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Search in VOSS Automate

Overview

Search Methods

There are two ways to run a search in the VOSS Admin Portal:

../../_images/search-icons.png

Note

VOSS Automate 21.3 Patch Bundle 2 ships with an early field trial of its enhanced Search feature. This feature has been tested internally, has shown to have no impact on general system performance, and works for most use cases, as described on this page. Minor aspects of the functionality may not work as expected, for example, enhancements to search phrase use is reserved for future development.

Best Practices for Meaningful Search Results

Search results are based on the menus and landing pages allowed and configured for your role. For this reason, administrators should align naming conventions and the setup of items for user navigation with terms that are familiar to users. For example:

  • Adjust the names of menus, landing pages, tasks, and quick actions if these prove to be unintuitive.

  • Configure relevant landing pages for quick actions, based on user roles.

  • Use the What would you like to do? search to quickly find actions that aren’t available on landing pages.

What would you like to do?

Search using the Compass icon or search field (What would you like to do?) is a quick way to navigate to a menu item or a landing page link.

Click the toolbar Compass icon to run a search on ‘actions’ based on a search phrase or a single word, such as add line, update subscriber, or phones, to navigate quickly to a relevant form, view, or list.

Note

Verbs in the search phrase return results when matching the same word in a menu or landing page, based on your access profile.

You can also run this search directly from the Home page, where you can click in the Search field, fill out a search phrase or word, and press Enter.

../../_images/search-what-would-you-like-to-do.png

The Compass search is a case-insensitive, fuzzy, free text search, with results based on the menu layout and landing page links for your access profile. All relevant items are returned. For example, including add in your search phrase also generates results for create and add.

Important

At the time of writing (for 21.3-PB2):

  • Plural keywords may not return all relevant results. If you don’t see the results you expect, change the keyword to singular, for example, phone instead of phones, or add subscriber, instead of add subscribers.

  • Using generic terms, such as subscriber or phone, returns all items relating to this keyword.

  • Avoid search phrases that include a or an. For example, use add user instead of add a user.

  • Search phrases that refer to a device, such as CUCM, returns all items (including device models) that have the device name in the label or description. Additionally, the phrase add device returns a list of results where the label starts with device, where the access profile allows the add operation, and (in this case), labels, descriptions, or models containing the full string, add device.

  • For best results (depending on the permissions you have on the model types), use the following verbs in search phrases:

    • create, add

    • update, edit, modify, change

    • delete, remove

../../_images/search-compass.png

Search criteria supports abbreviations, model type keywords (such as view, relation, model), and matches for the first character of words in a string. For example, QAS returns QAS - MS Teams, as well as Quick Add SIP Gateway.

Note

Including numerical digits in the search criteria only returns menus with digits in the menu name. For example, search criteria including the digits 1, 6, or 4 returns menus with these digits in their name, such as E164 Inventory (by default, a sub-menu in the Number Management menu).

../../_images/search-compass-digit-criteria.png

Search results display in a table, including the path.

../../_images/search-compass-result.png

Click on a search result to open it in the system.

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Advanced Search (Quick/Global)

Click the toolbar Search icon (magnifier) to launch an advanced search filter where you can perform a quick search of list views exposed by the menu layout, or a global search, in which you can specify the model to search on.

Constructing Global Search Queries

Global Search Syntax

You can construct search queries to search for specific items, based on VOSS Automate search syntax filters.

Search queries can contain:

  • Model type and model name references

  • Model attribute and nested model attribute references

  • Key words

  • Brackets, for grouping

  • Query string, using valid query string characters, as follows:

    • alphanumeric characters

    • Any of:

      !@#$%^&*-_=+<,.>/?\|[{]}~`

    • To search for single quote in a string, wrap the string in double quotes

    • To search for double quote in a string, wrap the string in single quotes

Search queries are carried out on models, so you can specify the model type and the model name in a query, using the syntax type/name as the full reference to a model type (for example, relation, data, or device) and model name (for example, Countries).

search-syntax

Global Search Keyword Types

Various keywords can be used to construct a search query. Available keywords are categorized by type, either of the following:

  • Specification - WITH

  • Matching - IS, LIKE

  • Grouping - AND, OR

Keyword

Description and Examples

WITH

Restricts the search to look for only specific data types. In the example below we have specified the data type Countries and so only countries will be returned.

