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Advanced Search Techniques

Siebel Advanced Search supports a variety of structured search techniques. Structured search techniques allow you to search using less restrictive, more intuitive search methods. For information on administering these search techniques, see Administration of Siebel Search. The Advanced Search Techniques are listed in the following sections.

Synonym Searching

Synonym Searching allows users to search for synonyms to the terms in their search criteria as well as the explicitly mentioned terms themselves. Siebel Advanced Search uses two thesauri to implement synonym searching, which are listed below.

NOTE:  You cannot have both thesauri enabled at the same time. You must enable one thesaurus option or the other. For information, see Advanced Search Execution Settings.

• The Fulcrum International Thesaurus, which is automatically installed during the Fulcrum install.
• A user-created thesaurus, which supports user-defined synonyms. The synonyms can be words, numbers, abbreviations, or phrases. Fulcrum includes a sample thesaurus, support.fth, located in the Fulcrum\fultext directory. To view this thesaurus, open the Fulcrum\Fultext\support.fts file. For instructions on how to create a thesaurus, see the Hummingbird documentation on the Siebel Business Applications Third-Party Bookshelf.

For example, if you enter [computer], surrounded by brackets ([]), the results returned will be synonyms for the word computer including words like PC, machine, and so on. For information on setting up and administering this function, see Advanced Search Execution Settings.

Proximity Searching

This search technique is used to determine the proximity of two search terms. The criteria are determined by counting the number of indexed characters between the end of one search term and the start of another. It is similar to using the operator AND, but allows greater control to make sure that the two terms are near each other, and not at opposite ends of a long document. For example, if you enter excel near project, the returned results include pages with the word excel near the word project. For information on setting up and administering this function, see Advanced Search Execution Settings.

Linguistic Searching

This search technique allows users to search for terms in various combinations. Linguistic Searching controls how the variant word forms are treated, and allows users to set language options.

For example, a user enters problem logging on, and needs to see results that include logging, logged, logs, and so on. The Linguistic Searching function controls how the variant forms are treated, and allows users to set language options. For information on setting up and administering this function, see Advanced Search Execution Settings.

Approximate Searching

This technique is similar to spell checking in that slightly misspelled or incorrectly entered terms may still return the appropriate result. For example, if you search for Sybel you may still get matches for records with the keyword Siebel. These approximations are calculated automatically, and are not determined by matching to a dictionary.