Full-text searching

Full text searching is a very powerful and fast way to find information that has been entered into HelpMaster.  A full text search is like an internet search engine style search, where you are able to enter in any words, or combination of words.  HelpMaster will then search through all of the text throughout the 6 main HelpMaster entities and return the results.  Full text searching allows you to use Boolean search conditions such as ‘AND’, ‘OR’, ‘NOT’ in order to refine your search scope.  Advanced searching features like proximity searching and paragraph searching are also allowed.

Full text searching is available from Job Finder, or the Advanced Search screen.  When full text searching is used via the standard Job Finder, only Jobs will be searched.  To search on Jobs, Actions, Clients, Assets, Knowledge Base articles, and/or Change Requests use the Advanced Search screen.

How it works

Full Text searching is a feature of Microsoft SQL Server and it must be installed, enabled and configured on your SQL Server instance before it can be used.  For full installation and configuration details,refer to Setting up full text searching.  Full text searching works by indexing every word in your HelpMaster database.  This is done on a regular basis as per the population schedule your configure on SQL Server.  This means that when you use the full text searching feature of HelpMaster, it can retrieve results very quickly and accurately.

Using Full text searching

With the HelpMaster full-text search interface you have the ability to search for six primary entities: Clients, Sites, Jobs, Actions, Knowledge Base articles, and Change Requests. For a quick full text search enter your search text directly into the Search box in the Quick Find section of the Jobs toolbar.  This will search on Jobs, Actions, and Knowledge Base articles by default. For more targeted searching click the Advanced Search option in the Find section, then tick the box(es) for the entity(s) that you wish to search on and press Find. Any successful matches will be returned on the Results tab.  Search results are highlighted to show your search terms.

Examples of full text searching

Example 1 - Simple

This example will find all entities containing the word “printer”

printer

Type printer and click on Find

Example 2 - OR

This example will find all entities containing the word “printer” OR “photocopier”

printer OR photocopier

Type printer OR photocopier and click on Find.

Example 3 - AND

This example will find all entities containing the word “printer” AND “photocopier”

printer AND photocopier

Type “printer AND photocopier” and click on Find.

Example 4 - Wildcard

This example will find all entities containing words that start with “data”.  Notice the use of the "*" character.

data*

Type “data*” and click on Find.  Variations on this style of search may be prefixing the criteria with the “*” character, such as “*data".  This may return results such as “big data”, “small data” etc.

Example 5 - Proximity

Try a proximity search.  This will look for words that are close to each other.

printer NEAR photocopier

Type “printer NEAR photocopier” and click on Find.

Example 6 - Exclusions

Exclude words from your search.

printer NOT photocopier

Type “printer NOT photocopier” and click on Find.

Experiment with combinations

Try combinations of the above examples.  String different types of searches together to form a more complex search.  For complete syntax details about what is possible, consult the Microsoft SQL Server on-line help under the Full Text Search heading.  

See Also

Setting up full text searching