Client Searches the Knowledge Base or FAQ

Using this screen, clients can search the Knowledge Base (KB) of questions and answers that your library builds up through use of RefTracker, or the Frequently asked Questions (FAQ) subset of that database. They cannot see incomplete answers and they cannot see any client information. They can only see questions and answers that your staff have specifically indicated should be made available for clients to be able to search for themselves, so the information that clients can retrieve here is able to be closely controlled by your organisation. How questions and answers are placed in the Knowledge database is covered in the staff interface manual, but for now, let’s try using this client screen.

Your organisation can decide whether to make the KB and/or FAQ available for searching through this screen (System administrators should see parameters 0.15-17 for more information about configuring this function). The KB and FAQ search functions can be made available from separate access points as is provided by the separate Knowledge Base and FAQ links in the standard client interface header (System administrators should see Customising your client interface for how you can do this in your own web pages).  Your organisation can also control the amount of information that displays about each question/answer returned by the search, for example you might not want Request type to show for your organisation (for details of how to do this System administrators should see the Template editor (text) section of the manual).

On initial display this screen provides a Search box with the FAQ or KB type of search it has defaulted to clearly shown, and then a list of the entries in the database, most recently added to the KB or FAQ at the top, ready for browsing. 

This KB/FAQ search function ONLY searches the Question and Answer fields.  The search box will remain on the screen as you scroll through the search results, so that you can easily refine your search criteria.


Exercise: In the previous page we discussed the different ways searches can be constructed in RefTracker. Now is the time to try a few of them by entering a word or phrase and clicking on Search (or simply using Enter after typing your search term). Your results will depend on what is in the particular knowledge base you are searching, so try searching for something you can already see in the browse list below the Search box.  Now try searching more widely – try entering some of the following search terms where * is a wild card:

  • a single word
  • a word stem with a wild card at the end
  • more than one word (the words are ANDed together) 
  • a phrase (in quotes) and perhaps even a phrase containing a wildcard  at the end of a word