Creating Filters

Negate or Null Filtering

For some filter options, it is possible to specify whether to search for everything but the parameter(s) selected, or for null values in the parameter(s), or both. These options are Negate and Null respectively.

If available, these options are accessed by clicking the Advanced Options button under the parameter setting.

For example, in the Attributes section, the State Changed On parameter offers both these options. In the following example, a date range of 26-Jan-2013 to 27-Jun-2013 has been specified:

State Changed On
Range
From: 26-Jan-2013 11:26
To: 27-Jun-2013 11:26

To search for cases or alerts with a State Changed On value outside this specified date range, check the Negate field.

To search for cases or alerts with a null State Changed On value, check the Null field. Note that the Null option overrides any previously selected criteria.

General

The General section allows you to perform text searches, to filter by case source, and to specify only cases or alerts. It has three sub-sections:

Quick Search, which allows you to search for a piece of text,
Type, which allows you to specify whether you are looking for either cases or alerts or both, and
Source, which allows you to search for cases and/or alerts from a particular case source.

Quick Search

Quick Search allows you to search for a piece of text associated with the cases and/or alerts. You can search for text in the description, comment or the key of cases and alerts. Enter the text you want to search for in the Search Query box, and check the boxes next to the fields you want to search in.

To clear the Quick Search options, click on the return arrow next to the Quick Search subheading.

This field permits the use of Lucene or Oracle Text query syntax. Refer to Apache Lucene - Query Parser Syntax documentation for further information about Lucene query syntax. For more guidance on the Oracle Text search syntax, refer to The CONTEXT Grammar documentation. The performance of search queries may vary between Lucene and Oracle Text. Refer to Key differences in Search Functionality between Lucene and Oracle Text in EDQ Case Management for more information.

Type

Type allows you to restrict your search to either cases or alerts only. Click on the type that you want to search for. If neither type is selected, both cases and alerts will be returned by the filter.

To clear the Type options, click on the return arrow next to the Type subheading.

Source

Source allows you to restrict your search to cases or alerts published to a specific case source, or sources.

Click on the case sources whose results you want to search for. You can specify more than one case source by holding down the Ctrl button as you select the case source names. Selecting a single source allows you to report on workflow states and search on Source Attributes.

To clear the Source options, click on the return arrow next to the Source subheading.

Attributes

The Attributes section allows you to filter on the standard attributes of cases and alerts. The Attributes section is initially empty for a new filter. Add entries to the attributes section by clicking the Add Attributes button in the section heading. A drop-down list of the available attributes will be displayed.

Note:

It is not possible to filter on the same attribute more than once. If the Attributes section already contains an 'Assigned To' entry, the 'Assigned To' option is disabled in the drop down list.

When you select an attribute for the list, a subsection will be created for it in the Attributes section. The controls and values available will depend upon the attribute you have selected.

Supply the values you want to use for the attribute filter.

To clear the values that have been selected for an attribute, click on the return arrow in the sub-section heading.

To stop filtering on a particular attribute, click on the minus sign in the sub-section heading.

Filtering on Data Attributes

Filters for Date attributes, such as 'Created On' or 'State Changed On', are configured by specifying one of a number of functions, such as:

Within - Time stamps must be more recent than the specified interval to qualify. For example, if it is currently 11:45 am and the filter is set to 'Within 1 hour', only timestamps later than 10:45 am will pass the filter.
Older than - Time stamps must be older than the specified interval to qualify. For example, if it is currently 11:45 am and the filter is set to 'Older than 1 hour', only timestamps earlier than 10:45 am will pass the filter.
Date range - Timestamps must fall within the specified range to pass the filter.
Today - only timestamps from midnight onwards for the current date will pass the filter.

Note:

All times are displayed as local times. All filters are applied to timestamps after they have been converted to local times. The time (and day) stored on the server may be different. For example, 23:00 GMT on a Monday is the same as 03:00 on Tuesday in a GMT+4 timezone. If a case is updated at that time on a server in a GMT timezone, the timestamp will be stored as 23:00 on Monday. However, a user in a GMT+4 timezone who is searching for 'cases updated today' at 13:00 on Tuesday will see that case as having been updated 'today'.

Extended Attributes

The Extended Attributes section allows you to filter on the extended attributes of cases and alerts. The Extended Attributes section is initially empty for a new filter. Add entries to the Extended Attributes section by clicking on the plus button in the section heading. A drop-down list of the available extended attributes will be displayed.

Note:

It is not possible to filter on the same extended attribute more than once. If the Extended Attributes section already contains an 'Escalation' entry, the 'Escalation' option is disabled in the drop down list.

When you select an extended attribute from the list, a subsection will be created for it in the Extended Attributes section. The controls and values available will depend upon the extended attribute you have selected.

Supply the values you want to use for the extended attribute filter.

Note:

If you filter on an extended attribute which is a STRING type, you can only perform exact match searches. That is, if the extended attribute is set to the value "Test String", it will only be matched by filters which search for "Test String". You cannot search for substrings (that is, filters which search for "Test" will not find it), and you cannot use logical operators (that is, searching for "Test String OR Help" will only return records whose attribute is set, exactly, to"Test String OR Help".

To clear the values that have been selected for an extended attribute, click on the return arrow in the sub-section heading.

To stop filtering on a particular extended attribute, click on the minus sign in the sub-section heading.