((data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE Kingdom) AND
 (data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE Unite ))

IS

For a result to be returned the data attribute must match exactly the ‘input’. In the example below the ‘input’ is Spain and only a Country with the attribute country_name Spain will be returned. If ‘North Spain and South Spain existed they would not be returned. In the example below we have specified the data type Countries and so only countries will be returned. If we had not specified a data type then the search would cover all data types looking for an attribute country_name.

country_name IS Spain

data/Countries WITH country_name IS Spain

Another example with a model tag as reference:

tag IS "featurea"

CONTAINS

Matching is done by substring and is the default parameter. For a result to be returned, the data attribute must contain ‘input’. In the example below, the ‘input’ is ‘Sw’ and the search would find both ‘Sweden’ and ‘Switzerland’.

data/Countries WITH country_name CONTAINS Sw

Keyword

Description and Examples

LIKE

Matching is done by fuzzy search. For a result to be returned, the data attribute must nearly match ‘input’. In the example below, the ‘input’ is ‘swe’ and the search would find both ‘Sweden’ and ‘Switzerland’.

data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE swe

AND

This grouping term allows you to combine different searches and only finds a result where both conditions are met. The example below the search would find ‘United Kingdom’ but not the ‘Kingdom of Bhutan’ as in this case the second condition (LIKE Unite) is not true.

((data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE Kingdom) AND
 (data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE Unite ))

OR

This grouping term allows you to combine different searches and matches a result where any one or both of the conditions are met. The example search below would find ‘United Kingdom’, ‘United States’ and ‘Kingdom of Bhutan’.

((data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE Kingdom) OR
 (data/Countries WITH country_name LIKE Unite))

Global Search Examples

Where the attribute of a model is nested in an object, the reference to the attribute in the search query requires a model type specification.

For example, for a model data/User with an attribute in a nested object called account_information, the query should take the model type (data) specifier:

data/User WITH data.account_information.credential_policy IS Default

The following query will not yield results:

data/User WITH account_information.credential_policy IS Default

Brackets should be used in a query with matching and grouping operators. In a query containing no model references, brackets are evaluated first. The order of bracket evaluation is inner to outer brackets.

Example Queries (line breaks added):

(((data/Countries WITH pstn_access_prefix IS 9) AND
  (data/Countries WITH emergency__access_prefix IS 112))
 OR (data/Countries WITH international_access_prefix IS 00))

Global Search String Format

The string to search for can be specified with the following properties:

Multi-word and quotes

Enclose in quotes. Single- and double quotes are supported. Example: 'United States'

When single word or multi-word values contain a single or double quote, the string needs to be enclosed in double or single quotes respectively, for example: "L'Amour".

Case sensitivity

Use the appropriate operator (LIKE)

In a query containing model references, brackets and grouping keywords, the query is evaluated in the order.

Order

Element

Description

1

WITH

Model reference is evaluated first.

2

brackets

Brackets evaluate before grouping keywords.

3

AND

AND grouping evaluates before OR grouping.

4

OR

Evaluates last.

A number of attributes from the meta data of a model can also be searched:

  • __device_pkid: if a device pkid is known, then for example:

    device/cucm/Line WITH __device_pkid IS 55c32b59a6165451e04f392a

  • pkid: if a pkid is known, then for example:

    data/CallManager WITH pkid IS 55c32b59a6165451e04f392a

  • tags (can also use “tag”): if the tag name is known, then for example:

((data/FieldDisplayPolicy WITH tag IS feature_tag_add_customer) AND
 (data/FieldDisplayPolicy WITH tags IS applicationendtoend))

Note

Only lower-case tags are searchable.

Search in Drop-Down Lists

On forms where you select values from pre-populated, editable drop-down lists, VOSS Automate allows you to run a case-insensitive search to filter results.

Run a ‘Contains’ search

You can start typing in a drop-down field to run a contains search on the first 1000 results.

Run a ‘Starts with’ search

If you don’t find the result you’re looking for, click the magnifier icon adjacent to the drop-down to perform a starts with search on all results.

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Working with Lists

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Searchable Fields