Searching in CM on Name or Keywords

If I have several possible Names or Keywords to search on in Content Manager, am I restricted to just 1 search word per line in the filter; meaning I must stack several Name or Keywords lines in the filter, possibly with an OR between each line. Really tedious if that is the case.

Or can I simply enter a string of search words into 1 line of the filter? If so, what is the correct separator to use between each word? Space, comma, semi-colon, colon...?

The Wiki didn't have much to say on these questions.



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I use spaces and works quite well. Just open CM and type in a search like 'xing oh 2t'.

Christopher824 - A space is not a delimiter, it's a character. The OP is wanting to search on two separate search terms (or more) in the one field.

Dinorius_Redundicas - I just tried the "common" delimiters and none seems to work. Type "Zyd" and you get Port Zyd items but as soon as you add any possible delimiter (comma) to the term, "Zyd" is lost, or not found any more. Thus, comma (and such) is defined in CM as characters and not a delimiter. The only option is as you say... to add "or" and another search term field.

And there is even more to it than that.

If you are searching Name, entering “xing oh 2t” only finds assets with that whole phrase, in that order, including the spaces. And I presume it is looking only in the assets’ username tags to find it.

But if you instead specify the search is on Keywords, entering “xing oh 2t” finds assets with the any of the fragments, “xing”, “oh” or “2t” in any order and even if they occur within other words (thus the fragment “oh” in John Deere will be found). I presume it looks for those in both the username and category-keyword tags. The spaces in the search phrase are not ignored but seem to be treated, not as characters, but as logical OR statements. This means the simple 1-line Keyword search on “xing oh 2t” is like a 5-line filter for; xing OR oh OR 2t.

Does that make the space in a Keyword search a delimiter? I’m not sure. Perhaps testing what happens if you include 2 consecutive spaces might clarify that.

So the Name and Keyword searches are very different beasts, but I was never very sure what the differences were.

From what I’ve seen, both types of search seem to be case-insensitive, but I might be wrong on that. I’m also unsure of the little search box in the top right corner of the CM window. Is that a Name or Keyword type of search, or something else again?


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I use commas xing,oh,2t works and is what's used with multiple assets as the separator as in list dependencies.

clam1952 said:

I use commas xing,oh,2t works and is what's used with multiple assets as the separator as in list dependencies.

Click to expand...

Depends where you use the term. Searching my currently installed TANE assets with xing,oh,2t as the search input, I got the following results;

In the Search box in upper-right: Nothing

In a Name filter: Nothing

In a Keywords filter: This one was really interesting. It found everything with any of those fragments anywhere in config.txt, not just in Username or Keywords tags.

What makes me now think the Keywords filter searches the whole config is this result - <kuid2:45588:15640:1> Caboose C&O 90212 red. This asset doesn't have any of those fragments in its Username or Name tags, nor does it even have a Keywords tag. The fragment 'oh' only appears in the old Company tag as part of the word Ohio, and is the only thing that could have triggered a positive hit in this search.

So the Keywords filter, whether using spaces or commas, is a very deep search, more powerful than I first thought. I guess it must be treating single spaces and commas as delimiters, rather than characters, otherwise every asset in the database would have been a hit. The downside of such a powerful search is that can bring up a lot of rubbish that is irrelevant to what you were really trying to find.

The fact that both the Search box and Name filter gave null results suggests the Search box is just a quick form of Name filter.


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When I posted the 'xing oh 2t' example, I used it in the box in the upper right corner. The filter on the left is set to Installed or All Content. It searches the Name field only I think.

A space can be a delimiter, as well as any other character, just a matter on how an interface is programmed. A space is ANSI decimal 32.

When I use the upper right hand box, it does not care what order I put the search term in as, so 'xing oh 2t' gets me the same results as '2t xing oh', so it looks to me the interface is using the space as a delimiter and treating it as a 'AND' operator.

I rarely use the filter dropdown on the left except for the Today search when making new assets.