Home > Resource Center > Blog/Newsletter > 2007.11

November, 2007

In this issue:

• Canto News
• Cumulus Training During MacWorld
• Canto Employee Profile: Tech Support Specialist, Alain Defrasne
• Cumulus Power Tips

Cumulus Power Tips

Quicksearch 102: AUTO not AUTOBAHN, and definitely not AUTO SHOW

This month's Power Tip extends our discussion of the Quicksearch tool from last month.

By default, when you enter a search term into the Quicksearch tool, Cumulus tries to find the search term somewhere within the fields included in the search. (See last month's Power Tip to learn how to specify which fields are searched.) This is commonly known as a "contains" search.

So, if the term you enter is "air," Cumulus will make matches on words like:

• air
• fairgrounds
• airplane

Though this might be what users sometimes want, it's probably not what they always want. Fortunately, it's easy to configure catalog fields to offer users the choice.

To add "whole word" search capabilities to your catalog fields:

1. Open the Preferences window for your catalog.
2. Under the Catalog Settings section, click the Record Fields tab. A list of the fields in your catalog appears.
3. Select one or more fields that you want to enable for word searching.
4. Right-click (Ctrl-click on Mac) and select Index for Word-Searching > Enable from the menu that appears.
5. Click the Apply button to save your changes.

Note: The option to enable word searching is also available from within each field's properties window.

A convenient context menu enables you to set word searching for many fields at once.

That's all you need to do for the catalog; now comes the user education part.

Using Full-Word Searching

Once the catalog fields have been enabled for word searching, taking advantage of the feature is easy. When you want to search for a whole word, just surround it in single quotes.

Example:

'AIR'

...finds "air" only. It will not also find "airplane," "fairgrounds" etc.

If you do want to find all occurrences of "air," just enter the term without quotes:

AIR

This will find "air," "airplane," "fair," "hair" etc.

Take note of the use of the single quotation marks here. Cumulus uses double quotation marks (") for the designation of multi-word phrases.

So, if you're looking for "air," enter it as:

'AIR'

But if you're looking for the phrase"Air Canada," it's entered like this:

"AIR CANADA"

NOTE: Cumulus searching is not case sensitive. The upper case letters are used in these examples for visual clarity. "AIR CANADA" is the same as "Air Canada" to Cumulus.

Using All Options Together

Keep in mind last month's tips and combine them for total search control when you need it:

'AIR' && 'FAIRGROUNDS'

... finds "air" AND "fairgrounds" but it will not find "airplane," "Fairmont" or other terms in which the text "air" is part of the term.

You can also use the minus (-) operator to exclude records that contain certain terms:

'AIR' && 'CANADA' && -"AIR CANADA"

... finds records with "air" AND "Canada" but it excludes those with the term "Air Canada." (Note the use of the double quotes for the phrase.)

The minus sign (-) excludes records that contain the word or phrase that follows it.

In this example, the minus operator used to omit "Air Canada" is necessary because even if the term "Air Canada" is in a single field, Cumulus treats the two words independently. So, "AIR" && "CANADA" without it, would also include airplane pictures when maybe what you're looking for are scenic shots of the Canadian open skies and wilderness.

Use of the minus operator is particularly useful when the search term you're using applies to very different subject matter. Assuming your assets have been categorized into hierarchies that accurately represent them, consider using category names as the exclusion:

'BERLIN' && -"Rock Bands"

This example might find records relating to the city or the composer, but not the rock band from the 80s. This example works because, by default, Cumulus considers the "Categories" asset record field in all Quicksearches. (The "Categories" field contains a list of all categories assigned to the asset.)

If you're thinking by using all these search modifiers together that simple searches can quickly become complex, you're right! This is exactly why Cumulus provides the Find Tool. The Find Tool makes complex searching easy. It's just good to know that you can modify Quicksearches when you need to.

In this issue:

• Canto News
• Cumulus Training During MacWorld
• Canto Employee Profile: Tech Support Specialist, Alain Defrasne
• Cumulus Power Tips