Searching Module

Training Exercises

The following exercises provide new users with some practical experience to help gain familiarity with searching for Entities, Documents and related content in ModalConnect.

Reference: Help Centre Topic Searching Documents and Entities and the Searching Video Series

Search Documents and Entities

From the top menu select Search to open the main search page. Or from the Homepage just click the Search button (without entering search terms).

Note the search page layout.
1. A Search box.
2. Source Filters under the Search box which can be used to filter search results. The ‘All’ source filter is the default. The sources are Entities, Documents, Attachments and Notes.
3. A Date selector on the left with All as the default setting. Any of the available date settings can be applied or a custom date range.
4. Results are automatically sorted by the ‘Best Match’ (default setting) or can be changed to sort by ‘Most Recent’ (date).
On the left of the search box, click on the info icon (i) to view search tips for applying conditions to search terms. Conditions can be used to refine or expand search terms.
In the Search Terms field enter either an Entity’s first name and Surname (from a known Entity or a name supplied from your organisations trainer). Note that search terms are not case sensitive.
Exact Match. Separate each term (name) by a space – E.G john smith The space between each term automatically applies the And condition (so no need to enter And) to find an Exact Match for the terms given e.g search across Entities, Documents, Attachments or Notes that contain both john and smith

Start a Search by one of the following,
1. Tap ‘Enter’ from your keyboard
2. Click on the Source Filter of the type required (e.g Entities)
3. Select a different date range setting or a custom date range.
4. Or change the default sort of ‘Best Match’ to ‘Most recent’
  (Note b, c or d can be still be applied \ selected after the initial Search.)
Source Filter results count. Note that each Source Filter shows the number of results found for that type (in brackets). ALL is the total count for all the source filters. The results listing can be scrolled and is paginated with 50 (maximum) results per page.

Results Each result heading includes the icon of the source type and the title or name of;
1. Entity Name \ Title
2. Documents start with the Document’s number followed by Title
3. Attachments – name and source – Entity Profile or Document name
4. Notes – Note Type and Entity Profile or Document title\name
The result's source‘Created Date’ shows under the Title.
To sort results by ‘Most Recent’ (created date) click on the ‘Best match’ filter and switch to Most Recent.
Type and Tag Filters. Note that there are additional filters available to apply for Entities (Tags), Documents (Type, Tags) and Notes (Type, Tag). The filters available show under the date range control when results are filtered by Entities or Documents or Notes.
Filter results by source by selecting any Source Filter– e,g Entities, Documents, Attachments or Notes.
The search terms used are highlighted in the results – heading, body or preview.
Preview Result. To Preview a result, click on the eye icon on the right. Note that results may not include all the available content -eg the full Document content, attachment or note. It will usually only include a snippet of the content around the search terms. To scroll through the next or previous results use the Next and Previous buttons.
Open Result. To navigate to and open\view the source content – e.g the Entity (profile), Document, Attachment or Note – click on the result header from either the result list or from within the Preview. Note that this opens the Entity (Profile), Document, Attachment or Note in a separate tab.
The source icons that show along the bottom of the listed result, provide links to further content that can be accessed by clicking on the icon which opens the Entity list in a Document Note, Document list for an Entity, Attachment list for an Entity or Document, Notes list for an Entity or Document or a link chart in Analytics for an Entity or Document.
Clear the current search - backspace or select terms and delete to clear previous terms or just highlight then overwrite with the new search terms.

