Property, Operator, Value, Options
Each object has property values that are assigned to it in the document card. These property values can be used to search for documents in a precise manner. A document property can be for example Project, and the value of this project can be Hospital Expansion (Florida). If you perform an advanced search with these values, the search returns all documents for which Hospital Expansion (Florida) has been defined as the value of the Project property.
A property can be an object property or an Item from a list selection. Item from a list selections affect all property definitions that have been defined using the selected value list. For example, if you have installed M-Files for evaluation, the properties Buyer and Supplier in the demo vault are both defined using the value list Customers. If you now select Item from list 'Customers' as a search criterion, the search returns all documents where the Buyer or Supplier property has the value that was searched for. If, on the other hand, your search criterion is, for example, the Buyer property only, the M-Files search is limited to the Buyer property of documents.
The properties tab of the additional search conditions dialog.
In the Operator field, you can determine criteria other than equal to. For more information, refer to the table below.
| = | Equal to |
| != | Unequal to |
| > | Greater than This operator is useful when the value to be selected contains numbers. You can easily find all values that are greater than the value you have specified. For example, if your document vault contains the data type of the Department property as numbers, the search criterion > 10 returns the documents whose Department value is greater than 10. |
| >= | Greater than or equal to |
| < | Less than |
| <= | Less than or equal to |
| One of | You can select some property values for the search, for instance certain projects but not all of them. In this case, the search results are just the documents whose Project property has one of the values you selected with the One of operator. For example, the Project property of the document Window Chart E12.dwg is "Hospital Expansion (Florida)". |
| Not one of | This search option is the opposite of the previous one. |
| Contains | When you want to search for documents by letter combination, for instance a word, you can use the Contains operator. For example, if you want to find all documents in the Demo Vault whose Project property value contains the letters pan, the search results include the document Window Chart E12.dwg, whose Project property is "Hospital Expansion (Florida)". The word Expansion contains the letters pan that were determined as the search criterion. |
| Does not contain | This search option is the opposite of the previous one. |
| Starts with | The Starts with option works in almost the same way as the Contains option. Here, the word must start with the value specified. |
| Does not start with | This search option is the opposite of the previous one. |
| Matches wildcard pattern | The Matches wildcard pattern option can be used with the wildcards ? and *. The ? character can replace any single character, and the * character can replace any number of characters. For example, if you want to find documents whose Design Field property value starts with any eight characters followed by the character string design and then any number of any characters, you specify ????????design* as the search criterion. The Design Field property value of documents returned by this search could be, for example Graphic design or Web site design. |
| Does not match wildcard pattern | This search option is the opposite of the previous one. |
| Is empty | In some cases, the properties of a document have no value. This happens when no value is specified for the property at the stage of filling in the metadata card – e.g., when no value has been specified for the Project property. The Is empty operator utilizes the missing value in the search. For example, you can easily find all documents whose Project property has no value. |
| Is not empty | This search option is the opposite of the previous one. |
Next, you need to select the property value(s). Please note that you can select multiple properties by holding down the Ctrl key.
Selecting properties for the search filter.
When you search for Projects with the Matches wildcard pattern operator (????house*), one of the documents returned from the Demo Vault is the document Functional Specification.doc, whose Project property has the value Warehouse Management System Development. The word Warehouse begins with any four character string, followed by the word house and then any character string.
Utilizing the"Matches wildcard pattern" operator.
If a property definition based on a hierarchical value list is selected as the search criterion, you can also select whether to include the values higher and lower in the hierarchy in the search.
If your search criterion is a property that is defined by time stamps, you can make the search more specific by using the Options column. For example, you can find all recently created documents. Give "Created < 7" as your search criterion, and select the option DaysFrom(). The search will return all documents created over the last seven days.
Also refer to Subordination of search criteria and Indirect searches under Advanced Search. You can always utilize indirectness for specifying the properties in filter settings.