Search for Keywords

The Search for Keywords option allows you to more easily and quickly find records comprising values you need. The Search field is displayed in each table.

Please note that the Search for Keywords field works only for columns with the active Allow find option. Moreover, this option is available only in physical text columns like Text, Text-Multi-line, Phone, Email, Autonumber, Barcode, URL, and File-Attachment. The other columns like Number, Lookup, Summary, Formula do not include the Allow find option; therefore, you cannot use the Search for Keywords field for these columns.

Search for Keywords field

Keywords

All entered keywords are interpreted as text, so only records comprising text values or file attachment names can be searched. If you enter the name like Donald, records including text values like "Donald Clark", "Donald Smith", "donald@email.com", or the file attachment named "Donald Clark Contract 1" will be found.

Please note that the system does not display lookup columns values as search results.

In case you search the numeric data like price "$12" or percentage "12", the numeric column data will be ignored and will not be displayed as search results.

Please note that you can’t search records using only one character like "A" or "1" as a keyword. You can use a minimum of two or more characters.

Text query language supports the following constructs:

Query Example Description
feature Searches for inflectional forms of the word feature.
feature failure feature AND failure Searches for inflectional forms of the words feature and failure. The keyword AND is optional.
feature OR failure Searches for inflectional forms of the words feature or failure. You can use either the pipe symbol or OR keyword.
"feature failure" Searches for an exact phrase.
feature -failure Searches for issues containing the word feature but NOT the word failure
+feature Exact word: searches for the word feature without generating inflectional forms.
feat* Prefix search: searches for words that start with feat
<feature failure> Searches for the word failure in close proximity to the word feature.
Notes
  • You can use & (ampersand) symbol instead of AND keyword and | (pipe) symbol instead of OR keyword.
  • AND operator takes precedence over OR in queries. You can change the precedence using parentheses. For example:
    • feature failure OR issue is evaluated as (feature AND failure) OR issue.
    • You can change the order of evaluation so that OR is evaluated first: feature (failure OR issue)
  • Certain combinations are not allowed. For example, you can’t write the query consisting solely of NOT constructs or containing OR NOT combinations or use prefix search or exact word search in proximity brackets. As we designed the search process to be unobtrusive, such invalid constructs are silently ignored.

Search results displaying

When keywords are entered, TeamDesk searches equivalents in a database. If corresponding values are found in searchable columns, TeamDesk displays records with highlighted values.

Firstly, the values found in the current table records are displayed:

Continue Search Button

In case you need to continue searching, you should click on the Continue searching? button, and records found in the next table will be listed. If you need more results, you can click on the Continue searching? button again.

Eventually, all records keeping found values will be displayed as the list of tables and records.

Please note that only columns with the active Allow find option are searchable. To define which columns will be displayed as search results and in what order, set the Search Options of a table.

All found equivalents are marked by the yellow color. If a file attachment name comprises a keyword you search, such file attachment is displayed in a separate File Attachments table at the end of the Search Results list.

Search by Keywords

If some values should be ignored when you enable the Search option, you can exclude columns comprising such values from the scope of the search. To exclude a column, just uncheck the Allow find option on the column form:

  1. Click the Setup link in the top right corner of the window.

  2. Select a table you need.

  3. From the setup menu select Columns > Customize existing columns.

  4. Click the Edit button near a column you don’t want to be displayed as search results.

  5. Uncheck the Allow find option on the column form.

Allow find Option

Access restrictions

TeamDesk enables you to differentiate access rights to various objects in the system, such as Tables, Columns, etc. So if the access for a user to a table or a column is restricted, records of such table or values of such column can’t be displayed to this user as search results.