Personalizing Search: FileNexus® Tips & Tricks


Searching for data needs to be as fast, easy and intuitive as possible. FileNexus® allows you to optimize your Search screens to suit your needs and return the results you’re looking for. You’ll learn how to:

  1. Streamline your Index Search screen
  2. Refine your search results
  3. Personalize your Search Results screen
  4. Develop Advanced Searches
  5. Simplify searches using pick lists
  6. Create custom Filing Cabinets for your own cross-folder searches

1. Streamline your Index Search screen
With FileNexus®, you don’t have to take the Index Search screen as it is “out of the box”. In this example, we want to move Customer Name to the top, and move the other Indexes around to suit your preferred view.

How do you do it?
Just left click and then drag and drop the Indexes into place. It’s as simple as that!

Another Tip: To make sure that the changes remain persistent, click on the Options button, and click on the Lock Search Indexes tick box.

2. Refine your search results
Your Index Search window may contain a number of different Indexes – some of which may be irrelevant to you. You can reduce the number of Indexes which will return search results. Imagine you only want to see documents based on Customer Name, Subject and Archive Date.

How do you do it?
Simply check the tick boxes next to Index each on or off. Now you will only see search results for Customer Name, Subject and Archive Date, based on the checked tick boxes.

3. Personalize your search results screen

i. Sort data in each column
How do you do it?  Click on the column header. The first left click of your mouse will sort the results in ascending order. The second click will sort the results in descending order. It’s that simple.

ii. Change the column order
How do you do it? Simply drag and drop the column headings horizontally to their desired locations.

iii. Grouping Results by Index Columns
This tip is very helpful when your search result returns many types of related documents.

How do you do it?
To group your results, all you have to do is click and drag the column heading of the Index or Indexes you want into the grey space just below the Search Results Toolbar. In this example, we want all of our search results organized by Vendor Name, and then by Invoice Number.

In the example above, you can see that Creative Catering have an invoice, packing slip, purchase order and cheque associated with their vendor name and invoice number 100.

Another Tip: To expand your grouped results, click on the + signs next to the Index name.

4. Develop Advanced Searches
Advanced searches let you look for specific data based on more complicated criteria. For example, you want to find all of the employee files that were archived on October 12, 2011, where the employee name starts with “J” and ends with “Smith”.

How do you do it?
On the Advanced tab, select the first index that you want to perform a comparison against (in this case, Customer Name) and click Add. The Add Index Search Criteria window will open.

Select the appropriate operator (in this case – Starts With) from the Choose Search Operator drop down. Then enter a value (“J”) in the Value edit box. Click OK when you’re finished.

This will return you to the Advanced Search tab with your query showing in the window.

Click on the Add button again to continue building the query, repeating these steps until your query is complete. In this case, search for “Smith” by selecting the operator “Contains”, and the date by selecting “Equals” and the specific date.

When you have finished building your query, click on the Search button to retrieve your search results.

Another Tip: If this is a query that you’ll be using on a regular basis, save it by clicking on the Save button.  The next time you want to it, click on the File Menu and select Open to select your saved query – it’s that simple!

5. Simplify searches using Pick-Lists
In FileNexus® 6 and later, you can use pre-populated Pick-Lists in the Index Search pane of the FileNexus® Client. These pre-populated drop-down menus let you to select valid search values for an Index without having to remember the exact search criteria or having to manually key it in.

(Note: You may need to contact your FileNexus® Administrator to enable Pick-List searching.)

In this example, a Finance team member is looking to find specific document types relating to client accounts.

How do you do it?
Simply click on the drop down next to the index name and select from the displayed values. Indexes set up for pick list searching are easy to spot – they’re highlighted in yellow.

Enter any remaining search criteria you need, and click on the Search button to conduct your search for documents. That’s all you need to do!

6. Create custom Filing Cabinets for your own cross-folder searches
Do you search through multiple folders on a regular basis? Do you have to sort through complicated folder tree structures to find what you’re looking for? With Custom Filing Cabinets, you can store virtual copies of the folders you regularly look at—letting you get straight down to work.

How do you do it?
First, to create a new cabinet, right click in the gray Cabinet List view and click New File Cabinet. Then right-click the cabinet and select Rename to give it a meaningful title.  Add folders to the cabinet simply by dragging them from the Folder Tree to your Cabinet.  A virtual copy of the folder is placed in the cabinet – nothing actually moves in the Folder Tree structure. Expand the cabinet to see the folders inside by clicking on the Cabinet icon next  to the cabinet name.

In order to search your Filing Cabinet, you simply double-click the cabinet you wish to search. (You can also right-click and select Search). FileNexus® will automatically conduct a subfolder search of all folders within the cabinet without having to click on the Subfolder Search icon. That’s all you need to do!

Another Tip: If you select an individual folder contained in a cabinet, double-clicking it will conduct a search on only its contents.

NOTE: The folders in your filing cabinet need to share common Indexes in order to see multiple search criteria. If they don’t have any Indexes in common, you will only be able to conduct a common search on Archive Date.

For more information on how these FileNexus® Tips & Tricks, please email Loris Technical Support, or call 416-252-4701 and press “3”.

Published May 23, 2012.