Searching for Projects and Documents

Search for projects and documents you have access to using Quick Search (available from the Accolade title bar) including words and phrases of metric values. Use Advanced Search to perform a more refined search. Additionally, you may use the Recent Items menu to see a list of items recently assessed.

The Accolade search engine is a Full Text Search, and searches for text contained in text files, HTML files, Microsoft Office 2003 and earlier files, and text in online forms. Search requires third-party IFilters to search text contained in Microsoft Office 2007 and later documents, PDFs, email files, Microsoft Project files, and others. These IFilters are part of the installation process. See the Accolade Installation Guide or contact Sopheon Customer Support for more information.

Important! Images do not contain text so you cannot use search to find images attached to projects. If IFilters for PDFs are installed, Accolade search can only search text within PDFs, not images. If a document that contains text is scanned and saved as a PDF, the text is not searchable because scanning creates an image of the document.

Quick Search

To search for a project:

1. Enter search text in the Quick Search field in the far right of the Accolade title bar. See Search Rules and Operators for information about how to enter search expressions.
2. Select Project from the drop-down menu.
3. Choose a filtering option: Filter by Favorites, by Open Projects, or by both options.

4. Choose a sorting option: Sort by A-Z, sort by Z-A, or sort by project ID (Note: the Project ID displays on the right-hand side of the project name).

5. Press Enter.

Notes:    If you wish to favorite a project from the Quick Search menu, hover over the project ID. You will then see the favorite icon which you may toggle on or off. Hover over the project name, if truncated, to see the entire project name.

 

To search for a document:

1. Enter search text in the Quick Search field in the far right of the Accolade title bar. See Search Rules and Operators for information about how to enter search expressions.
2. Select Docs from the drop-down menu.
3. Choose a filtering option: Filter by Follow Ups, by Open Projects, or by both options.

4. Choose a sorting option: Sort by A-Z, sort by Z-A, or sort by modification date.

5. Press Enter.

Notes:    You may download a document by clicking on the document icon. If you wish to flag a document for follow up from the Quick Search menu, hover over the document name. You will then see the follow up flag icon which you may switch on or off. Hover over the document name, if truncated, to see the entire document name.

 

To find all the projects in which you are a team member, all documents which you own, and all published documents to which you have access, leave the search field blank and press Enter.

Search results are shown in a panel that slides in from the right side. Do any of the following to work with the Quick Search results:

• Dock the panel - Click to dock the panel so it remains open.
• Access Project Manager or document owner details - Click next to the project or document in the search results to expand the details. From here, click to contact the Project Manager or document owner by email or via chat.
• Display the project or document - Click the name of the project or document in the search results.

To set Quick Search preferences:

1. With the Quick Search window open, click in the search results window.
2. Select the appropriate options to do the following:

• Limit or increase the number or returned results - In the Max. projects results field, assign a maximum number of projects you wish to display. By default, this is set to 50. Choose between 10 and 250. Likewise, set the Max. documents results.
• Search within one or more project classes - In the Select Classes in Project Search field, click one or more class names. You may also include all classes by ticking the Select all box.

3. If happy with these settings, click Apply Settings. If not, you may Reset Default to start again.

Notes:    This is a user setting and will be retained upon logouts and system upgrades.

 

Advanced Search

Advanced Search enables you to filter the search to specify the part of the total results you want to see. Using Advanced Search, you can search for project or published documents at one time.

Select to print the list of projects or documents found using Advanced Search.

To use advanced search to find projects and documents:

1. From the Workspace menu, select Search and select whether to search for project or documents.

You can also access Advanced Search directly from the Quick Search results window. Click Advanced Search and select the appropriate tab.

2. Do one of the following:

• To find all projects or documents to which you have access - Leave all the fields in the Search For section blank and click Search.
• To search for one or more specific projects or documents - Enter filtering information in one or more fields in the Search For section. When you enter filters, Search finds projects for which ALL of the filters are true meaning the filters are combined logically by AND, not by OR.

3. Click Search.

Search Rules and Operators

In any form of search, you can successfully search using the first letter or number in a word, the beginning part of a word, or a whole word. For example "C" finds up any product or document that starts with the letter "C" and "Can" finds "Candidate" but entering "date" does not.

You can also enter search phrases that include the following operators in Quick Search, in any filter when using Advanced Search to find documents, and in the top four filter options when using Advanced Search to find projects.

Note:  In the following descriptions, it is assumed that Search matches singular and plural forms of words as well as tenses.

