follows; Invoice NOT “paid in full” |
| * (wildcard) |
A wildcard search is a text string that uses an asterisk to represent one or more letters of the search term To search for a term where the spelling is in question or there are multiple possible spellings |
For example the surname Andersen, Anderssen, or Andersson. To retrieve all variations located in the document management system enter the search string. “Ander*" |
| Exact Phrase | To find documents stored in the records management system using an exact phrase enclose the search in quotes |
To find files related to “Tiger Woods” an exact phrase search assures that the returned hits would be about the golfer. Searching Tiger Woods without the quotes would also return files that contained the words tiger AND woods |
| Stemming | Finds files on the records management system that contain grammatical variations of word endings | Returns applies, applied, applying in a search for apply |
| Fuzzy searching | Finds files in the document management system even when words are misspelled. The level of fuzziness can be set. This can have dramatic results on search quality - use with caution! | A search for alphabet with a fuzziness of 1 would also find “alphaqet” |
| Phonic searching | Finds files in the document management system with words that sound alike | Smythe in a search for Smith |
| Synonym expansion | Finds word synonyms using a comprehensive English language thesaurus | Purchase and acquisition would both be searched for |
Search Results Relevance Ranking
The relevance value (expressed as a percentage) is an approximation of how close the document is to the search criteria.
Full Text Searching and Stop Words
The document management system is designed to ignore common words or characters as they tend to slow searches without improving the quality of the results. By default the following words, if entered into the search string are omitted from the query to the search engine: I , a , about , an , are , as , at, be , by , com , de , en, for , from, how , in , is , it , la , of , on , that, the , this, to , was , what , when, where , who , will , with, and, the.
Indexing files for Full Text Search
Documents are indexed by the full text search engine on a schedule as set by the records management system’s library administrator. This schedule can be set frequently (every minute) or infrequently (once a week and anywhere in between) as required to support the search activities of users. Documents will not be able to be located by the search engine until the file is indexed. By default this is set to every minute via FileHold server scheduled task, and we do not recommend that this be changed.
Actions on files that trigger an index update for the full text search engine
The following user activities trigger the full text index to be updated for a document:
• New document(s) or a new version of a document is added to the records management system (both the documents Metadata values and the document content will be indexed).
• Metadata values that are associated with a document are edited (the new Metadata values are added, the old values are removed).
• A document is deleted from the document management system (both Metadata Values and content index entries associated with the document shall be removed)
Note : Library Administrators may customize the search engine settings by logging onto the web client of the document management system, switching to Library Admin then click on Library Settings > Search Engine. The following can be set:
Search Result Metadata Weighting, Number of Files To Return, Stop Searching After, Search timeout, Stemmed Search, Phonic Search, Fuzzy Search Setting, Synonym Searching, Hyphen Searching and Accent Support.
Default settings may also be restored from this page.