Working With Categories

Contents:

Note: Because categories are determined by your administrator, it is possible that your network does not provide categories or that some individual documents have not been assigned to any category.


Most iPlanet Compass Servers have their own, unique set of categories that organize the documents they index. A category is a collection of documents grouped by common subject matter. It is possible for one document to be listed under multiple categories.

One way to find information on your network is to go to the category that covers the subject you are interested in and view the list of documents in that category.

Categories can contain subcategories, forming a hierarchy of categories. By browsing through this hierarchy, you can move to more specific categories, each containing documents concerning a more precisely defined subject.

Your site administrator designs your category structure. For example, a company organized into various divisions might choose to categorize their documents by division. To view documents created by the Sales division, you would go to the Sales category.


Your Current Category

At any given moment, iPlanet Compass Server is oriented toward one particular category. This is called the current category. If you are browsing by category, the subcategories and documents displayed are those of the current category.

The name of your current category appears above the search box. If you are in a subcategory, all the parent categories above your current category are displayed separated by colons. The category farthest to the right on that line is your current category. For example, Compass:Companies:iPlanet indicates that your current category is "iPlanet," which is a subcategory of "Companies," which is a subcategory of "Compass."

Below the search box on a Search page is a list of subcategories that are below your current category, followed by a list of the documents in the current category (if any).


Finding Documents by Category

There are three ways to find documents by category:

Browsing Categories from Search Pages

To browse through categories for documents from a Search page, follow these steps:

  1. Click a category name to go to that category.

    Each time you go to a new category, that category becomes your current category and a list of its documents and subcategories is displayed.

  2. To view a document, click its title or URL.

    Using the Category Browser

    The Category Browser can be expanded to display all of the categories on your network. You can use the Category Browser to find and go to the category you need. An example Category Browser looks like this:
    Category Browser

    To use the Category Browser, follow these steps:

    1. Click Category Browser at the top of whatever page you are on.

      A Category Browser window is displayed. (Depending on how many categories your network has, it may take a few moments to display the category list.) It may be that only the top category, or some subset of categories, are shown.

      • A right arrow to the left of the category name indicates that there are undisplayed subcategories.
      • A down arrow to the left of the category name indicates that all of the subcategories immediately below are already shown.
      • If there is no arrow to the left of the category name, that category has no subcategories.

    2. Use the Category Browser to navigate through categories as follows:
      • Go to a category by clicking the category name. When you click a category name, your Search page is redisplayed showing the category you clicked as the new current category.
      • Expand the category listings by clicking the right arrow  Right Arrow  to the left of a category name. For example, to expand the Business Conditions category shown above, you click the right arrow.
      • Contract the category listings by clicking the down arrow  Down Arrow  to the left of a category name. This collapses the display of all the category's subcategories.

    Finding Similarly Categorized Documents

    Your iPlanet Compass Server administrator can specify that when a document is listed as the result of a search, a link is provided to that document's category. For example, the link might read: Find similarly categorized documents. When you click this type of link, that document's category becomes your current category, and all of the documents in that category are listed for you.


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