Source Attributes

The Source Attributes section allows you to filter on the attributes of the data sources in the case source.

The Source Attributes section is initially empty for a new filter. Add entries to the Source Attributes section by clicking in the section heading. A multi-select dialog box containing a directory tree display of the data sources associated with the case source is displayed.

Select the data sources as required. It is also possible to search for specific data sources with the Search field.

This field permits the use of Lucene query syntax. Refer to Apache Lucene - Query Parser Syntax documentation for further information.

Note:

It is not possible to filter on the same source attribute more than once.

When you select a source attribute from the list, a subsection will be created for it in the Source Attributes section. The controls and values available will depend upon the source attribute you have selected.

Supply the values you want to use for the source attribute filter.

To clear the values that have been selected for a source attribute, click on the return arrow in the sub-section heading.

To stop filtering on a particular source attribute, click on the minus sign in the sub-section heading.

History

The History section filters based on changes to attributes and/or comments made on cases by users.

Use the fields to select the parameters to filter by. The fields are described in the following tables.

Table 1-20 Attribute Change History Fields

Field	Type	Description
Attribute	Single selection, with Search option.	List of attributes to filter by.
User	Single selection.	Specifies the user to filter by.
Action Date/Time	Single selection drop-down, defaults to a blank value.	Excluding the default blank selection, there are four possible values for this field: Within Older Than Range Today Other than "Today", each option allows the user to specify a period of time to search for attribute changes within. For example, selecting "Within" and 5 days will filter for attributes changed within the last 5 days.

Field

Type

Description

Attribute

Single selection, with Search option.

List of attributes to filter by.

User

Single selection.

Specifies the user to filter by.

Action Date/Time

Single selection drop-down, defaults to a blank value.

Excluding the default blank selection, there are four possible values for this field:

Within
Older Than
Range
Today

Other than "Today", each option allows the user to specify a period of time to search for attribute changes within. For example, selecting "Within" and 5 days will filter for attributes changed within the last 5 days.

Table 1-21 Commented On Fields

Field

Type

Description

User

Single selection. Defaults to a blank value.

Specifies the user to filter by.

Comment Date/Time

Single selection drop-down, defaults to a blank value.

Excluding the default blank selection, there are four possible values for this field:

Within
Older Than
Range
Today

Other than "Today", each option allows the user to specify a period of time to search for attribute changes within. For example, selecting "Within" and 5 days will filter for attributes changed within the last 5 days.

Allowable Transitions

The Allowable Transitions section filters results by the transitions that a user is permitted to make.

Table 1-22 Allowable Transitions Section

Field	Type	Description
User	Single selection. Defaults to a blank value.	Specifies the user to filter by.
Transitions	Single selection, with Search option.	Select the transitions to filter by.

For example, if a user selects "Current User" and "Begin work [In Analysis]", only the cases and/or alerts that they can perform that transition for are returned.

Reporting

The Reporting section is different to the other sections, because it does not actually change the results that the filter returns. Instead, it allows you to change the way those results are presented in the Results pane. If no reporting settings are provided, the results are presented in a simple list. Reporting allows you to group the results according to the values of one or more attributes, so they are presented first in a grid format:

Table 1-23 Results - Cases and Alerts by Assignee

—	—	Assigned To
—	—	—	Director Administrator
Type	Case	3	11
Type	Alert	5	7

This report shows that there are three cases that are currently unassigned, five cases assigned to the Director Administrator user, eleven alerts that are currently unassigned, and seven alerts assigned to the Director Administrator user.

You can 'drill down' on the grid results to investigate each category further, by clicking on the number in the appropriate cell.

The reporting section allows you to pick one or more attributes for each axis of the report.

For example, you could select 'Assigned To' for the first (horizontal) axis of the grid, and 'Type' for the second (vertical) axis.

You can select more than one attribute for each axis by holding down the Ctrl key as you click on attribute names.

The results are grouped by their state and type on the vertical axis.

Reporting by Date

There are several date attributes that can be assigned to the horizontal or vertical axis:

Created Date Time
Assigned Date Time
Modified Date Time
State Change Date Time
Flag Update Date Time
State Expiry

Note:

If a date attribute is selected for an axis, no other attribute can be selected. For example, the X axis of a report can be set to Create Date Time, and any other attributes desired (Type, Source Name, etc.) must be specified in the Y axis.

When a date attribute is selected, the Aggregation button is activated. Click this button to open the Aggregation Configuration dialog, which is used to specify the granularity and offset of the date ranges.

Table 1-24 Aggregation Configuration Dialog

Field	Type	Description
Enabled	Check Box (checked by default)	This option allows aggregation to be turned on or off. Turn off when reporting on each distinct value is needed, rather than ranges.
Granularity	Drop-down list (default selection is "Day").	This field specifies how the columns are calculated. For example, the "Day" value will generate a report with a column per day of the date range. The granularity can be set from one second up to one year.
Offset	Month, Day, Hour selection.	It may be desirable to, for example, generate a report with columns beginning on the 15th of each month. These fields are used to specify such offsets.
Hide Empty Rows	Check Box (cleared by default).	This field is used to hide any columns that do not return any data.

Saving a Filter

Save a filter configuration by clicking the Save button. If you are modifying an existing filter, you will be asked if you want to overwrite the existing filter definition or create a new filter.

If you select 'No', you will be prompted for a new filter name and optional description.