Working with search

Caution

OpenKM 7.1 comes with two user interfaces, called “classic” and “kcenter”. Although both are functionally very similar, the layout and the way they are used may have significant differences. This page is based on the “classic” user interface. If you are using the “kcenter” user interface and have any doubts about accessing any of these features, please create a ticket in the support website.

The search tab enables querying the repository. The search view is distributed in four sections:

• Search panel.
• Search panel.
• Control panel.
• Results.

Search panels

The Search panel on the left-hand side is a stack panel.

Tip

Once a search has been done, it can be saved for future sessions by entering a name that identifies it and clicking on the “Save search” button.

This panel has two stacks:

• Stored searches.
• User news.

Stored searches shows a list of the user’s searches that have been saved for later use. By double-clicking a stored search, you can execute the search again. Right-clicking a stored search will show a contextual menu with these options:

Feature	Description
Run	Run stored search.
Delete	Delete an stored search.
Share query	Share an stored search. This option is only available if you have enabled the Messaging feature.

Note

The stored searches and user news are only visible to the user who created them.

User news shows a list of user searches that are used as a push service (usually executed every 30 minutes). These searches are periodically executed and the results are shown in the Dashboards > News panel.

Tip

User news helps users stay periodically updated about repository news based on their own queries.

Only new results that have appeared since the last time the query was executed will be shown.

Search panel

This panel at the top center gives access to different searches for querying the content of the application:

• Default search is a full-text search. Default search is also available from the top right corner of the screen.
• Advanced search enables you to search on keywords, metadata and additional criteria such as location in the application.

You can switch between default and advanced search by checking or unchecking the “View advanced mode” checkbox.

Tip

Default search engine configuration uses stemming and stopwords.

• Stemming is the term used in linguistic morphology and information retrieval to describe the process for reducing inflected (or sometimes derived) words to their word stem, base, or root form, generally a written word form. The stem need not be identical to the morphological root of the word; it is usually sufficient that related words map to the same stem, even if this stem is not in itself a valid root. For instance, if you type “fishing” in a full-text search field, search results will return documents with “fishing”, “fish”, “fisher”. In that case, the stem is “fish”. 
• Stopwords usually refer to the most common words in a language; there is no single universal list of stop words used by all natural language processing tools, and indeed not all tools even use such a list. Stopwords are removed from searches. For example, “the”, “is”, “at”, “which” and “on” are stopwords.

Operators and wildcards

By default, internally the search engine uses the “AND” operator.

You can use wildcards:

• Add an asterisk “*” as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms, for example,  “*2015”, “2015*”, “20*15” or “*2015*”.
• Add a question mark “?” as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard character; for example, the query “?015” will return occurrences where the first character doesn’t matter. 
• The query “2015” is a synonym of “2015*”. In this search view, the application always adds “*” for you at the end.

Default search

Default search is a full-text search which only searches document content.

Caution

Default search shows result nodes only in the “/okm:root” context; results from other contexts are automatically filtered.

Note

You always have quick access to the Quick search box feature at the top right corner.

Advanced search

Advanced search enables you to search on keywords, metadata and additional criteria such as location in the application.

The advanced search organizes the query fields on three tabs:

• Basic (most common fields).
• Advanced.
• Metadata.

The available criteria from the basic view:

Field	Description	Wildcard allowed
Context	Sets the context in which the query is executed. Available contexts: - Taxonomy - Templates - My documents - E-mail - Trash	No
Content	The content of the node. Document content or mail body.	Yes
Name	The name of the node.	Yes
Title	The title of the node.	Yes
Keyword	The associated keywords of the node.	Yes
Language	The language of the document. Only typed document nodes have a language value.	Yes
User	The user who created the node.	No
Date range	The range of dates when the node has been modified (or created). Each selected date is set to 00 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds and 00 milliseconds. That means if you want to query for a node modified on 2015-08-15, you must set a range from “2015-08-15” to “2015-08-16” (internally you’re querying from “2015-08-15 00:00:00” to “2015-08-16 00:00:00”). It is not mandatory to set both dates for the range (“from” or “to”); you can set only one date.	No

