General search rules

The following general search rules apply when searching for documents in Document Manager:

• To match an exact phrase, enter the text in quotes, for example, “rental property”.

• To match any of the words in a string, regardless of their order in the document, enter the text without quotes: for example, rental property. This is the same as entering rental OR property.

• To match both the words of an entered string (but not as an exact phrase), enter the text separated by the keyword AND. For example, rental AND property.

• If only one word is entered and neither quotes or wildcards are used, the system will append the wildcard automatically. For example, if you enter the text rent and click Search, a search will be triggered for rent*.

Indexing in Document Manager

The following general indexing rules apply in Document Manager:

• Every field or word is stored in the index in lower case.

• The following common English words are not indexed: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with.

• If a field name contains more than one word, it is stored as one word with the space replaced by an underscore, for example, work_type.

• The basic searchable fields are:

  contents
  ref
  documentid
  title
  contactid
  contactname
  isarchived
  authorid
  createdby
  createdbyname
  datecreated
  datemodified
  sent
  sentdate
  extrafields

Advanced search rules

The following advanced search rules apply in Document Manager:

• Keywords include OR, AND, NOT, TO.

• A colon indicates that a specific field is to be searched: for example, ref:101_*.

• The keyword, AND, can be replaced by the plus (+) sign: for example, rental AND property is the same as rental + property.

• The keyword, NOT, can be replaced by the minus (-) sign: for example, title:rental - contents:property. This means that rental is part of the title field and property is not part of the contents field.

• Date searches are also possible using the format yyyymmdd.
  For example:
  datecreated:20131231 searches documents that were created on the last day of the year 2013.
  datecreated:[20131201 TO 201312331] searches documents that were created in the last month of the year 2013.
  datecreated:{20131130 TO 20130101} searches documents that were created in the last month of the year 2013. The {} brackets mean that the stated dates are non-inclusive.

• The character, ~, has 2 special meanings:

  • Used to search for a similar word. For example, java~ could return results on lava.

  • Used with double quotes to determine the position distance between words. For example, “rental property”~5 is for rental and property within five positions of one another.