search question

[ayecarumba]

Is there a way to search across all text in the ticket including the custom fields (columns)?

[Alex]

Could you please give an example of such query?

[ayecarumba]

Thank you for such a quick reply.

A customer fills out several of the custom fields (columns) that were created by the addon design module.  The agent can search through each individual field as a filter.  It would be nice to have a search that globaly searched through the custom fields (columns), the text of the message, the e-mail address and all other information in the ticket.  I understand that the idea of a filter is to reduce found sets of data but it would be helpful to find a piece of data in any of the fields -- in other words a search across all data in the ticket.

As an aside, is there documentation for the search (filter) itself.  I have used an asterisk as a wildcard but it is not clear if other search (filter) capability exsists.

[Alex]

Not sure about this idea: applying generic text search to fixed value or restricted fields (ID, email address, operator id) would result in empty set in most cases (e.g. a single white space in search string applied to email address would not return any records). Also mind the custom fields of list and item type. And last but not least - original values of all custom fields are available inside of 1st message.

Search fields support multiple '*' wildcards. If using Standard or MySQL Edition you may try regular expressions. However we do not guarantee availability of this feature.

[ayecarumba]

Thank you for your quick response.

While they are available in the 1st message they are not searchable as such.  In testing the items added in a new ticket that occur in custom fields using TEXT, LIST or ITEM I get no results found when searching the using the agent screen TEXT input.  Interestingly enough an asterisk in this agent screen  TEXT input returns no results and when in the agent screen custom fields returns all entries with data.  I can search for fre* and find Fred as a name in the agent screen NAME input yet I get no results for proble* in the agent screen TEXT input when problem exists.  I cannot search for * in the agent screen  TEXT input when * exists in the original ticket text.

I had tried some regex but I do not want agents or customers to use regex as in a production environment the use of special characters will be stripped.

Regards,

[Alex]

The text search is different. It does not support wildcards. It supports commonly used syntax:

Search quick tips: Search terms are not case sensitive: "White House", "white house", "WHITE HOUSE" will produce the same results.

white house - Will find all tickets having messages containing words "white" AND "house" in no particular order.

"white house" - Will find all tickets having messages containing phrase "white house".

"white house" george - Will find all tickets having messages containing word "george" AND phrase "white house" in no particular order.


Thanks for heads up, the next release will provide some hints.

[ayecarumba]

Thank you for your help.  It would be helpful to have beginning letter matching so that whit hous would still find white house.  It would also be helpful to be able search across all custom fields in the layout module as customers frequently enter text in the wrong field.

Regards,