The available criteria from the advanced view:

Field	Description	Wildcard allowed
Folder	Restricts results to folders. When the Recursive checkbox is checked, it also considers the subfolders.	No
Category	Restricts results to categories. The nodes must be associated with a specific category.	No
Type	Restricts node types: - Document - Folder - Mail - Record When the Mail checkbox is checked, extra fields are shown (from, to, subject).	No
MIME type	Set the document MIME type.	No
Notes	The content of the notes.	Yes
From	The from mail field. This field is only available if you have checked the Mail checkbox.	Yes
To	The to mail field. This field is only available if you have checked the Mail checkbox.	Yes
Subject	The subject mail field. This field is only available if you have checked the Mail checkbox.	Yes

In the metadata view, you can filter by any metadata field from existing metadata groups:

• Click on  the Add metadata group button.
• Choose one metadata group from the list.
• Choose a property from the list.
• Click  the Add button.

Note

In almost all input and text area fields, you can use wildcards.

Control panel

The control panel at the top-right corner has several features:

Feature	Description
Switch to Advanced mode checkbox	When checked, the advanced mode search view is shown.
Results compact view checkbox	When checked, the results are shown in a compact table with minimal details.
View metadata groups checkbox	When checked, metadata groups associated with each node are shown in the results view. This option is only available when “Results compact view” is not checked.
Save as user news checkbox	When checked, if the user saves a search, it will be set to a user news search.
Save search button	Once a search has been done, it can be saved for future sessions by entering a name that identifies it and clicking on the “Save search” button. Depending on whether the “Save as user news” checkbox is checked or not, the search will be saved as a “user news” or a “stored search”.
Page results lists	Set the limit of nodes to be shown in the results list.
Clean button	Resets the search.
Search	Executes the search.
Results	Indicates the number of results (total).
Go to previous	Goes to the previous list.
Go to next	Goes to the next list.
Export to CSV	Downloads a CSV file with results.
Export to ZIP	Downloads a ZIP file with results.

Results

The Results panel at the bottom center shows a table of nodes (documents, folders, mails, and records) that are the result of querying the repository. Results panel is shown in:

• Compact view (a table with a single row for each node).
• Full view (a detailed description for each node).

Tip

Stars indicate the relevance of the document found. This value is established by the search engine according to the search field and the results found. The list of documents found is ordered from most to least relevant.

When you right-click the compact view, a contextual menu with the following options will be shown:

Feature	Description
Download	Downloads the node. Only shown for document or mail nodes.
Go to document	Goes to the document location. Only shown in document nodes.
Find similar documents	Finds similar documents in the repository. The feature is based on a search engine heuristic that, based on the contents of the selected document, returns similar documents. Only shown in document nodes. The search is executed only in the context of the selected stack. This feature is only enabled when a document is selected in the Browser view.
Go to folder	Goes to the folder location. Only shown in folder nodes.
Go to e-mail	Goes to the mail location. Only shown in mail nodes.
Go to record	Goes to the record location. Only shown in record nodes.
Preview	Previews the node. Only shown in document or mail nodes.

From the full view, you can see detailed information of each node and some features are also available:

Feature	Description
Find similar documents	Finds similar documents in the repository. The feature is based on a search engine heuristic that, based on the contents of the selected document, returns similar documents. Only shown in document nodes. The search is executed only in the context of the selected stack. This feature is only enabled when a document is selected in the Browser view.
Download	Download the node. Only shown in document or mail nodes.
Notes	Shows notes. From this view you can manage the notes of the node.
Preview	Preview the node. Only shown in document or mail nodes.
Options	Shows extra mail fields (cc, bcc, reply, extra fields). Only shown in document or mail nodes.