Search menu and results

These screens allows you to specify a search to suit your particular needs, to see the results of a search, to redefine the search if necessary, and it may even allow you to export the results of the search.

The Open questions screens are specific variations of this screen where the initial search criteria has been pre-specified by RefTracker so that these screens show results appropriate to open, unallocated, and questions allocated to you, using the subset of open questions determined by the Search tab settings in your My preferences, and providing the ability to refine these specific predefined types of searches. These Open questions screens also refresh automatically at the rate specified in the Search tab of your My preferences.  They are intended to provide a summary of the current request workload – all requests in the system that are waiting on some work to still be done on them.

The Search screens provide generic tools for finding questions in the system that are in any state (not just open questions like the Open questions screens).

USING THE SEARCH AND OPEN QUESTIONS SCREENS

Select the parameters that you want to use and click Search, or if results are already showing, check that the parameters are providing the results you want.

You can change the sort order by clicking any of the column headings.

If there is more than one page of results the paging controls are at the bottom of the results list.

To work on a question, click its question number on the left of the screen, or cursor over it and select the function that you’d like to perform on it. The bolded function is the most likely function that would be performed on that question given is current status, and is the function you will be taken to if you just click on the question number itself.

When you select a request from a search results screen, and work on that request, you will be taken back to the same search results screen, when you finish working on that request (so that you can continue working on other requests returned by that search). Note that when you are returned to that search results screen, the search will have been performed again, so that you see updated results (so, for example, if you deleted a request, the request will no longer be showing in the search screen you are returned to).

THE SIMPLE SEARCH PARAMETERS

You will most commonly use the Open questions screens and the Simple Search screen.  Here’s what the Simple Search parameters mean:

  • All Locations: determines the Staff locations that you want included in your Open questions list.  You can choose all locations or just one or some.  Some staff will be locked into a specific location (when the System administrator denies the “Ability to change operating location” Function for that user’s signon). 
    It also allows the search to be limited to questions allocated to a particular staff member (or unallocated).
  • All Request types: determines the Request type/s that you want included in your Open questions list.
  • All time periods: determines the time period to be searched based on the Received date of the question unless the name of the screen specifically says it is presenting requests by target date.  If you need to specify particular starting and ending dates, use the Advanced search screen.
  • All service types: Select whether you just want to search for Requester service, KB or Internal tasks (or all types).  The Service type is set according to the Service type of the Request form in use for each question.  This option will not show if you only have Requester service questions in your system, and, individually, the Internal task and Direct to KB options will not show if you do not have any questions of these types in your system.
    Sub tasks are subsidiary to a Primary request which can be a Service request or an Internal task, but no matter what type the Primary is, all sub tasks are Internal tasks and use Internal task forms.
  • Any database is locked for Open questions to ensure you see the right Open questions list.  If you need to use this parameter use the Simple search under Search, where it can be used to limit the search to questions in the KB, FAQ or not in either KB or FAQ.
  • Any Status groups is locked for Open questions to ensure you see the right Open questions list.  If you need to use this parameter use the Simple search under Search, where it can be used to limit the search to Open Closed, Review or Rejected status groups or any individual status/es under these groups. 
  • Scope: determines which tables of the records will be searched for the word/words in the search box.   All text boxes and area fields in the selected tables will be searched.  The default is to search just the text fields in the Question and Answer tables, but you can expand it to other tables.
  • Search word/s: enter a word, words or phrase and find an open question using proximity relevance searching on the fields defined in the Scope.  A wild card (*) can be used at the end of words.  Leave this blank to return all records.

THE ADVANCED SEARCH PARAMETERS

You should generally only need to use the advanced search if you are searching for something in a specific field/data type.  The Advanced search screen is different for every RefTracker system as it intelligently works out the 40 odd most commonly used fields in your system and allows you to search on those specific fields.