Advanced Search

The global search provides a selection of the search results and a link to the list that contains all items found. In large installations, this list can contain thousands of records. The advanced search helps you restrict its contents. It is powered by Lucene, which allows for quick search results and entails certain restrictions that are documented in this topic.

Tip: You can share filtered lists with other users. You can also bookmark the filtered list to be able to access it quickly next time. For more information, see Bookmarking and Sharing Links.

This page includes the following:

Authorizations and Search Results

The results of the search depend on your object authorizations. Consider the following:

  • To be able to find an object, you must have at least read rights to the folder where it is stored, otherwise, the search does not display it.

  • If you have read rights to a folder, the results of the search display all the objects contained in it, even in the case the authorizations specified for those objects restrict their access.

  • The authorization attributes defined at object level are evaluated as soon as you try to interact with the object. This is why the list of search results displays objects for which you do not have read rights. You can see them on the list, but you cannot open or edit them.

Starting an Advanced Search

The global search box on the upper right corner of your screen is the entry point for the object advanced search. You can start the advanced search in two different ways:

  • Place your cursor in the global search box without entering anything. A pop-up opens up displaying the following sections, each with a link:

    • Search for objects

      Click this link to open the advanced object search view.

    • Search for tasks

      This link opens the lists of tasks in the Process Monitoring perspective.

  • Type a search string in the global search box. The pop-up opens up displaying the two sections, the upper one providing a selection of the objects that match the search string and the lower one displaying the tasks. A link at the bottom of each section leads you to the advanced search view

When the advanced search view is displayed, it is either empty (if you had not entered any search string) or it contains the list of objects found according to your search term. The caption of this list shows the number of items found and the date and time of the last index update.

Use the filter criteria on the Filter pane to restrict the number of records in the list. For details on the available filters, see below.

Object Name, Location and Object Type are always displayed. You cannot hide them.

Click Search to apply the entered criteria or Reset to clear all filters.

Outdated Index

If you do not find what you are searching for, this is probably because the index is outdated. The search index is updated at regular intervals. Changes done to items after an index update are reflected in your search results after the next update has taken place. The index update intervals are specified by administrator users in the INDEXSEARCH_INTERVAL key, UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS system variable (see UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS - Systemwide Settings).

Example: The last index update has taken place at 14:18 today and that the next update is scheduled for 14:48. If you rename an object at 14:30 and make a search for it at 14:35 (that is, before the next index update at 14:48), this object will not be available in the results.

Filters

Use the following filter criteria to restrict the number of records in the advanced search results:

Object Name

If you entered a name or part of a name in the global search box, this section shows it and the Results list is filtered accordingly.

Allowed wildcard characters: * and ?

By default, the search function uses implicit wildcards at the beginning and at the end of the string you enter here.

Example:

Entering DB_BACKUP triggers the search for *DB_BACKUP*. The following results are also found:

  • MSSQL_DB_BACKUP
  • DB_BACKUP_MSSQL
  • MSSQL_DB_BACKUP_JAN

Important! The string you enter here is searched for in the Name field of the objects and NOT in their Title.

Location

This option limits the search for objects to a specific path within your folder structure. Click the arrow to expand the list of folders where you can search for the object and select one.

  • Activate the Include sub-folders option to search the entire folder structure beneath the selected folder.
  • Activate the Include links option if you want the results of the search to display both the object and any links to it.

Object Type

This option restricts the list of objects to one or more object types.

Time Frame

This option finds items that have been created, modified or used (last executed) within the period of time that you specify here. The following options are available:

  • No Time Frame

    Default value. Leave it if you do not want to set a time restriction to your object search.

  • Created

    Displays all the objects that have been created within the time frame you are about to define.

  • Modified

    Displays all the objects that have been modified within the time frame you are about to define.

  • Used

    Displays all the objects that have been last executed within the time frame you are about to define.

    This option is only effective if the LAST_USE value in the UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS - Systemwide Settings is other than 0, that is, if a refresh interval for the object usage counter has been defined.

Object Contents

Full text search for content available on the following pages of the object definition:

  • Process pages and sub pages (Pre Process, Post Process, Child Process)
  • Documentation pages and sub pages (both for structured and unstructured documentation)
  • Title of objects
  • Archive keys of objects
  • Keys and values in STATIC VARA objects

The following limits apply:

  • Maximum length of object titles: 255 characters
  • Maximum length of archive keys and Variable keys: 60 characters

If you enter strings that exceed these limits, the search does not return any results for object titles, archive keys and variable keys.

Notes:

  • Enter entire words. If you enter part of a word, it is not found unless it is the first word in a string
  • The Object Contents search is not case-sensitive
  • Wildcard searches are not supported
  • The following characters are stripped from search terms: !"#$%&'()*+,/;:<=>?@[\]^`{|}~-
  • Regular expressions are not supported in queries, but you can search for special characters
  • Whole words are searched for
  • When searching for strings on any of the Process pages in an object, take into account the script language that is used in the object

You can restrict the search to one or more of the following:

  • Process

    The system searches for the string you enter here in all your scripts on all Process pages of executable objects.