Search Conditions
Practice applying different search conditions to search terms.
Wildcard (or partial) search. This is useful to find variations or different spellings of a term. Perform a partial search by adding an asterisk * at the end of the term. The * operates as a wildcard and searches for multiple variations at and from the placement of *. E.g. instead of searching for an Entity of for example John just put in Joh* and the results will include any Entity with an Entity Property for the search type selected that starts with Joh. Note the number of results. Perform another search but this time replace the * with a ? This condition only matches alternative results with a single variation so will return fewer results.
OR condition. When this is applied between terms, results include either or of the terms given. Apply this by typing OR (in capitals) with a space between the terms. eg. john OR smith, o’connor OR oconnor etc This typically returns a larger result set than the exact match condition.
Phrase search. To find a phrase use quotation marks around the whole phrase (not each single term) e.g "organised crime syndicate" This provides a more targeted result as rather than find each and every term within a source it just returns results where those terms appear in that exact order and not dotted throughout.
Proximity search. To extend a phrase search to include terms within a specified number of words from each other use the Tilde character ~ and the number words apart. Add this immediately after the quotation marks. E.G "organised crime syndicate"~20 which will find this phrase where the terms are within 20 words of each other.
Email search. The Phrase search works best for an email search as otherwise when searching for an email the @ symbol is treated as a space so the domain detail is treated as a separate term. If the search term is johnsmith@gmail.com this is treated as 2 terms - johnsmith and gmail.com. If the email has a period in it e.g john.smith@gmail.com the period has to be included. So a search could use a phrase complete with or without the domainname detail - e.g "johnsmith@gmail.com", "johnsmith" or "john.smith".
The OR operator could also be used (with or without the @domainname) to search for different phrases in the one search E.g "johnsmith" OR "john.smith"
Date Search. The Phrase search also works best for searching for a specific date Eg "04 05 1995". It is not necessary to include the date separator / . Results will depend on what format the date has been saved as - E.g 01/12/2021 or 1/12/21, 1 January 2021, mm dd yyyy etc. If the Phrase condition is not used then each will be treated as a separate number likely to return many more unrelated results.
Number search. A continual string of numbers or alpha\numeric will be treated as a single term e.g 123456 or ABC456. Depending on the format of the saved data use Exact Match or a Phrase e.g 112233 or "022 112233" If a number format is prefaced by any characters or text e.g # or ID etc but you're unsure of the format use the wildcard ? (for a single variation) or * for multiples (including single). E.g *123456 results in ID123456 and #123456
Exclude terms. To exclude a term from the search where you know otherwise it will be included in results either use a hyphen immediately in front of the term e.g -term2 or you can enter NOT (in capitals with a space between terms) e.g term1 NOT term2. Excluded term results mean you won't see that content even if it also contains any of the other search terms.
Apostrophe or hyphens. Terms with an apostrophe must include one in the search term. E.G o'connor A wildcard can be used in place of an apostrophe o*connor. Alternatively use the OR condition to find variations of spelling. e.g o'connor OR oconner
Terms that have a hyphen must include the hyphen between the search term. E.G mary-ann. Wildcards, or the Tilde cannot be used against a hyphenated term. If the hyphenated term is separated with a space between then it is treated as 2 separate terms.
Fuzzy Search. This uses the Tilde character ~ and a number (up to 50 - note the higher the number the larger amount of results) to find words with a similar construction. E.g blue~1 returns blues, blues and glue.
Combination searches: Different conditions can be used against different terms in the same search e.g an exact match for term1, a wildcard on term 2, and\or a phrase or an exclude condition on another term. Be aware that if the terms are similarly constructed then one may override or cancel the other e.g jo* -jo cancels -jo as would mary-an* as a wildcard cannot be used with a hyphen as it will be treated as the exclude condition.
Apply different conditions and combinations to search terms to gain familiarity with these. If possible, use a test Document that you can add a phrase or specific terms or dates to practice with. Refer to the Search Tips by selecting the (i) next to the search box or for more in-depth details and examples view the Search Topic in the online Help.

Search All Documents

Objective – Search the All Documents list to find Documents
Learning Outcome: Demonstrate how to search for Documents on the Documents page.

From the Documents table on the Homepage or from the 'My Recent Documents' list in the left menu with the Document button selected, click ‘View All’.
Note that all Documents (that you have permissions for) are available on the all Documents page and that these can be searched for / filtered by File Title, Document Title, Document Number or Document Type.
Click into a column header to sort the results by that column.
To navigate to and open a Document from the list, click on the Document number.

View Entity's Document list

Search for an Entity and open the Entity Profile
Click on the Document label to expand and view the list of the Entity’s related Documents.
Sort results by any column by clicking in the column header.
Click on a Document Title to open it (in the current tab).
Right click / CTRL + click to open a Document in a new tab