Searching

Watch a video on the search-functionality here.

Using full text search you can search projects or workspaces for documents, tasks, bugs, forums, Wiki pages, users, SCM commit comments, attachments and projects. The search is based on indexing, which takes place in the background and the new artifacts are searchable within seconds. Once indexing is complete, CodeBeamer's search automatically synchronizes with any changes you make. You can search and then place tags or labels on the relevant items you found, and share just about everything with your team.

Full-text search is provided for:

• documents - including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, RTF, PDF, HTML, wiki and text document contents,
• projects - the content of the name, description and category fields,
• tracker items - including all fields, comments and attachments. For attachments the same file formats are supported as for document search,
• CMDB configuration items,
• branches,
• report - the content of the name and description fields.

codebeamer Simple Search Syntax

A simple syntax is used for word based searches. The simple search field is found in the upper right corner of almost every codebeamer screen. By default codeBeamer executes a prefix search. This means that when for example you search for org the result will contain issues containing org and also organization. You can override this by using the Advanced query syntax.

If you know the ID of the artifact you want to find you can use a shortcut. For example if the issue id is 2000 just type #2000 to the search box and hit enter. The only element in the result will be the issue with that id.

Tabbed Search Results

In both simple and advanced searches, trackers, wikis, acounts and document items in codeBeamer are all searched for the keyword or text. The results are given in a tabbed table, separated into pages. For example a search on:

bond

may give results as shown in the screen capture figure below.

Figure: Search Results

On the All tab you'll find the list of all the different type of matching items.

Quick filter options

When you click the search box on the toolbar an option list opens:

The first section is useful when you want to restrict the search results to those artifacts that were modified in the last 7, 30 or 90 days.

In the Search in Project you can select some projects to restrict the result to only the entities from those project.

in the Search in section you can select the type of atifacts you want to search for.

By clicking on the GO button you can start the search or if you want to access the Advanced Search page just click on the downward pointing arrow beside the button.

Advanced Search Syntax and Options

The supported search string complexity ranges from keywords to keyword groups connected by logical operators. The keywords can be specified using wild cards, as described below. In the Advanced Search, Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. CodeBeamer search supports the OR, AND, +, - and NOT boolean operators. Boolean operators, grouping (brackets) and fuzzy searches are only supported when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked, in the Advanced Search. Boolean operators, grouping (brackets) and fuzzy searches are only supported when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked, in the Advanced Search.

The OR, AND and NOT boolean operators must be used in ALL CAPS form.

Figure: Advanced Search on CodeBeamer Applications.

Filtering results by date or username

You can use dates and/or usernames in the search expression to restrict the number of results. Dates can be entered in the format YYYYDDMM, YYYYDD or YYYY to achieve this. For example, to search for issues that are related to Firefox and are either submitted by or assigned to john.smith65 in 2014 May, use a query like this:

Firefox john.smith65 201405

Wildcard Searches

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

CodeBeamer supports single and multiple character wildcard searches.

To perform a single character wildcard search, use the "?" symbol.

To perform a multiple character wildcard search, use the "*" symbol. The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match the single character replaced.

For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the following query:

te?t

Multiple character wildcard searches look for zero or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:

test*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term.

te*t

Escaping Special Characters

The codeBeamer search supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The following special characters are supported:

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

When these characters are in the search text, use the \ character before them (to 'escape' them). For example to search for the term "(1+1):2" use the query:

\(1\+1\)\:2

OR

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in the document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The || symbol sequence can be used in place of the OR word. To search for documents that contain either the "jakarta apache" or just "jakarta" strings, use the following query:

"jakarta apache" OR jakarta

The default operator (used when neither OR nor AND is present in the query expression) is AND. If you'd like to use OR you need to write it in the query explicitly. Or you can simply use Extended search.

AND

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The && symbol sequence can be used in place of operator AND. To search for documents that contain both the "jakarta apache" and the "Apache CodeBeamer" terms, use the following query:

"jakarta apache" AND "Apache CodeBeamer

The default operator is AND so the above query is equivalent with this one:

"jakarta apache" "Apache CodeBeamer

+

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

The "+" operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exists in the document. To search for documents that must contain the "jakarta" term and may contain the "apache" term, use the following query:

+jakarta OR apache

-

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

The "-" operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol. To search for documents that contain "jakarta apache" term but not "Apache CodeBeamer" term, enter the following query:

"jakarta apache" -"Apache CodeBeamer"

NOT

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after the NOT operator. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The ! symbol can be used in place of the word NOT. To search for documents that contain the "jakarta apache" term but not the "Apache CodeBeamer" term, use the query:

"jakarta apache" NOT "Apache CodeBeamer"

The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:

NOT "jakarta apache"

Grouping

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' box is checked in the Advanced Search form.

CodeBeamer supports using parentheses to group clauses into sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to define a more complex boolean logic for a query.

For instance, to search for one of the terms "jakarta" or "apache" and also for the term "website", use the query:

(jakarta OR apache) AND website

Fuzzy Searches

This feature only works when the 'Allow Query Syntax' and 'Find approximate matches' boxes are checked in the Advanced Search form.

CodeBeamer supports fuzzy searches based on the Levenshtein Distance, or Edit Distance algorithm. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a single word term. For example to search a term which spells similar to "roam" use the fuzzy search:

roam~ 

This search will find terms like foam and roams.

Extended search

By default the words in a search expression are connected by AND. That is, the result contains only those items that match all parts of the expression. You can change this on the advanced search page by ticking the Extended search checkbox. After this the words of the expression will be connected by OR and all items matching at least one of the words will appear in the search result.

Restricting Search Scope with Project groups

When you know that what you're searching for is in a certain type of project, but you don't know exactly which project, searching by project group helps to narrow the scope of the search. Please see Project Groups for more information on working sets.

Search for Artifacts by Owner / Submitter

You can enter a CodeBeamer user name or account name in the Owner/Submitter field if you want to find artifacts created by a particular user:

To search for work items submitted by the account "j.wilson" you can enter in the Owner/Submitter field of the search form:

j.wilson

You can also use the account's real user name or other account data such as company name, phone number and others for searching. To search for work items submitted by the company "Intland" you can enter it in the Owner/Submitter field of the search form:

Intland

Search for Artifacts by Creation / Modification Date

Enter dates and intervals to search when artifacts were created or modified by filling the After and Before fields of the search form:

This way you can find all documents or tracker items which were uploaded onto the server at a specific interval of time. To find all artifacts which were uploaded to the server between 2005-05-04 and 2005-05-30, enter the following values and click GO :

Created / After: 2005-05-04
Created / Before: 2005-05-30

To find all artifacts which were modified on the server between 2005-05-04 and 2005-05-30, enter the following values and click GO :

Modified / After: 2005-05-04
Modified / Before: 2005-05-30

Search for Artifacts by Date and by User

To find all artifacts which were modified by the account "j.wilson" on the server between 2005-05-04 and 2005-05-30, enter the following search criteria:

Modified / After: 2005-05-04
Modified / Before : 2005-05-30
Owner/Submitter: j.wilson

Search for Source Symbols and Files

The search for source symbols and files supports only simple pattern matching. The more advanced features described above in the boolean operators section do not apply here. For example to search for the source code symbol "open", enter the values following value and click GO: