Search in DocuShare

Every time an object is added, DocuShare indexes and stores the object’s properties and, if the object is a document, it’s content. Because of this, DocuShare search features enable you to quickly find objects.

You can perform simple word searches by having DocuShare find the objects that contain the text you specify. You also can combine several search terms to find specific objects, such as all documents authored by one user that contain the word “math” in their titles.

In addition, DocuShare uses a process called stemming to find objects that contain variations of the word you specify. For example, a search for the word “mouse” will find the word “mice”.

Quick Search

The navigation bar provides a search area that lets you quickly search for objects and content.

  1. On the navigation bar, enter one or more words in the Search field. Separate each word with a space.
  2. Click Search.

DocuShare displays the search results. For documents, DocuShare either provides a snippet of the document content with the search term highlighted or displays the document’s abstract if the search term is not found in the content. You can click the Show/Hide Details button to control this display.

Get more specific

If you want DocuShare to search for an exact phrase (or a phrase that includes a word that is also used as a logical operator such as And or Or), enclose the phrase in quotation marks like this: “war and peace”

If you want the search results to exclude objects that contain a word, precede that word with a minus sign (-). For example, if you want to find content on green vegetables but not broccoli, enter:  green vegetables -broccoli

If you want the search results to include objects that contain a specific word, precede that word with a plus sign (+). For example, if you want to find content on green vegetables that definitely includes broccoli, enter:  green vegetables +broccoli

Advanced Search Triangle

When searching, you can specify several options to narrow the search and to control how the search results are displayed.

  1. Click the small triangle next to the Search field and specify any of the following information:
    • Search Text Contained In: Specifies the location of the search words. Any Text searches the object’s content and properties.
    • Last Modified: Limits the search to objects that were last changed within a specific time period.
    • Object Types: Specifies the type of objects to search.
    • Document Types: Searches for all types of documents or a specific type. (The Object Types must be set to All Object Types or Documents Only.)
    • Maximum Results: The maximum number of objects to display in the search results list. DocuShare orders the results by displaying the most relevant objects first.
    • Sort Results: The order in which to display the search results.
  2. Click Search. DocuShare displays the search results.

Advanced Search Page

In addition to clicking the small triangle to the left of the search field, you may click the word Advanced to the right of the Search button. This takes you to a page where you may specify that your search be limited to a date range, Object type, Document type, or certain area within DocuShare.

Saved Searches

After running an advanced search, you can save the search query so you can run the same search again. This is particularly of use when you periodically need to run the same search, or if you need to share the search results with other users.

To save a search query, you must be logged in.

  1. Define your search terms and run a search. The search results display.
  2. From the Add menu, select Saved Query. The Add Saved Query page appears.
  3. In the Title field, enter a title for the saved query.
  4. Enter any optional information.
  5. Click Save Search. The Locations page appears.
  6. Do one of the following:
    • To find specific containers, enter any part of a container title in the Search field. Click the Go button.
    • To display all containers, click Show All.
    • To display your favorite containers, click Show Favorites.
  7. In the Possible Locations field, select the container(s) in which you want the saved query to appear and click the Add button.
  8. In the Selected Locations field, select any containers in which you do not want the saved query to appear and click the Remove button.
  9. Click Update Locations. DocuShare adds your search query to the container(s). When you click the saved query, DocuShare runs the search using the saved search terms and displays the results.

 

Updated June 19, 2017