About Pathways Search Syntax

Pathways lets you use Pathways Search Syntax to define complex search queries that contain text, tags, and properties. This topic discusses the rules for using Pathways Search Syntax. It includes these sections:

Text Search
Tag Search
Property Search
Operators
Creating Complex Search Queries

This topic discusses the rules for creating search queries. For information on how Pathways determines the items and people that it returns in your search results, see About Text, Tag, and Property Matching.

Text Search

Pathways lets you search for items and people by creating queries using text strings. An item or person is returned in your search results when a successful text match occurs on that item or person.

To create a search query with a text string, simply type the text that you want to look for and execute the search. If desired, you can use operators to add conditions to your search query.

Use these guidelines when creating search queries with text strings:

• Text is case-insensitive; that is, uppercase A is the same as lowercase a.
• Use quotation marks (") around several words to search for an exact phrase.
• Type a list of terms, separated by spaces, to find search results that contain all of these terms.
  This is the same as using the AND operator.
• Type a list of terms, separated by commas or vertical bars (|), to find documents containing one or more of these terms. This is the same as using the OR operator.
• You can use the common Internet search operators plus (+) and minus (-). Put a plus in front of any text that must be included in the results and a minus in front of any text that must be excluded from results. Do not include a space after the plus or minus.
  
  Note: You cannot search for text using the + and - operators combined with Pathways' operators listed below.

Tag Search

Pathways lets you search for items and people by creating queries that contain tag references. An item or person is returned in your search results when a successful tag match occurs on that item or person.

To create a tag reference in your search query, type tag followed by a colon (:), followed by the name of the tag. For example, typing tag:sales into your search query returns items and people that have the "sales" tag applied to them. When creating tag references for tags that contain multiple words, put quotations around all of the words, as in tag:"sales department". Tag references are not case sensitive; you can type "tag" and the name of the tag in upper, lower, or mixed case.

If desired, you can use operators to add conditions to your search query.

Typing a tag reference into your search query is the same as clicking that tag. Type the tag name when you want to create a more complex search query that also includes text and properties.

Property Search

Pathways lets you search for items and people by creating queries that contain property references. An item or person is returned in your search results when a successful property match occurs on that item or person.

To create a property reference, type the name of the property, followed by a colon, followed by the value that you are looking for. For example, if you want to find all documents that have been authored by a person whose first name is Jane, type author:Janeinto your search query.  Typing Department:Marketing returns all people who belong to the Marketing department. When creating property references for properties whose values contain multiple words, put quotations around all of the words, as in author:"Fred Smith".

Note: Your search results may include more items and people than just those that have matched your property search exactly. Using the above examples, the property query author:"Fred Smith" returns documents whose author property equals not only just "Fred Smith" but also returns documents whose author property contains any other value, such as "Fred Smith-Jones", or "Fred Smith/New York". The property search query Department:Marketing returns documents whose Department property equals not only just "Marketing", but also returns documents whose Department property contains any other value, such as "Marketing - Northwest" or "Marketing and Sales".

To create a reference to a property that has multiple words, remove the spaces between the words of the property. For example, if your system includes a property called Phone Number—and you want to search for items and people that are tagged with the phone number 415-555-5555—create the property search query phonenumber:415-555-5555.

If desired, you can use operators to add conditions to your search query.

To view a list of the properties that you can search for, navigate to the Search Assistant. The drop-down list to the left of the Contains condition includes all of these properties.

Operators

The following table describes the operators that you can use in your search queries.

Creating Complex Search Queries

You can create complex search queries that contain any combination of text, tags, properties and operators. You can also use parentheses to nest queries. The following table provides examples of complex queries and describes what they would return in your search results:

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  Related Topics:

• Performing a Search (Simple Mode)
• Performing a Search (Enhanced Mode)
• Using the Search Assistant