Understanding Search/Match

To use the full functionality of your system, you must maintain the integrity of your database. With users from many departments entering data into your system, you want to minimize the entry of duplicate or multiple records. Search/Match enables you to define criteria to check for duplicate or multiple ID records. The searchable ID types (called Search Types) are:

• Person (Empl ID)

• Applicant (HRS_PERSON_ID within PeopleSoft Talent Acquisition Manager)

For each of these ID types, departments or business areas can, based on user security roles, define their own search criteria to perform a search. The criteria can include defining search rules and placing them in the desired order within a search parameter. Each department or business area can also set what data to display in the results to identify a possible matching ID. Departments and business areas can set up multiple search result codes and give security access to all users or restrict it to specific users who have a certain security role assigned.

You can also set rules and parameters to permit only ad hoc searches to enable users with the appropriate security to perform ad hoc searches without the constraints of predefined criteria.

Data returned in a search result can contain sensitive information. You can control whether to entirely or partially mask a field or display the entire field. The masking configuration can be controlled with user security access. With search results and display controls defined, users can perform Search/Match to determine if a record already exists before adding one.

You can also enforce the use of Search/Match by setting Search/Match to trigger when a user enters data and saves a new ID by transferring the user directly to the list of IDs that match the criteria. When you enforce Search/Match at save time, the user does not need to navigate to the Search/Match component and reenter the data to determine whether the ID exists.

You define search rules to identify which fields to search for and how to use them to perform the search. You can use one or multiple search rules. If you use multiple search rules, Search/Match applies the rules in the order that you define. Starting with the first rule, if the system finds at least one match according to that rule, it will stop searching. However, if it finds no match for that rule, it will continue to the next rule, and so on.

Also, if you use multiple search rules, you should order the rules from the most restrictive to the least restrictive. For example, rule 1 could return matching IDs when first name, last name, phone number and national ID exactly match. Rule 4 could return matching IDs when only the first and last name match. In this example, rule 4 could return more potential matching IDs than rule 1. The search rule used by Search/Match could therefore be used as an indicator to users of how significant the returned results are.

A search parameter is a set of one or more search rules that you order sequentially with the lowest (or first) search order level as the most restrictive, and the highest (or last) search order level as the least restrictive. A search parameter must be created even if it contains only one search rule.

When a user runs the search, the system searches according to these rules and search orders until it either encounters a potential duplicate or executes all search sequences and finds no potential duplicate.

Use search result codes to specify the data that you want Search/Match to return in the grids on the Search Results page for the potential matching IDs that it finds. You can define field-level security for fields that you consider sensitive. For example, you might allow some users to see the full birth date, but restrict other users to see only the year (or nothing at all), depending on the Primary Permission List in their user profile.

Some search rules, search parameters, and search results are delivered with your system. You can use these as they are, modify them, or add as many as you need.