The search form

The search form consists of a top row where you determine the domain of search and in its lower part of a number of nested expressions represented as boxes, each grouping a number of search criteria as rows.

A search expression may be of AND or OR type, i.e. an object satisfying the search ex­pres­sion must fulfill either all its criteria (AND) or at least one (OR). A search criterion may be either a basic criterion, e.g. requiring that the name of the objects to be found contains the string “bscw”, or a search expression, hence the nesting of the expressions. A basic criterion can also be negated, e.g. requiring that the name of the objects to be found does not contain the string “bscw”. The same goes for search expressions except the top level one.

Basic criteria may concern all object metadata as well as document content. More speci­fically, basic criteria may concern

general object attributes like name, description, tags or BSCW object type,

content and specific attributes of documents like file type or Dublin Core attri­butes,

events that have occurred with an object,

specific attributes of certain object types like department and e-mail address of contacts or tasks of a flow folder. Here you may also refer to user-defined metadata attributes.

An example given in Figure 10 is a query looking for all objects in your work­spaces whose name or tags contain the strings “introduction” and “bscw” and which were created by user “koch” or user “ruland”.

Figure 10: BSCW search form

You start filling in the search form by selecting your domain of search from the drop down menu provided:

the current folder,

the current workspace, i.e. the ‘smallest’ workspace containing the current fol­der, which is the workspace from which the current folder inherits its members (only offered in the menu if different from the current folder),

all your workspaces,

the entire system including your clipboard, waste and calendar or

The search domain where you have searched the last time (if different from the above). This domain is characterized by an asterisk (*) appended to its name.

When you have never searched before, you start with an AND expression having ‘name’ as the only search criterion. Once you have done a search, your last query is offered as starting point.

You edit a query by adding new search criteria or subordinate expressions to a search ex­pression, by filling in values in search criteria, as well as by negating, deleting or moving search criteria and expressions.

We start with describing the functions offered in the head line of a search expression – pro­ceeding from left to right:

      The small triangular icon fold in at the left-hand border of the head line lets you fold in and out the search criteria and subordinate expressions of the search expression (not available for the top expression). You achieve the same effect by clicking in the head line somewhere beside the buttons and menus.

      The next icon positive allows for negating the entire search expression (except the top level one). Clicking on this icon changes it to negated. Clicking on negated takes back the negation. Basic search criteria may also be negated this way.

      The type of the search expression (AND or OR) may be toggled using the drop down menu right next to the indication of the logical type of the expression.

      The [Fill all] button enables you to fill in all text fields inside an expression with a certain string. You may of course also fill in the text fields one by one.

      Using the drop-down menu add you may add commonly used search criteria (like name, description, tags or content) and new search expressions to the search expres­sion. As subordinate expressions you can choose from the empty search expression and two predefined expressions that correspond to quick search ‘all’ and ‘documents’ of the search field in the navigation bar. The quick search ‘documents’ is only offered when an indexing service has been installed on your BSCW server.

      Using the drop-down menu [Search criteria] you may add search criteria to the search expression that relate to attributes from a group of metadata profiles chosen from the following profile menu. The profile sources available are:

      System profiles: The pre-configured metadata profiles for the diverse BSCW ob­ject types.

      My profiles: Metadata profiles which are stored in your personal templates folder.

      Profiles of other users: Metadata profiles of other users with whom you cooperate.

You find details on metadata profiles in 3.9.1 Metadata profiles.

      The [Graph] button in the head line of the top level expression presents the current query in graphical from. This search graph representation is shown in a separate brow­ser window. Graphical displaying of search queries has to be activated by your BSCW administrator.

If you are not using the [Fill in] function, you have to fill in the input fields of your search cri­teria one by one. With text fields (name, description, tags, content etc.) you may enter multiple search terms and also parts of search terms. Please also read the following note.

Note: Searching with textual search terms underlies the following rules (we use docu­ment search by content as an example, but the rules are also valid for other cases like object search by name).
If you enter a single term, all documents will be found whose content con­tains this term as word or part of a word. If you enter several terms separated by blanks, all documents will be found whose content contains all terms entered as words or part of words. The order does not matter. If documents are to be found containing a certain phrase possibly with blanks, you have to enclose this phrase in double quotes.       
Non-alphanumeric characters are treated as they are by default. If, however, an indexing ser­vice is installed on your BSCW server, these characters are treated as they are in phrases, but as separators in simple terms (with the exception of . and :).     
There are no wildcard characters to be used in search strings.   
Upper and lower case characters are not distinguished in search strings including phrases.

You can delete and move the expressions and criteria of your query as follows.

      You remove a criterion or expression by clicking on the icon delete at the right-hand side of a criterion or expression. For the top level expression of your query this operation means that all expressions and criteria contained are removed, resulting in an empty query. Note that this operation cannot be undone.

      You rearrange criteria and expressions by dragging them around using the icon move left of delete. This way you may move, e.g., a criterion or expression inside another ex­pression or move a criterion from inside an expression to a level higher up.

If you are done with the editing of your query,

      hit [OK] to start the search. You will be shown the search results in a temporary search folder.

Please note that content-based search for documents (full text search) is only possible for plain text and HTML documents (MIME types text/plain and text/html) if no indexing service has been installed on your BSCW server. This is indicated by the fact that no quick search for documents is offered as search expression in the add drop-down menu. Contact your BSCW admini­stra­tor.

Special features of the user search

Searching for users is only possible on a members’ page using the search field in the navi­gation bar.

      Select the kind of your search from the drop-down menu  in front of the search field: all or e-mail.

      The default search (“all”) looks for all users on the members’ page with the search terms occurring in user name, given name, middle names, surname, organization or e-mail address. An e-mail search finds all users with e-mail addresses containing the search terms.

      Enter your search terms into the search field and start the search. The users found are shown in a temporary search folder.

When you edit such a query for users on a members’ page (e.g. using  File    Edit Query  in the top menu of the search folder) you are presented with the normal search form. Here you can

      extend the search domain to your whole BSCW server and

      use further user specific search criteria:

      In the drop-down menu add you may add tags as further search criterion.

      Using the drop-down menu [Search criteria] you may add search criteria from the system profile Contact, i.e. attributes that users may fill into their personal profiles using  Options    Profile    Change .

Note that with most users the only informa­tion available is ‘name’ and ‘e-mail address’ since filling in personal details is optional.