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Edit search screen

This screen can be used to specify what you would like to look for, and what data you would like to consider in your search. Not all the controls listed here may be present in the search screen; this depends on how your system administrator has configured Dialog Alert/Dialog Discovery. The following controls can be used for entering your search parameters:

Search on

This text box is where you can type in your query, using natural language words and phrases. You may, if you wish, type in a complete sentence. The search will look for these words, and will return a list of the most relevant items.
You can put as many other words as you like into the box; you should always enter as many words as you can (that are relevant to your interests) into this box.
Additional techniques that can be used for entering queries: Please refer to the online user manual for further details of these query techniques.

Language selection

You can specify that the query will look only for document items in a particular language (choose the language from the this search is in selection list). Dialog Alert/Dialog Discovery will work out which documents have a high incidence of words in the chosen language, and will include them in the search. The only documents in other languages that will be matched to the words in the query are those where words occur with initial capital letters.

Time scale

You can limit your search to items that were added to the index within a number of days or other periods specified by you. Any items outside this date range will be ignored.

Sorting by

You can choose how you would like the results of your query to be displayed. The default setting sorts by relevance (this is determined by the relevance of each item). Relevance is a rating of how well the contents of each document item match the search terms and conditions you have typed in.

Document items which have the same score are then ordered by word proximity - in other words, an item which contains search words close to each other will be ranked more highly than one which contains the same words, but not close to each other.

Alternatively, you could choose to sort by relevance then date, in which case items with the same relevance will be presented in reverse chronological order; in other words, the most recent comes first. (The date used is the date when the item was written.) Also, you can sort by date then relevance, where items are listed in reverse chronological order, with items written on the same day presented in order of relevance (in other words, the highest percentage score comes first).

Excluding relevance

You can choose to exclude all items which have a relevance below a level you specify. To do this, you can select from a list of relevance ratings in the excluding items less than % relevant drop-down list.

Category filters

If you wish to perform a more exact match, you should use category filters. These are drop-down selection lists allowing you to restrict your search to different categories of market sectors, locations and scopes.

Select the appropriate categories when performing a query - this will restrict the results to those categories.

Search button

When you have finished setting up your query, click on this button to initiate a search.

Thesaurus button

Click on this button if you wish to use a thesaurus to find similar or related words. This will open the thesaurus screen.