Search: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:10, 5 June 2024

The search is located centrally within the Desktop App and provides quick access to contacts, matters, documents and transactions. It is also the entry point for contact creation.

The search plays an important role in locating records for the purpose of linkage. For example; when a contact must be added to a document, matter or other resource, the user clicks the empty "Add contact" hyperlink and is immediately taken to the search window. Upon locating (or creating) the desired contact, the search populates the empty hyperlink with a reference to the chosen contact.

The search window displays different options depending on which mode is selected.

The following modes are available:

Contacts
Matters
Documents
Transactions

Contacts

The contact search is at the center of ContactsLaw, appearing whenever details about a person or business are required in any capacity. As with other types of searches, the Desktop App opens the contact search when a contact is required for a particular hyperlink, or it can be accessed at any point in time by clicking the prominent Search button at the top of the main window.

The contact search.

Search term - One or more keywords that in some way describe the contact(s) you are searching for. These will be matched against a selection of fields (name, address, etc). You can determine whether to match all words in the search term, or any word. 
Advanced search - This is opened by clicking the cog icon in the top right of the search window. It allows you to further refine your search based on the follow advanced criteria: 
- Contact type - you can restrict your search to either Individuals or Entities.
- Fields - Determines which fields the keywords in the search term will be matched against. This enables you to, for example, search for all contacts on a particular street.
Search results - After the search is complete, contains the contact(s) that matched the search criteria. Simple summary details are displayed, with entities being marked in bold. The results are listed in order of rank/relevance, best match first. You can navigate between multiple pages of results. 
Contact creation - The contact search is the entry point into contact creation. Once the search has completed, the option to create or import a contact becomes available.

Search term

By default, the search will return partial and exact matches if they contain all of the words in the search term. You can change the match type to "any words" if the contact(s) you are looking for might not contain all of the words in the search term.

Similar-sounding results

Search results may contain similar-sounding results, shown in grey text. For example, if you search for "Smith" you may also get results containing "Schmidt".

Matters

ContactsLaw includes a sophisticated Matter search, which serves as the entry point for locating all active and archived matters in the system. Upon switching the Contact search to 'Matter' mode, a series of search criteria will appear. You can list matters where your search term matches information about the matter or any of its associated contacts. As with the contact search, you can restrict/expand your search by matching 'all words' or 'any words'.

The matter search.

Advanced Search criteria

You can toggle this by clicking the cog icon in the top right hand corner of the window, which the displays the following settings:

Matter type - restrict your search to Prospect, Client and Administration matters.
Status - restrict your search to Active and Archived matters
Match these fields - restrict your word search to match only against the fields you select.

Documents

The document search allows you to quickly and easily locate any document within ContactsLaw. As with the contact search, you enter a search term that is matched against the set of fields you specify; for example, the description of the document.

Search term and match type

Type your search term into the box. If you type two or more words, you can decide whether you want documents that match all words or documents that match any word in the box.

Search criteria

Fields - Select the fields you want to search in. The document description is the most common (and fastest) field to search in. You can also type all or part of a contact's name and match documents who are associated with a particular contact.

Date - You can restrict the search to a specific date range.

Search results

The results of the search appear in the list below the search criteria. Results are ranked and ordered according to relevance, with the best match at the top of the list.

Transactions

ContactsLaw provides a transaction search, which allows you to quickly locate general/trust transactions. Your search term can match a range of transaction properties.

