How Do I Use the Standard Search Screen Versus the Simple Query Search?

To initiate a search using the web interface, enter the web address provided by the IT department in the address bar such as http://YourServer/AlchemyWeb.  This will take you to the Alchemy web interface.

Once you are in the web interface, click the Search Tab to display the Search panel.      

1. In the Search In section of the Document Contents tab, select the target database or search group from the list. A search group is a selection of databases you can select in future searches.

2. The binoculars icon toggles the display between the standard "SEARCH" dialog and the simple "QUERY" dialog. The above screen is showing the standard "Search" dialog.  

3. Enter your search criteria into the field provided in the Type your query here if you want to search for content in any of the selected options.  

4. Check each of the appropriate boxes indicating where to conduct the search: the content of the documents; the profile fields associated with the documents;  and / or annotations.

5. Click Search to display a list of matching documents in the results mode. If desired, refine your search by searching the search results or simply entering in additional criteria.

When entering criteria for a content search a user can be specific or they can use one of the approaches below.

BOOLEAN SEARCHES:

Alchemy Search supports the Boolean logic operators AND, OR, and NOT. Boolean searches allow you to search for multiple terms in the same field. When more than one word is typed in the box and no Boolean operators are used, the AND operator is assumed. You must use the NOT operator in conjunction with either the AND operator or the OR operator. Therefore, you cannot use NOT CONFIDENTIAL to find all documents that do not contain the word “confidential”.

EXAMPLES:

Type ADDITION OR ABILITY to locate all documents that contain either the word “addition” or the word “ability,” or both words.

Type ADDITION OR (ABILITY AND CONFIDENTIAL)to locate documents that contain the word “addition” or documents that contain both “ability” and “confidential.”

Type (ADDITION OR ABILITY) AND CONFIDENTIAL to locate all documents that contain both “addition” and “confidential” or documents that contain both “ability” and “confidential.”

Type (ADDITION OR ABILITY) AND NOT CONFIDENTIAL to locate all documents that do not contain the word “confidential,” but do contain either the word “Addition” or the word “Ability.”

WILD CARD SEARCHES (May be Disabled in Some Environments):

Alchemy Search supports the use of DOS wild card characters. The asterisk (*) can be used to replace an indeterminate number of characters in a word. The question mark (?) can be used to replace one character in a word.  When you perform a fuzzy search, the search words cannot begin with a wild card character.

EXAMPLES:

Type RED* in the File Name box to find all documents whose file name begins with “red.” Files such as “redpage.one,” “red.txt,” and “redy1” are found, but not “nored.doc”.  

Type CA? in the File Name box to find all documents with a three letter file name that begins with “ca” regardless of the file extension. The search will find the files “cat.txt” and “cap.bmp”, but not “cape.tif” because it has four letters.

ADJACENCY SEARCHES:

Use adjacency searching to retrieve only those documents where the specified search words appear next to each other.  To find words that appear next to one another, type the word combination enclosed in quotes. For example, type “October sales” to find all documents that contain the word “October” next to the word “sales.”

PROXIMITY SEARCHES:

Use proximity searching to search for words that appear within a certain range using the following syntax:  <word1> within n <word2> where <word1> represents a word n represents a numeric value <word2> represents a word.  For example, to find each occurrence where “random” appears within 4 words of “aquarium,” type the following statement in the Type your query here box on the Document Contents tab of the Search dialog box: random within 4 aquarium

In this example, you would find a document that contains “random fish aquarium” (“aquarium appears within 2 words of “random”) or “random fish in the aquarium” (“aquarium” appears within 4 words of “random”), but not the document that contains “random fish swim in the aquarium” (“aquarium” appears within 5 words of “random”).

BLANK AND EMPTY SEARCHES:

Date Field : enter Not >=1-1-1601 to find a blank date field.

Text Field: enter Not * to find a blank text filed.

For more advanced searches, the user can select the the "Document Profile" tab and enter search criteria specific to one ore more or the profile fields.   If a user enters search criteria in multiple fields, the default operator between fields is "and" meaning the results must match every word in the criteria in each field. The user can change this setting to "OR" in the Settings tab if required.

The following operators are available for searching in numeric and date  fields:

> (greater than)

< (less than)

>= (greater than or equal to)

<= (less than or equal to)

EXAMPLES:

When a Check Number field has been added to a profile, to find all documents with check numbers between 1025 and 1050, type the following statement in the Check Number box: >= 1025 AND <= 1050

When searching a Date field, any non-numeric separator can be used in the date. To Alchemy, 10-25-97 is the same as 10/25/97. All four digits for the year do not have to be entered. The “implied century rule” is implemented, that is that if the year is less than or equal to 29 that the assumed century is 2000, if the year is greater than 29 and less than 100, then the implied century is 1900. So, if a user types 25 for the year, the system will store the year as 2025; if a user types 59 for the year, then the system will store it as 1959.  When a Date field has been added to a profile, to find all documents with dates between 5-1-96 and 5-1-97, type the following statement in the Date box: >= 5-1-96 AND <= 5-1-97

Another acceptable form of syntax for range searching is using the keyword Between as shown below:

Between 5-1-2012 AND 5-1-2013

For more advanced searches the user can also select the the "Folder Profile" tab and enter search criteria specific to the "Folder Title" field or any other custom fields of the database(s).  

Common and repetitive searches can be saved and retrieved by the user for future use.  Once all the criteria has been entered, the user can select the "Settings" tab and enter a name for the criteria to be saved.  As searches are saved, they will appear in the drop down list as shown above and be easily selected by the user. Saved searches are unique to each end user.  Users can select a saved search and then immediately click the Search button to conduct repetitive searches.

To switch to the simple "QUERY" dialog select the binocular icon.

The simple "QUERY" is a single search dialog on which criteria fields from the Document Contents, Document Profile and the Folder Profile tabs can be placed to be searched.  The system administrator determines which fields are shown on this screen for each database.  

To return to the standard search, simply click the binoculars again.