Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Words and Phrases
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| A single word | cat
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Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
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A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |
Using Boolean Operators
| Search for | Operator | Example |
|---|---|---|
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Two or more words in the same topic |
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| Either word in a topic |
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| Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
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| Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
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| A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
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Documenting the root cause
The root cause is the reason why the problem exists. Identifying and documenting the root cause leads to a workaround and known error status. Identifying the root cause also formally stores this information in the database for future reference. The following table shows a sample problem and different root causes that affect the workaround and final solution.
| Problem | Root Cause |
|---|---|
| Service Manager upgrade fails | User error. The user did not uninstall the previous version first. |
| Service Manager upgrade fails | Training required. The user did not know that the client version must be the same as the server version. |
| Service Manager upgrade fails | Configuration Item error. The operating system is not supported. |
Related topics
Phase 3: Investigation
Problems with multiple Configuration Items
Related topics
Document the root cause
Document the workaround
Open a Problem Management task