The transaction search.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-The '''ContactsLaw Search''' is located centrally within the application and provides quick and easy access to all information stored within the system, including contacts, matters, documents and transactions. It is also the entry point for contact creation.
+The '''search''' is located centrally within the [[Desktop App]] and provides quick access to [[Contact|contacts]], [[Matter|matters]], [[Document|documents]] and [[Transaction|transactions]]. It is also the entry point for contact creation.
-The search also plays an important role in locating records for the purpose of linkage. For example; when a contact must be added to a document, matter or other record, the user clicks the empty 'Add contact' hyperlink and is immediately taken to the search window. Upon locating (or creating) the desired contact, the search populates the empty hyperlink with a reference to the chosen contact.
+The search plays an important role in locating records for the purpose of linkage. For example; when a contact must be added to a document, matter or other resource, the user clicks the empty "''Add contact''" hyperlink and is immediately taken to the search window. Upon locating (or creating) the desired contact, the search populates the empty hyperlink with a reference to the chosen contact.
 The search window displays different options depending on which mode is selected.
+===The following modes are available:===
-=== The following modes are available: ===
 * Contacts
-* Matters
+*Matters
-* Documents
+*Documents
-* Transactions
+*Transactions
-== <big>'''Contact Search'''</big> ==
-The contact search is at the center of ContactsLaw, appearing whenever details about a person or business are required in any capacity. As with other types of searches, it can be opened by the system when a contact is required for a particular field, or it can be accessed at any point in time by clicking the prominent Search button at the top of the screen.[[File:Contact Search.png|none|thumb|500x500px]]
-* '''Search term''' - One or more keywords that in some way describe the contact(s) you are searching for. These will be matched against a selection of fields (name, address, etc). You can determine whether to match all words in the search term, or any word.
-* '''Advanced search''' - This is opened by clicking the gear/wheel toggle in the top right of the search window. It allows you to further refine your search based on the follow advanced criteria:
-** '''Contact type''' - you can restrict your search to either Individuals or Entities.
-** '''Fields''' - Determines which fields the keywords in the search term will be matched against. This enables you to, for example, search for all contacts on a particular street.
-* '''Search results''' - After the search is complete, contains the contact(s) that matched the search criteria. Simple summary details are displayed, with entities being marked in bold. The results are listed in order of rank/relevance, best match first. Only the first 100 results are displayed.
-* '''Contact creation''' - Following the ContactsLaw philosophy of 'search-before-you-(re)create', the contact search is the entry point into contact creation. Once the search has completed, the option to create or import a contact becomes available.
-=== Search term ===
+==Contacts==
-By default, the search will return partial and exact matches if they contain all of the words in the search term. You can change the match type to "any words" if the contact(s) you are looking for might not contain all of the words in the search term. Some words may be excluded from the search if they appear too frequently or are too short. You can enclose the term in double quotes to return only exact matches.
+The contact search is at the center of ContactsLaw, appearing whenever details about a person or business are required in any capacity. As with other types of searches, the [[Desktop App]] opens the contact search when a contact is required for a particular hyperlink, or it can be accessed at any point in time by clicking the prominent ''Search'' button at the top of the main window.
+[[File:Contact Search.png|none|thumb|500x500px|The contact search.]]
+*'''Search term''' - One or more keywords that in some way describe the contact(s) you are searching for. These will be matched against a selection of fields (name, address, etc). You can determine whether to match all words in the search term, or any word.
+*'''Advanced search''' - This is opened by clicking the cog icon in the top right of the search window. It allows you to further refine your search based on the follow advanced criteria:
+**'''Contact type''' - you can restrict your search to either Individuals or Entities.
+** '''Fields''' - Determines which fields the keywords in the search term will be matched against. This enables you to, for example, search for all contacts on a particular street.
+*'''Search results''' - After the search is complete, contains the contact(s) that matched the search criteria. Simple summary details are displayed, with entities being marked in bold. The results are listed in order of rank/relevance, best match first. You can navigate between multiple pages of results.
+*'''Contact creation''' - The contact search is the entry point into contact creation. Once the search has completed, the option to create or import a contact becomes available.
-=== Similar-sounding results ===
+===Search term===
-Search results may contain similar-sounding results, shown in grey text. For example, if you search for "Smith" you may also get results containing "Schmidt". These results always appear at the bottom of the list.
+By default, the search will return partial and exact matches if they contain all of the words in the search term. You can change the match type to "any words" if the contact(s) you are looking for might not contain all of the words in the search term.
-=== Ranking ===
+===Similar-sounding results===
-Results are listed in ranked in order of relevance to the search term. Factors which affect the ranking of results include:
+Search results may contain similar-sounding results, shown in grey text. For example, if you search for "Smith" you may also get results containing "Schmidt".
-* Whether the term partially or exactly matches the field (exact matches are ranked higher)
-* The number of times the term appears in the field (repeated terms are ranked higher)
-* For similar-sounding results, whether the pronounciation is the same or similar (same pronounciation is ranked higher)
-* Whether the term matches the contact's middle name only (these results are ranked lower)
-* Whether the result is an associated contact (associated contacts are ranked lower)
-* Whether the search term was a contact/client number (the matching contact is ranked much higher)
-* The number of fields containing the search term (more fields matched results in a higher rank)
-== '''<big>Matter Search</big>''' ==
+==Matters==
