Search the knowledgebases

You can search knowledgebases to determine if your current issue matches any existing incidents or problems with known solutions or workarounds. Using an existing solution or workaround reduces your organization's costs and ensures that you are following approved policies and procedures.

If your Service Manager uses the SOLR search engine, follow these steps to search the knowledgebases,:

1. Click Knowledge Management > Search Knowledgebase.
2. Type the key words or phrases you want to search for.
3. Select the knowledgebase libraries to narrow your search.

4. Click Search.

   Service Manager searches knowledgebases and attachments, and returns with a list of results matching your search request.

   Tip If there are no results, or you did not find useful information within the search results, type a new search string for your search or use Advanced Search to specify additional search criteria.

5. Click the document title or identifier to open the document.

   In addition to the document content, you can also view additional information about the document. For example, if you open a document from Knowledge_Library, you can also see the following information about the document: Document ID, Document Type, Document subtype, Summary, Creation Date, Expiration Date, Author, Tags and Related (Document subtype is available only for the Reference type).

If you install and enable Smart Analytics as the search engine for your Service Manager, you can search the knowledgebases using Smart Search. For more information, see Use Smart Search as a general search tool.

Use advanced search

User roles: All users

If your Service Manager uses the SOLR search engine, you can use advanced search to narrow the results of a simple search or to restrict your search to certain conditions. In the advanced search page, you can specify what knowledgebases and document categories Service Manager searches. You can also specify a set of filtering parameters such as exact phrase and creation date.

To use advanced search, follow these steps:

1. Click Knowledge Management > Search Knowledgebase.
2. Click the Advanced button.
3. Type the key words or phrases you want to search for.
4. Select the knowledgebase libraries to narrow your search.

5. Provide advanced search filters for each of the knowledgebase libraries that you selected in step 4.

   Tip Select specific criteria if you can. For example, you can use the date fields to specify a particular date and time range. In addition, searching for records by specified Affected Services is supported in Service Manager starting from version 9.50.

6. Click Search.

   Service Manager returns a list of documents matching your search request. If there are no results, type a new search string for your search or specify additional search criteria.

Search within the search results

Sometimes a knowledgebase search query results in more matches than you can quickly and easily review. In such cases, you may want to search within your search results to find documents that address your particular issue. You can use both the simple and advanced search options to search within your search results.

To search within search results, follow these steps:

1. Click Knowledge Management > Search Knowledgebase.
2. Type the key words or phrases you want to search for.
3. Click Search. Service Manager returns a list of documents matching your search request.
4. Select the Search within results check box to continue searching within the search results.

5. Type another search string in the "Search for" box.

   Tip Make your second search as specific as possible to reduce the number of search results the query returns. For example, rather than searching for a generic term such as "server," use specific terms such as the server model number or name. You can also use the Advanced Search options to limit your search to particular knowledgebases.

6. Click Search. Service Manager returns a list of documents matching your search request.

   You can continue revising your search string to make the search more efficient; however, the search only searches the search results list.

Caution: Clear the Search within results check box to start a new search.

Sort the search results

By default, knowledgebase search results are sorted only by Relevancy in descending order. Once you have completed a knowledgebase search and a list of search results is already displayed, you can specify your preferences to sort the results.

To sort the search results, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Knowledge Management > Search Knowledgebase.

2. Perform a search.

   A list of search results is displayed.

   Note The sort options are not available until you have completed a search and a list of search results is already displayed.

3. Specify the following sort preferences:

   • Sort by multiple fields: If selected (default), sorts the current search results by a combination of these fields in the following order: Modified Date, Status, and Relevancy; If not selected, sorts the current search results by one of the these three fields.
   • Modified Date: When clicked, sorts the current search results by modification date in ascending or descending order. The name of the actual sort field is "sysmodtime" for all out-of-box knowledgebases.
   • Status: When clicked, sorts the current search results by status in ascending or descending order. The actual sort field being used varies with the knowledgebases: "problem.status" for Incident_Library, "open" for Interaction_Library, "status" for Knowledge_Library, and "rcStatus" for both KnownError_Library and Problem_Library.
   • Relevancy: When clicked, sorts the current search results by relevancy in ascending or descending order.