Vertec full-text search

As of Vertec 6.8, Vertec features a full-text search function that searches emails (incl. attachments) and documents stored in Vertec in addition to the texts.

Clicking on the magnifying glass in the navigation menu (or F6 and F12) opens the Vertec search page:

There are the following search fields:

Click on Search or Enter to start the search. The results appear below:

By default, the search results are sorted in descending order by relevance and date.

Double-clicking on a search result opens the relevant object.  

Documents and email attachments in which the search term was found are shown as links and can be opened directly.

For activities, the project and the contact, if available, are also shown. These are also direct links to the relevant object:

A total of 500 search results will be shown, even if more than 500 entries were found in one search. Above, for each class, you can see how many entries are shown and how many were found in total (shown / found). This is especially useful if more entries have been found than can be shown:

In this case, the search result can be narrowed down by adjusting the search and filter options.

The total of the objects found is given as follows:

• If all found objects can be shown, shown and found are equal.
• If objects of a class are shown, but in total more than 500 objects of this class are found, the total is shown in steps of 500, e.g. >1500.    
• If no objects are shown by a class (because 500 objects from other classes are shown already), but some are found, then the total is rounded up in increments of 100, e.g. ca. 100.    
• This is done because, for performance reasons, the read permissions are only determined when the result list is compiled. The approximate information does not allow precise conclusions to be drawn about the exact number.   

The search syntax

Exact search with quotation marks

Search terms can be enclosed in quotation marks. In this case, the entire term is searched. For example, the search for "Christoph Keller" finds only entries in which this term occurs in this exact way. If, on the other hand, you search for Christoph Keller, without quotation marks, all entries containing Christoph and Keller will be found.

• In Vertec versions up to and including 6.8.0.14, a single word cannot be enclosed in quotation marks, it must be at least two words. On the other hand, word stem, similarity, etc. apply.
• In Vertec versions 6.8.0.15 and later, terms that are enclosed in quotation marks are searched exactly as they were entered ("exact match"), whether they are one word or several words. Only umlauts and special characters are interpreted the same way as described below.  

Search for multiple terms

If more than one word is entered as a search term, the words are searched with AND, so only results containing a combination of the words are shown.

This can be adjusted as follows:

• Exact search with quotation marks, see above.
• Or search with OR: The Or search can be used to search for several terms without having to find all terms in the same entry. The search for Christoph OR Keller
  finds all entries in which either Christoph or Keller (or both) appear.
• Exclude terms with NOT: Certain terms can be excluded with NOT. The search for Christoph NOT Keller finds all the entries that contain Christoph, but not Keller.
• The keywords AND, NOT and OR must be written in capital letters. 

The words can be combined with keywords and quotation marks or wildcards (see below).  

Wildcard search

You can use the question mark ? to replace any character, allowing you to enter search terms with varying letters without having to enter each possible scenario individually. Example:

• The search for globali?ation finds both the terms globalization and globalisation.

You can use the asterisk * as a wildcard to expand the search for the entered term. The asterisk replaces any number of characters. Examples:

• The text of an activity contains the word globalization. If you enter the word global, the search does not find anything. However, if you enter global* it finds the relevant activity.
• For indexed invoice numbers, searching for 0018 will not find anything. However, if you search for *0018, you will find activities and invoices relating to the queried invoice number:

  

Note: Using wildcards deactivates both the similarity search and the word stem search. This means, for example, that a search for globaal* or globaalisat?on delivers no results.

Umlauts and special characters

Umlauts and special characters are ignored, in both indexing and in the search. For example, the search for “Müller” searches for “Muller” and thus finds both “Müller” and “Muller,”. The search for “Sørenson” finds “Sørenson,” “Sörenson” and “Sorenson”. This achieves the best results across all languages.

Stop words

As of Vertec 6.8.0.15 there are no more stop words.    

In earlier versions, there is a set of language-specific stop words that are not searched for, such as “and,” “in,” etc. If a search term consists only of stop words, no results are shown.

Typographical errors

For typographical errors (typos), the Levenshtein distance is used If Activate similar words search is enabled. This means that a certain deviation is tolerated.

In the Vertec full-text search, the following rules apply:

• The search term must have at least three characters
• A mutation is allowed.

In English, the search for abcense (two characters swapped), absense (one character changed) or absnce (one character omitted), finds the term absence. In German, the search for Rechnugn (two characters swapped), Rechnunn (one character changed) or Rechung (one character omitted), finds the term Rechnung.

Word stem search

The word stem search means that, for example, the search for house also find houses.

The word stem search is always active automatically. It is language-dependent and is based on the language selected on the search page.

For example, the search for bikes, only finds bike if EN is the language selected.  

In addition to the default language, the languages defined as additional search languages in the system settings are available for the word stem search.

Configuring search fields

In the full-text search, all indexed data and documents are searched.  

All objects for which at least one configuration is defined are considered. For this, there is a subfolder indexed fields in the
class settings on each class:

In addition, you can find an overview of all index field definitions in the folder Settings > Full-text search:

Here, you can define additional index fields and include them in the search index. The index configurations shown here are supplied by Vertec as the default.

Note: Indexing of documents and emails is not configured here. It is defined in the System settings for full-text search.

Special case of creditors and expenses

As of version 6.8.0.18, it is possible to index receipts (images & PDFs) in expenses and creditors. Also for these classes index field definitions are usually entered, which are structured as follows:

As a search result, the document name is output as a Receipt if the search term has been found in the receipt document. As with documents and attachments in emails, it can be opened directly from there.

The index field definitions have the following attributes:

• Index type: Specifies the data source and is one of the following values:
  • Field: The value is in a persistent database field of the data type string/varchar. The index field must be a persistent member of the class.
    Exception for Creditor/Expenses: The field here is derived and it is a binary data type blob. See section above Special case of creditors and expenses.
  • Key: The value is in a key on the data set. The index field must contain the name of the key.
  • Custom fields: The value is in a custom field. The internal name of the custom field must be specified in the index field. This must be of type “Character," "ANSI Text" or "Text".
• Index label: String. Optional. The label shows the name with which the field value is written to the index. Therefore, it must be unique per object type (class).

  The label is used later when the search results are displayed on the search page to indicate the field in which the search term was found. If no label is set, the value index field is shown instead.

• Index field: String. Specifies the field name, depending on the selected index type.

If new index fields are defined, the indexing must be refreshed before corresponding results appear. This can be done with one of the Python functions or with the scheduled tasks.