-[[ContactsLaw]] includes a sophisticated Mater search, which serves as the entry point for locating all active and archived matters in the system. Upon switching the Contact search to 'Matter' mode, a series of search criteria will appear. You can return matters where your search term matches information about the matter or any of its associated contacts.
+ContactsLaw includes a sophisticated Matter search, which serves as the entry point for locating all active and archived matters in the system. Upon switching the Contact search to 'Matter' mode, a series of search criteria will appear. You can list matters where your search term matches information about the matter or any of its associated contacts. As with the contact search, you can restrict/expand your search by matching 'all words' or 'any words'.
-As with the contact search, you can restrict/expand your search by matching 'all words' or 'any words'.
+[[File:Search Matters.png|none|thumb|500x500px|The matter search.]]
-[[File:Search Matters.png|none|thumb|500x500px]]
-=== <big>Advanced Search criteria</big> ===
+===Advanced Search criteria===
-You can toggle this by clicking the gear/wheel in the top right hand corner of the window, which the displays the following settings:
+You can toggle this by clicking the cog icon in the top right hand corner of the window, which the displays the following settings:
-* '''Matter type''' - restrict your search to Prospect, Client and Administration matters.
+*'''Matter type''' - restrict your search to Prospect, Client and Administration matters.
-* '''Status''' - restrict your search to Active and Archived matters
+*'''Status''' - restrict your search to Active and Archived matters
 * '''Match these fields''' - restrict your word search to match only against the fields you select.
-== '''<big>Document Search</big>''' ==
+==Documents==
 The document search allows you to quickly and easily locate any document within ContactsLaw. As with the contact search, you enter a search term that is matched against the set of fields you specify; for example, the description of the document.
 [[File:Document Search.png|none|thumb|500x500px]]
-=== <big>'''Search term and match type'''</big> ===
+===Search term and match type===
 Type your search term into the box. If you type two or more words, you can decide whether you want documents that match '''all words''' or documents that match '''any word''' in the box.
+===Search criteria ===
+*'''Fields''' - Select the fields you want to search in. The document description is the most common (and fastest) field to search in. You can also type all or part of a contact's name and match documents who are associated with a particular contact.
-Alternatively, you can also search by contact. In this mode of operation, the search term is replaced by a field which allows you to add one or more contacts. The match type determines whether the documents matched must contain all or any of the contacts in the list.
+*'''Date''' - You can restrict the search to a specific date range.
-=== <big>Search criteria</big> ===
-* '''Fields'''
-Select the fields you want to search in. The document description is the most common (and fastest) field to search in. You can search within the body of the document through integration with the Windows SharePoint Services search (results from SharePoint are combined with those matched from the ContactsLaw database). You can also type all or part of a contact's name and match documents who are associated with a particular contact, optionally selecting a role to narrow down your search.
-* '''Document type'''
-You can restrict the search to a specific type of document. This also determines which roles/dates you can filter by.
-* '''Date'''
-You can restrict the search to a specific date range, optionally using a specific document date.
-* '''Direction'''
-You can restrict the search to show incoming/outgoing documents.
-=== <big>Advanced search</big> ===
-'''Member'''
-You can restrict the search to return documents that a particular member has been involved with, optionally selecting a particular action that occurred on the document (e.g. when the document was sent, finalised, etc).
-* '''Workgroup'''
-For documents on files, you can restrict the search to find only documents pertaining to a particular workgroup.
-* '''File format'''
-You can narrow your search to include only documents of a certain Windows file format.
-* '''Attributes'''
-You can further restrict the search by including only documents that match a given set of attributes.
-=== <big>Search results</big> ===
-The results of the search appear in the list below the search criteria. ContactsLaw will display up to 100 results per search. Results are ranked and ordered according to relevance, with the best match at the top of the list. You can override this order and sort by a particular column if desired; your preferences will be retained across searches, but will reset to the default order if the search is reset.
-Occasionally, you may see documents in the search results which have obfuscated names and cannot be selected; these results are for documents which you have not been granted permission to view.
-== '''<big>Transaction Search</big>''' ==
-ContactsLaw provides a '''transaction search''', which allows you to quickly locate general/trust transactions. Your search term can match a range of transaction properties. If searching for a specific amount, you can match against the transaction total, a line total (Net+GST) or an aggregated total. A series of advanced criteria allow you to further restrict your search to a specific amount/date range, member, account type or subsidiary company.
-Transaction searches always perform boolean "and" matching (i.e. "all words"), therefore a transaction will only appear in the results if it matches all of the words in your search term.
-[[File:Transaction Search.png|none|thumb|500x500px]]
-=== <small>Matching amounts</small> ===
-The transaction search will only match exact amounts, so you must type the full figure you are searching for (dollars and cents). If the amount you are searching for is in whole dollars, you do not need to add the trailing ".00", but it is a good idea to do this to avoid matching reference/transaction/file numbers. The currency symbol ($) is optional (results will be returned whether it is present or not).
-The search will also match the original amounts on cancelled cheques/receipts, as well as pending amounts on trust journals.
-=== <small>Matching contacts</small> ===
+===Search results===
-If you expand the search to match contacts, ContactsLaw will perform a basic search against the "file as" field and then return any transactions where matching contacts appear as the payer/payee. Client names are not matched unless they appear in the aforementioned capacity.
+The results of the search appear in the list below the search criteria. Results are ranked and ordered according to relevance, with the best match at the top of the list.
+==Transactions ==
+ContactsLaw provides a transaction search, which allows you to quickly locate general/trust transactions. Your search term can match a range of transaction properties.[[File:Transaction Search.png|none|thumb|500x500px|The transaction search.]]
+[[Category:Desktop]]