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Jama Connect User Guide

Full text search

For its search function, Jama Connect uses an index of the database fields to find the items you are looking for. It also searches in files — text, Word, and PDF files.

You can search for fields and attachments for terms and phrases. For more targeted searching, use powerful syntax.

Ways you can search

Search option

Example: type this...

To return...

Single term — Enter a single word.

Test

Items that include the terms test, pretest, tests, tested, and tester.

Phrase — Surround a group of words in double quotes.

“primary test"

Only items that contain the words primary test.

Single character wildcard — Enter a single character wildcard (?) with a single term (not a phrase).

te?t

Items that contain test, tent, and text.

Multi-character wildcard — Enter a multi-character wildcard (*) with a single term (not a phrase).

syn*ize

items that contain the terms synchronize and synthesize.

Boolean operators — Boolean operators in ALL CAPS to combine phrases or terms.

OR (||) is the default Boolean operator when you enter two terms or phrases.

primary test OR sample

Items that contain either primary test or sample.

AND returns items where both terms and phrases exist.

primary test AND sample

Items that contain both "primary test" and sample.

+ returns items that must contain the term or phrase immediately following the +. For example, +primary test returns items that must contain primary and might contain test.

+primary test

Items that must contain primary and might not contain test.

NOT (-) excludes items that contain the word or phrase after NOT. The application doesn't allow null searches, so you must enter something before the word NOT to get any results.

primary test NOT sample

Items that contain primary test but not sample.

Parentheses — Group clauses and form sub-queries.

(tests OR samples) AND maps

Items that contain tests and maps OR samples and maps.

Field name — Use field names followed by a colon to search for information in specific fields. If a field name contains spaces, replace the space with an underscore character (_).

user_status:new and tag:security

Items with a User status field that contains new.

Important considerations

  • The application doesn't support searches for null values, including checkboxes that haven't been selected.

  • Files larger than 25 MB aren't indexed, so their content isn't searchable.

  • Searchable file types are: PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, TXT, RTF.

  • Non-searchable file types are: XLSX, XLS, XML, HTML, HTM.

  • To avoid a syntax error when you search, don't begin a search with an open or close parenthesis followed by text or by itself.

  • These special characters are automatically excluded (escaped) from full text search, so that they can be searched for as plain text:

    \ ^ [ ] { } ~ /

  • If you used \ to manually exclude special characters, you can achieve the same results by using double quotations. For example, if you previously searched using \*abc to treat the * character as text, you can now use “*abc” instead.

  • Special character search only works with newly created items. To use with older items, re-index the items you want to use in the search.

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