Performing InfoSearch Searches


Your content is now ready to be used with InfoSearch. To perform a search, from the WebFOCUS Home Page, click Ask WebFOCUS to display the Ask WebFOCUS user interface, as shown in the following image.

When you first access InfoSearch, no search results or questions are listed under the Last Viewed Questions area, which identifies the most recent searches that users have asked. As you begin to use InfoSearch more frequently, the screen will display previous searches, as shown in the following image.

You can quickly click on a tile to run a search on that item. To clear this list of search terms, just click the Click button.

All of your InfoSearch queries are performed from the search bar in the Ask WebFOCUS user interface. Here, you can either type your search term, or click the microphone icon to speak it. For example, you can search for all reports that have data for customers with the first name Aaron. As you enter your search term, a list of all possible search terms displays.

If you know the exact field that you are looking for, you can click on it from the list and then either press the Enter key or click the magnifying glass icon to initiate your search. But what if you are not sure what the exact name of the customer is that you are looking for? In this situation, you can just enter the term that you do know and initiate a search. InfoSearch will display all of the content that is related to your search term as tiles. Clicking a tile displays all available links for the content item, as shown in the following image.

Note: While Magnify gives you ability to set a limit to the maximum number of search results, this parameter will not affect your InfoSearch results. All available reports that match your search query will be returned.

These links accept your data value search term as an input parameter value. When you click one of the links inside the tile, the content item executes using the data value search term as the parameter value in the procedure. In this example, clicking the tile for Aaron Markley in the Purchase Details report runs a report that contains only his information.

Note: Click an expanded tile to return the tile to its original display size.

You can also combine your search terms and retrieve information about two or more data values simultaneously by using the word and. The word and must be placed between each data value and does not need capitalization.

Initiating a search using and can retrieve the following types of search results:

  • A repository item that contains all your search terms.
  • A repository item that contains just one of your search terms.
  • A repository item that contains your search terms in any combination.

Note: InfoSearch is not compatible with traditional Boolean search operators.

For example, you can run a search to compare the total year-to-date sales revenue for the North American state Florida and the European city London. In the search bar, enter London and Florida to perform your query. A list of tiles opens that match these search terms, as shown in the following image. Clicking on the Business Region Revenue YTD tile shows you the various combinations of the search terms you entered.

The results show a combination of the parameters that were entered. Since we wanted results for both Florida and London, click the tile that shows both parameters to open a filtered version of the Business Region Revenue TYD chart that shows information about both London and Florida on the same chart, as shown in the following image.

a version of the Business Region Revenue TYD report that shows information about both London and Florida on the same report

Note: You cannot perform voice search for more than one parameter at a time.

InfoSearch also gives you the ability to search for content using a date value. To do so, you must create a Define field that will index the date value as a string by manually adding it to the procedure. For example, let's say we have a simple report that shows the quantity of items sold on a particular date. In this example, you would add the following line to the dimensional data procedure:

DEFINE FILE retail_samples/wf_retail_lite
MY_DATE_STRING/A30=EDIT2(WF_RETAIL_LITE.WF_RETAIL_TIME_SALES.TIME_DATE, 'MtrDYY');

This will create a Define field that will take the date field in your report, translate it to Month Day Year format, and save it as a string. Once the Define is created, you must index it, as shown in the following image.

Once the Define field is indexed, you must change the parameter name in your report to match the name of the field that is being indexed, as shown in the following image.

You can now search for date fields in InfoSearch, by either typing or speaking the date in the following format: February 15 2013.

Once you perform a search, you may notice different colored boxes above your content tile results. These boxes are filters that allow you to drill down even further into your content. In the following image, which shows all content related to Canada, there are a number of boxes with different names directly above the content tile results.

The green boxes indicate the domains that contain the displayed search results. In this example, there are three domains that contain content with information on Canada: Public, Retail Samples, and Store Sales. The blue boxes show you search results that are associated with that particular attribute. Selecting any combination of these boxes applies multiple filters to your search results. In the following image, we have filtered out content for Canada that is in the Retail Samples domain to show both Customer and Product information.

Tip: You can easily find the content associated with a particular search term by right-clicking the content item on the Ask WebFOCUS user interface and clicking Open item location, as shown in the following image.

The content item associated with that search term will be highlighted on the Content page, as shown in the following image.