Help with searching

Entering natural language queries

Above is the search on text box, where you can type in your query, using natural language words and phrases. You may, if you wish, type in a complete sentence. The search will look for these words, and will return a list of the most relevant items.

Of course, you can still put as many other words as you like into the box. In fact, you should always enter as many words as you can (that are relevant to your interests) into this box. This will result in a good ranking of the items, so the ones you are most interested in will come right to the top of the results list.

Search weighting
If you wish, you can give a higher weighting to more important search terms by placing a plus (+) sign in front of them. Similarly, less desired terms are preceded by a minus (–) sign; you can use the minus sign to remove all or most items containing a specific word. For example, to search for documents about computers but not about networks you would specify the following search string:

+computer -networks Entering Boolean queries
You can enter a query in Boolean form into the search on text box, to search for document items with specific combinations of words.
You can use the following operators between words in a Boolean query:

AND
OR
NOT

NOT is used before each word you wish to specifically exclude. A NOT can only be used as part of a Boolean query; it cannot be used on its own.

If there is no operator between two words, AND is assumed to be the operator. Round brackets can be inserted around parts of the query to control the order in which the operators are evaluated.

An example of a Boolean query demonstrating the syntax is:

(Homer OR Marge) AND Simpson
This will return documents containing Homer and Simpson as well as documents containing Marge and Simpson.

Homer OR (Marge AND Simpson)
will return documents containing just Homer as well as documents containing Marge and Simpson.

(Homer Simpson) OR (Marge Simpson)
will return documents containing Homer and Simpson as well as documents containing Marge and Simpson.

(Homer OR Marge) AND Simpson NOT Bart
will return documents containing Homer and Simpson as well as documents containing Marge and Simpson, but it will exclude documents containing Bart.

Phrase searching
This search method can be used to search for a complete phrase. When a phrase is entered into a query, the phrase as a whole is used as a search term, rather than the individual words which constitute the phrase. Documents which contain the exact phrase will be returned with a higher weight than those that simply contain the same words which make up the phrase.

To specify something as a phrase, enclose it in double quotes (for example "this is a phrase"). If you wish to influence the weight of a phrase, you can add a + or - symbol as a prefix:
+"this is a phrase"

Fuzzy searching
This search method breaks words down into segments of three letters and compares them with similar words in the index. Your system administrator should have set up a database containing these three-letter groups. Fuzzy matching finds words which are the closest in structure, even though some of them may be linguistically dissimilar. A major effect of this method is to allow spelling which may be incorrect.

To use fuzzy matching, you should use the tilde symbol as a prefix for some words when entering your query text. You can also use fuzzy matching when setting up the query for an agent.

Examples demonstrating the syntax:

~grafical           This looks for all terms similar to grafical
~grafical ~disspla  This looks for all terms similar to grafical and disspla

If you wish to use fuzzy searching with phrase searching, you can use syntax similar to that shown in the following examples:

~"mikael gorbachov" This is equivalent to ~mikael ~gorbachov
"~mikael gorbachov" This searches for a phrase containing the terms '~mikael' and 'gorbachov'
+~mikael This is equivalent to ~mikael with each term returned given large weight

You will only be able to use this feature if your system administrator has enabled it.

Wildcard searching
You can type in search terms with wildcards - Dialog Alert/Dialog Discovery supports truncation of words. These wildcards take the form of an asterisk ( * ) which is always placed at the end of a word used in a query.

To search for all words beginning with car, type in the string car*. This may return words such as car, carrion, carp, carpark, carpet and so on (depending upon which words you have in your index).

You will only be able to use this feature if your system administrator has enabled it. The system administrator should have set a maximum limit for the number of words returned by a wildcard search (otherwise, too many words would be found and included in the query).

Note: If you wish to use a wildcard as well as fuzzy matching, only the fuzzy matching will be performed.