Searching & Reporting
Now that you have a repository of knowledge base articles in your exchange folder and as the number multiplies, finding the right article at the time of need is crucial for support team. For example, more so then often, support staff would require to query articles based on particular problems, author, KB number or simply, custom fields etc. Therefore, a comprehensive search capability with rich filter sets and techniques are imperative. But the inbuilt Outlook search functionality provide few options to search non-default fields (i.e., that are not part of default Outlook fields) and is only good to search the subject of the articles. So to overcome this handicap, TeamKB implements its own search feature with support for diverse filters that will search not only Outlook default fields (such as created date, modified date, subject etc), but also TeamKB specific fields (such as Author, Editor, Contributors, Notes, Custom Fields etc.). Results of search performed from within the TeamKB toolbar are displayed in the folder view itself.
In 'Published Articles' folder, a search box in the toolbar accepts keyword(s) to make a query to all KB articles of the folder. Search is performed on inbuilt Outlook fields as well as TeamKB specific fields. The matches of the search are then automatically displayed in the folder view in Outlook itself using the relevant filter (while restricting those items from showing up in the view that does not fulfill the search). For example in the screenshot below, a keyword 'disc' is searched in all the KB articles in the 'Published Articles' folder, returning 3 articles. All three have the searched keyword in the subject itself, and one of them has it in the message body field too.
Multiple keywords search are also supported using the AND (+) and OR (,) logic.
For example, to search for KB articles that has both 'disc' and 'DVD'
keywords in any of the fields (not
necessarily in sequence), you may enter something like disc + DVD. Likewise, to
search for articles that has either 'disc' or 'DVD' keyword (in any fields), you will
enter disc, DVD.
Advanced Searching and Reporting
Apart from the free text search by keywords,
TeamKB also implements an
advanced search and reporting options with an array of filters available to
extract only the required Kb articles quickly within the folder view itself.
Currently, there are 10 filter types available in the advanced search and
reports. You can choose any of these from the drop down menu (the first button).
Created On
Search and report those KB articles that were created on the specified date.
You can feed the date by clicking on the 'Pick' button. A popup dialog with a
month view calendar allows you to select a date.
Created Between
Search and report those
KB articles that were created between a specified date range.
You can feed the date by clicking on the 'Pick' button on each From: and To:
field. A popup dialog with a month view calendar allows you to select a date.
Modified on
Search and report those
KB articles that were modified on the specified date.
You can feed the date by clicking on the 'Pick' button. A popup dialog with a
month view calendar allows you to select a date.
Modified Between
Search and report those KB articles that were modified between a specified date range.
You can feed the date by clicking on the 'Pick' button on each From: and To:
field. A popup dialog with a month view calendar allows you to select a date.
Author
Search and report those KB articles created by the a specified
user from the
drop down list.
Problems
Search and report those cases belong to the specified problem category and type
from the drop down list.
If no type is specified, then it would show all KB
articles that belong to the
specified problem category.
Contributed By
Search and report those KB articles that were
contributed by the selected user from the drop down list.
Origin
Search and report those KB articles that belongs to a particular
origin. 