Onit Administrations have the option to enable a global search in an Onit environment. Using keywords, phrases, and numbers, this search feature can be used to find:
- Records
- Comments
- Documents
- Emails
- Fields
- Apps
In this tutorial well break down how searching works, and how administrators can customize its out-of-the-box settings. When searching, end-users will only see Records that they have the security clearance to access. For example, a user in the Accounting User Group will not be able to see any Records restricted to the Law Department User Group in their search results, even if the search terms match.
Note: Most of the tutorial is targeted at Onit Administrators, who need to enable and customize Onits search feature. That said, there is one section below which explains how end-users interact with search results.
Note: In order to perform the search configuration steps explained in this tutorial, your Onit user must be assigned the System Administrator role.
How to Enable and Configure Search
To enable and configure searching in your environment, as an Onit Administrator browse to the search configuration page:
- Navigate to the Administration(/admin) page.
- Click on the Corporation Settings node.
- Click on the Search tab.
Lets break down all of the configuration options available to you on the Search tab:
- The Enabled checkbox enables global search in your environment.
Warning: Once the Enabled checkbox is checked, Onit will begin to index your entire environment. If your environment contains lots of data, this process will take a while before the search is available. Disabling the search will undo all indexing.
- The Advanced Search checkbox enables further options to narrow your search. We will look at the specifics of the advanced search page later, but for now know that without Advanced Search checked users will be unable to refine their searches and searches will be limited to 10 results.
- The Or Search Terms (Instead of And) checkbox modifies the behavior around how your search terms are interpreted. For example, lets say that an end-user searched for two separate terms: law, document. The default behavior would search for law AND document, meaning you would only get results with both law and document in the result. However, if you check the Or Search Terms (Instead of And) box, the terms will be interpreted as law OR document, meaning you will see all results with either law, document, or law and document in the result.
- The Solr7 Cloud checkbox should be checked.
- Select the URL in the Solr 7 URL dropdown.
For this tutorial, we will check the boxes shown below:
Click Update to save your configuration. Once the Indexed Document Field has changed from Not Available to a number then indexing is complete and you are ready to test your search.
Note: Be patient, as indexing can take a while.
Advanced Search Results Page
This section of the tutorial will assume Advanced Search enabled in your environment.
Note: Without Advanced Search enabled the user will not see the advanced page where they can refine their search; they will instead see only a dropdown of search matches limited to 10 results.
To search, an end-user can enter a search term in the top of any App or from the /apps page.
With Advanced Search enabled, the end-user will be taken to a page that contains their results:
Lets break down this page from an end-user perspective:
- This is the search box. Searching terms in this box will return any matching results on the Record. For example, the search term test could return a Record named test, a document with the word test in the title or document itself stored within a Record, or a Record where any Field contains the word test. The All Fields dropdown (shown above) allows you to choose a specific Field to search in. Note that choosing a Field from this dropdown will limit the search to only the contents of the selected Field.
Note: Later in the tutorial well cover how Onit Administrators can add Fields to this dropdown.
- This bar will display what terms you have searched for and any further filters applied to the current search. Click the X in the bubble to remove any filters or click Start Over to clear all filters.
- This is where end-users will see all returned results. End-users have the option to sort your results by relevance or by a specific Field. Each returned result will, at minimum, display the name of the Record (i.e., Transaction), comment, email, or document.
- The sidebar allows end-users to narrow down your search results. By default, end-users can narrow results by App and result type. With further customization (which will be explained later in this tutorial), end-users can narrow these results.
Customizing Your Results with Facets
As noted above, search results shown on the Advanced Search Results Page can be customized with Facets.
A Facet is a specific Field in an App, that is enabled in the Apps Wizard. Facets allow end-users to further refine their search results. Enabling a Field to be a Facet will make the Field show on the Advanced Search Results Page as an option in the All Fields dropdown (#2 in the annotated screenshot above), the sidebar (#4), and the Sort By dropdown (#3).
The following Field types can be made into a Facet:
- Attachment
- Checkbox
- Combo
- Currency
- Date
- DateTime
- Decimal
- Displayfield
- Displaytext
- Htmlfield
- Integer
- Listcombo
- MultiCurrency
- MultiSelect
- Password
- Text
- Textarea
Other Record artifacts such as comments, documents, and emails cannot be designated as Facets. That said, end-users can narrow their search based on these artifacts under the built-in Result Type filter (shown below).
So, when should you make a Field a Facet? Lets say, for example, that users in the Legal Department frequently need to narrow their search by Area of Law. Designating Area of Law as a Facet would make this search much easier for users.
Note: You should not enable every Field to be a Facet. Doing so would not only clutter your search results but also slow the search engines response time. Think carefully about which Fields would be most useful to your organization.
To enable a Facet:
- Navigate to the appropriate Apps Wizard (i.e., the App that contains the Field).
- Go to the Fields tab and click on the Field that you wish to enable as a Facet.
- Click on the Advanced tab.
- Check the Facet checkbox.
- (Optional) Underneath the Facet checkbox is a checkbox labeled Include in results. This checkbox is optional. Checking this box means the Facet Field will be returned with the search results. For example, the Facet Area of Law is configured to be included in the search results, so the Records Area of Law Field will show underneath the match.
- Click Save to save your configuration.