Operator	Example	Description
AND	crank AND arm; crank arm;	Match contains both crank and arm.
OR	crank OR arm	Match contains either crank or arm.
NOT	crank NOT arm	Match contains crank but not arm. Cannot be used with OR.
" " (quotes)	"XP sprocket mounting"	Matches exact phrase XP sprocket mounting. A search on a phrase in quotes finds exact matches to the phrase, minus numbers stopwords. More.... For example, "XP 100 sprocket mounting" actually searches for "XP sprocket mounting", as the "100" is considered a stopword. Stopwords (also called noise words) are commonly occurring words, such as "a," "an," and "the" that the search functionality strips out of search phrases. Numbers are also considered stopwords in a search phrase. To view a list of words that are eliminated from search phrases, create a query using the following expression, filtering by language_id for a specific language (US English is 1033): SELECT * FROM sys.fulltext_system_stopwords FSS WITH (NOLOCK) To query the languages supported, use the following expression: SELECT * FROM sys.fulltext_languages FL WITH (NOLOCK)
- (dash)	crank AND - arm	Equivalent to crank NOT arm. Note that the dash is separated from the words by spaces and that AND is required prior to the dash. Cannot be used with OR. More... When a dash is not separated from other characters by a space, it acts like a space to delimit words in the search string. When there is a space before but not after it, it behaves like the search operator NOT. For example, given a project ID of 123-456-789, either a search string of 123 or 123-456 would find the project, but 123 -456 (with a space before) would find projects that contained 123 but not 456.
+ (plus)	+crank	Does not search for inflectional forms of the word. That is, it finds crank but not cranks.
* (asterisk)	assemb*	Match contains any word beginning with assemb.
< >	<chrome bumper>	Match contains chrome near bumper.

Keep the following addition rules in mind when searching using operators in the search phrase:

• You can use the operators described above together in a single search expression to form more complex searches. For example, to find projects and documents that contain the words crank and arm, but not bumper, enter crank AND arm - bumper in the search field.
• If you are searching for text that contains a search operator such as -, +, or *, enclose your search in quotes. For example, if you are searching for a project called Tools + Machinery, enter "tools + machinery" (including the quotes). Entering tools + machinery without the quotes returns results matching both words.
• When searching for a partial word in combination with an operator, include an asterisk (*) after the partial work. For example, to find all projects that have a word in their name that starts with proj but does not contain the word test, search using one of the following:
• proj* -test
• proj* NOT test

When searching for partial words with operators, you must use the asterisk (*) after the partial word. Entering proj - test or proj NOT test in the search field returns no results

Notes:    Project searches match your search phrase to the project name, project ID, project description, and the project manager's user name. In a project ID, letters and numbers between dashes or spaces behave like words in a phrase. For example, given a project ID of DOG23 Cat5 378, you could find this project using the search phrase ca or 378, but not with 23. Results would be identical if the project ID were DOC23-Cat5-378. Exclusion-only searches are not supported. For example, a search for NOT crank NOT arm is not supported; however, a search for crank NOT arm or crank AND - arm returns results that contain the word crank but not the word arm. You must search for a term or phrase to include an exclusion in the search. Depending on how the deliverable or activity is configured in the model, access may also be restricted by user role. For deliverables and activities set up with these restrictions, users must also have the user roles assigned to the deliverable and activity within the model to view and download versions through Quick Search and Advanced Search.

Recent Items Menu

In addition to searching by word or phrase via Quick Search or Advanced Search, you may also use the Recent Items Menu to quickly locate projects, deliverables, or activities you have viewed previously. The Recent Items Menu also supports favoriting projects and adding follow up flags to deliverables and activities. You may update the status of an item to favorite or follow up directly from the Recent Items Menu. When an item is favorited or flagged for follow up, it is promoted to the top of the Recent Items Menu.

To search for a recently accessed project or document using Recent Items Menu:

1. Click from the Accolade title bar.
2. Locate the item you wish to view.

To favorite, unfavorite, or add a follow up flag to an item on the Recent Items Menu:

• To favorite a project - Click on the favorite icon to the left of the project name; the icon should go opaque
• To unfavorite a project - Click on the favorite icon to the left of the project name; the icon should return to the default outline
• To add a follow up flag to deliverables and activities - Click on the follow up flag icon to the left of the deliverable or activity; the icon should go opaque
• To remove a follow up flag from deliverables and activities - Click on the follow up flag icon to the left of the deliverable or activity; the icon should return to the default outline

Notes:    Changes to the Recent Items Menu will be reflected when you reopen the menu. The number of items that appear in the Recent Items Menu is set in the Administration Console. If you exceed this number, the oldest items will disappear from the list if they were not favorited or flagged for follow up.