Federated Searches

A federated search lets you simultaneously search for data across multiple searchable repositories. You can easily make a single query on both mailbox items and archived items, and find data quickly, navigating from thousands of search results to a handful.

Federated search supports multiple formats and search results are in its original formats, such as Word docs, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and file shares in a consolidated view, which identifies the knowledge type. Approximately 600 file types are supported.

When entering criteria, you can use symbols and Boolean operators—see Search Operators.

You can also perform a search for attachments using advanced search tools—see Advanced Federated Search.

TIP
If you want your current search criteria to be carried over into Advanced Search, avoid clearing the criteria after running a search. The criteria may be organized differently in Advanced Search than how you originally entered it.

How to Perform a Federated Search

  • In the Folder view, select the archive stores and users to filter.
  • In the Document view, click Search > Federated.
  • The Search dialog box displays.
  • Click Clear if there was a previous search, unless you would like this query to appear in Advanced Search.
  • Enter criteria in any of the fields:
  • Parameter

    Description

    Subject/Filename matches

    Lets you search for specific names or email addresses in the Subject field of an email message. The three match options lets you decide how precise or general your search results will be. In general, the Word Root Match option provides the widest pool of results and the Phrase Match option preserves word sequence. These two options are most useful for finding variations of words. The Exact Match option provides the most precise results.

    Word Root Match

    This option returns the widest pool of results. IPRO searches data indexed without punctuation or stop words and looks for different forms of all the words you search.

    A root word does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word. It is the primary lexical unit of a word and of a word family. It contains the most significant aspect of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller components.

    This type of search is not case sensitive, which means it does not matter if you use uppercase or lowercase letters. Word Root Match is useful when you do not know exactly what you are searching for but you know the words involved. In the following example, two root words are used in the search: employ and contract.

    • Example: Searching for Employment contract will produce the following:
    • Employment Contracts
    • employed as a contractor
    • contracting for employment

    See About Natural Language Processing and About Natural Language Processing.

    Phrase Match

    This option preserves the sequence of words in a search and is not case sensitive. It is useful when you have a clear idea of the results you are looking for, yet still want to see possible word forms. There may be stop words between the search words.

    • Example: Searching for employment contract will produce the following:
    • Employment Contract for 2019
    • my colleague's employment and contract
    • contracts for employment would not appear in results because the word sequence is reversed

    See About Natural Language Processing.

    Exact Match

    This option delivers search results that are exactly what you type in a search field. IPRO Search performs a literal search on indexed string fields and is case sensitive.

    IMPORTANT
    Do not use quotation marks around search words unless what you are searching for is in quotation marks.
    • Example: Searching for Employment Contract for 2019 will produce the following:
    • Employment Contract for 2019
    • employment contract for 2019 (lowercase) would not appear in results because it is case sensitive

    You can use a search operator such as a wild card to expand the search.

    • Example: Searching for Employment Contract for 20* will produce the following:
    • Employment Contract for 2018
    • Employment Contract for 2019

    See About Natural Language Processing and Search Operators.

    Date range

    Lets you search for files within a specified date range.

    Relative / Absolute Date

    Relative Date: Lets you set dates that fall within relative date ranges. A relative date range is a period of time that is relative to the current date. Relative date ranges include: Now, Start of Day, End of Day, Start of Week, and End of Week.

    Using relative date ranges allows you to run searches periodically without needing to alter your query.

    Absolute Date: Lets you set the exact dates on which to start and end the audit.

    Sender/Owner matches

    Lets you search for files with a sender or owner that matches one or more specific words.

    Size range

    Lets you search for files within a specified size range. File sizes must be entered in bytes.

    Contains

    Lets you search for files with a specific word found within the body.

    Phrase Match

    This option preserves the sequence of words in a search and is not case sensitive. It is useful when you have a clear idea of the results you are looking for, yet still want to see possible word forms. There may be stop words between the search words.

    • Example: Searching for employment contract will produce the following:
    • Employment Contract for 2019
    • my colleague's employment and contract
    • contracts for employment would not appear in results because the word sequence is reversed

    See About Natural Language Processing.

     

    Regex matches

    IPRO Search supports some regex (regular expression) or pattern matching. You use the forward slash symbol (/) to initiate it. For a larger string, you must also end with it. The following example would find four digits in a row, or two letters and two digits. There is a limit of four such variables in a row.

    • Example: /[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]/
      /[a-z][a-z][0-9][0-9]/

      Example: Searching for "newspaper" or "news paper" using the NEAR operator

      (news NEAR/2 paper) OR newspaper

     

    Document ID

    Copy-paste or enter a singular or multiple Document IDs to search the specific items.

    Automatically escape reserved index characters (SOLR)

    Certain characters and words are reserved for indexing. By default, this option is selected so you can search for the following: \ + - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ AND OR NOT

  • Click Search.
  • The Search dialog box closes and your results (if any) are displayed.
  • If needed, run another search. Add criteria to the Tags tab to narrow the search even more.
  • TIP
    If you want your current search criteria to be carried over into Advanced Search, avoid clearing the criteria after running a search. The criteria may be organized differently in Advanced Search than how you originally entered it.