
Searching FileHold from the Chrome address bar
The Google address bar lets you enter a web site address or any URL, but it also lets you enter a search term. By default, you will be searching Google but you can search many different places by entering the shortcut for an alternate site. For example, if you type duckduckgo.com and press space or tab the default Chrome configuration will change the address bar to say “Search Duckduckgo”.
Several alternative search engines are configured by default, and you can edit the shortcut – duckduckgo.com is not that short after all – to customize the behavior. The configuration is available at chrome://settings/search (just type it in the address bar). From there you can choose the default search engine, but you can also choose to manage search engines and site search.
So, why not make FileHold your default search engine? The site search feature lets you add new arbitrary search targets. You give your new search target a name, a shortcut and the address where to find it. The address URL must have a place to include the search term using %s. Those two characters will be replaced by the search term. So, you could use the FileHold Open Search feature with an URL like the following: https://<my-filehold-server>/fh/filehold/Webclient/SearchManager.aspx?q=%s.
In addition, give your new search engine a name like My FileHold server and a shortcut that you will use to activate this search. If you give it a shortcut of “fh”, all you need to do is type fh in the address bar, press space and you will now be able to enter a search term that will be passed to a file and metadata search.
You can create many of these search engine definitions and you might want some more targeted options. For example, I am always searching for project and case documents. To make this simple I have created quick searches for both.
With a quick search I have option to generate an URL and I can use that URL in this Chrome search site configuration.
Any options in the URL Builder Properties are okay except the login type must be normal. Unfortunately Google chose to use a percent sign in their search term replacement method and that conflicts with URL encoding that is used with the other authentication methods.
In my example, I have used the case “10412” to generate the URL so I will replace that in the URL builder result with %s and paste it into my new search definition.
Using the letter “c” for my shortcut means all I need to do to find a customer’s case related documents is to press the letter c in the address bar, then space and type my case number.
While other browsers often have methods to change search engines, they are not as flexible as Chrome, so this tip is probably only good for Chrome users but I suspect that is most of you.
Happy searching!

Russ Beinder is the Chief Technology Officer at FileHold. He is an entrepreneur, a seasoned business analyst, computer technologist and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). For over 35 years he has used computer technology to help organizations solve business problems.