  • Object Title

    Enter the title or part of it. Although you can use wildcards, the following restrictions are imposed by Lucene:

    • For search strings up to 20 characters long you can enter * as wildcard character
    • For search strings that are longer than 20 characters, the Lucene search does not support the use of wildcard characters

  • Documentation

    The system searches for the string you enter here on all the Documentation pages, both structured and unstructured.

    Structured documentation: The search looks for the string in the keys and in the values of the documentation. If you enter a string that is available as option in a dropdown list, the search function only suggests it in the Results list if that option is also selected in the list.

  • Archive Keys

    Enter the entire text or part of it.

  • Variable Key

    Enter the complete string or part of it. The system searches for it in the Key column of all STATIC VARA objects.

  • Variable Value

    The string is searched for in the values entered in Variable objects.

    If you activate this checkbox, the Search Columns and Datatype section is displayed.

    • Activate Search in all Columns if you want the system to scan the values in all columns. If you leave it deactivated , the system searches for the value in the first column only.
    • Select one of the datatypes in the dropdown list to restrict the search to values with this type. This refers to the datatypes defined in the Variable object (STATIC VARA objects).

Calendar Event

See Searching for Calendar Events.

List of Results

The Results list is empty if you did not enter any search string in the global search box to open it. If you did, it is pre-filtered using your search string as Object Name.

This list can contain up to 5000 entries. However, your system administrator can restrict the number of items to display by defining a different number in the UC_SYSTEM_SETTINGS system setting. For more information, see GENERIC_SEARCH_LIMIT.

Information in the Browser Caption

The caption of the browser tab of the result list provides information about the Automation Engine system, Client and user that triggered the search. For example:

Search: <entered search criterion>, <number of items found> results (<connection>: client number | user/department | Automic Web Interface)

Screenshot showing the popup message that displays when hovering the mouse over he browser tab in which the advanced search is opened.

Working with the List

You can change the sort order of the results and rearrange the columns and rows to best fit your needs. For details see Working with Tables.

From this list you have access to all the functions you can carry out with the objects, according to your rights and privileges. Right-click one or more objects to open a context menu displaying the available options. See Working with Objects.

Click Ctrl+A to select all the objects in the list and right-click to process all them at once. This is useful if, for example, you are searching for objects that you want to move to a different client or Automation Engine system using the Transport Case.

Note: When bulk selecting and right-clicking, the system must check which of the available functions are common to all selected objects. If you have selected a large number of objects, this might take some time. In these cases, a message is displayed informing you of this. Likewise, a message is displayed if the selection results in no functions being available for bulk selection.

Exporting the List to a CSV File

See Exporting Tables to CSV.

Saving Custom Filters

You can save your favorite filters for future reuse. Custom filters are saved per user. If you save one under a particular user and then log in to as a different user, it will not be available.

To Save a Custom Filter

  1. Add and define the filter settings.
  2. Click the arrow on the Custom Filter button to expand the available options.

  3. You have two options to provide a name for the filter:

    • The first entry on the list lets you save the filter with a name suggested by the system. Click it if you want to use it, select this option.

    • Select Save custom filter as... and enter the name of the filter in the dialog that is displayed.

  4. Click OK. The filter is now available in the Custom filter dropdown list.

To Modify a Custom Filter

  1. Click the arrow on the Custom Filter button.
  2. Select the filter you want to modify.
  3. On the Filter pane modify the filter settings.
  4. Click the Filter button at the bottom of the pane.

  5. To save the modified filter, click the arrow on the Custom Filter button again. You have two options:

    • To save the modified settings as a new filter, select Save custom filter as... and enter a new name for the filter.

    • To overwrite the existing custom filter with your new settings, click Save as "<name of custom filter>" .

To Duplicate/Rename/Delete a Custom Filter

  1. Click the arrow on the Custom Filter button.
  2. Select the custom filter.

  3. To display a sub menu with the Duplicate/Rename/Delete options, do one of the following:

    • Right-click the selected entry.

    • Click the three dots that are displayed when the entry is selected.

Wildcard Characters in Custom Filters

Use wildcards before and after your filter criterion and save it as custom filter. This creates a dynamic filter that always results in all the tasks that match the search criterion. You ca do this with all filter options that use names as filter criterion, namely, Task Name, Agent Name, Archive Key, Current Sync Usage (the name of the Sync object), Task Alias, User Object.

Example: You set a filter for Task Name and enter *JOBS* as filter criterion to get a list of all tasks with the string JOBS somewhere in their names. You then save it as custom filter. This custom filter always result in the most recent list of tasks containing this string in their names.

See also: