Online Help | Desktop App

Using the Advanced Search tool

Updated in 2023.1

The Advanced Search tool allows you to search your Alloy Navigator for text fragments or keywords; for example, to find ready-to-use solutions in Service Support tickets or Knowledge Base articles. This page describes how to use Advanced Search to quickly find what you need.

This tool allows you to find all objects of a specific class (Incidents, Contracts, Computers, etc.) that contain your text. You can also search in All Tickets (i.e., Change Requests, Incidents, Problems, Work Orders, and Service Requests ) and All CIs (i.e., Computers, Hardware, Networks, Documents, Configurations, and Software Licenses) . For details, see Search for any Alloy Navigator objects.

You can apply a number of additional search criteria to restrict the search results as you need.

IMPORTANT: By default, inactive objects, such as closed tickets or retired CIs, are not included in search results. Although, you can include them by setting search options.

Search for any Alloy Navigator objects

To find any Alloy Navigator object, follow the steps below.

To search for an object:

  1. Select Search > Advanced Search from the main menu to bring up the Advanced Search window.

    Alternatively, press СTRL+ALT+F on the keyboard.

  2. In the left navigation pane, select a particular object class or a group of object classesClosed (All Tickets includes Change Requests, Incidents, Problems, Work Orders, and Service Requests; All CIs includes Computers, Hardware, Networks, Documents, Configurations, and Software Licenses) where you want to perform the search.

  3. In search box, type some text to search for.

    IMPORTANT: The search box is mandatory.

    If you are not going to specify additional search criteria in the Advanced Search section below or you are going to choose the "Boolean (text contains AND/OR)" method in the Using field there, you can use boolean operators in your search query; for details, see Using boolean operators in search queries.

    NOTE: If you have recently used the Advanced Search tool for the same text, you can select the text from the drop-down list in the search query field.

    By default, the search is performed in an optimal search area for the specified object class (Summary and Description fields for Tickets, Name and Description fields for Computers, etc.).

    To change the search area, select the desired option in the drop-down list on the right. When you are not sure where to search, you can choose to search in the "frequently-used text fields"—all text fields that contain important object information. Every object class has an individual set of "frequently-used text fields." Click here to view the list of frequently-used text fields for each object class.

    NOTE: Search in frequently-used fields may be time-consuming.

  1. By default, not more that 100 found records are shown as advanced search results. If you want to view all found records, clear the Retrieve first 100 records only check box.

  2. If you want to make the search more precise by adding conditions, click Advanced Search and specify the following additional criteria in the fields that appear:

    • In the Using drop-down list, select the method of search: All words entered, Any of the word entered, the exact phrase entered, Boolean (text contains AND/OR).

    • To include in the search scope the Activity Log records shown on the objects' Activity tab, select the Search in Activity log check box.

    • To include inactive (or closed, or retired objects, depending on their type) objects in the scope of search, select the corresponding check box.

    • To include in the search scope the History records for the chosen objects, select the Search in History check box.

    • To add specific search conditions for particular object's fields, under Restrict search result to, select up to three object fields and define conditions for them.

  1. Click Search.

Search results

The Advanced Search tool shows the search results in a grid. You can either look through the matching records and open them as needed or you can further refine the search results by sorting, filtering, or grouping the records.

INFO: For details, see Customizing grids.