The Search Query Builder allows you to perform advanced searches by using various buttons and drop down options to apply syntax that you would otherwise have to type into the main search bar.


Search Query Builder is enabled by clicking on the Builder icon to the right of the Search and Save buttons.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Adding a term

Once the Builder tool has been enabled, you will be able to add a search term by clicking or clicking and dragging Add term. You can then enter the term that you are looking for, with the box initially setup to search within document or transcript text.

Note: Anything you enter into the box will be considered a single term, so phrases and sentences will automatically be surrounded by quotation marks in the converted syntax. This is seen in the main search bar once you run the search.


The first drop-down in the search term box is used to change the type of content you are searching within. By default this will be document or transcript text, 'Text', but can be changed to other metadata fields such as Date, Document ID and Tags. 


The second drop-down will allow you to select how the term is searched for. With the Text field selected, this would show options for Should contain, Must contain and Must not contain, with the final option allowing you to perform a NOT type search if selected. Some fields, such as Date, have different options relevant to the field type selected.

More information on field searches and the options within each available field can be found here.


The More drop-down can be used to apply modifiers to your search term. There are three potential modifiers that you can choose from depending on your search term and the field being searched. The modifiers available are:

  • Fuzzy: for single terms only. Fuzzy will allow to search for terms that are misspelled or have a slight variation in spelling. Users can select a fuzziness of 1 or 2 which accounts for 1 or 2 characters of variance.
  • Proximity: can only be used if the term contains two or more words. This will search for the words within proximity of each other.  Users can enter any positive integer to limit how closely the words must appear to each other with the default starting at 1.
  • Boost: for single terms and phrases and only works when multiple terms have been added to the search query. Boosting is used to make one term more relevant than another, and the documents returned are ranked by the frequency of the boosted term. Users can enter any positive integer with 1 being the default value.


Adding additional terms

Additional terms can be added into the builder by clicking or clicking and dragging Add term. This will provide another search term box in which you can enter a further term. Between the two boxes will be a drop-down with the boolean operator OR selected, this can be toggled to the AND operator at any time. You may add as many terms into your search and select which boolean operator you want to apply between each term.

●      AND – shows results where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document or transcript e.g. dog AND cat

●      OR – shows results where one term or the other exists e.g. dog OR cat


Adding logic groups

Logic groups are a way to organize search conditions in a visual format, similar to parentheses, that allows you to control the order in which your search is processed. Logic groups are evaluated first, and then connected to other logic groups or filter conditions using AND or OR operators.


To add a logic group:

  1. Click or click and drag from Add logic group to create an empty group box.
  2. Select Add term to create a term box and click and drag the six dot icon of the term box to add it into the empty group. Alternatively, click and drag from Add term and drag the term box directly into the empty group.
  3. You can then repeat step 2 and add as many further terms as necessary into the group.
  4. You may then want to apply a further term or logic group that sits outside of the initial logic group. In this example the matching documents would need to have both the terms Enron and Nymex appearing in the text, or simply have the Key document tag applied at the document level.
Once you have created a group and added terms, you may use the six dot icon to drag and re-arrange any term that you wish to reposition it within a group, or to pull out of or into a group. For more information on logic groups please click here.