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What’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5 : Part 2 : Search and Query

We’re continuing on with what’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5. Part 1 is available here.

Simplified Search Tips

We’ve simplified the Search Tips page, making it easier for users to understand all of the robust searching capabilities that are available.

search_tips

search_tips2

Simplified Date Searching

We’ve simplified searching using a date/time property.

The baseline date/time range search can be a little cumbersome.

For example, to search for items created in December of 2011: created:[20110101 TO 20111231]

That syntax is still available for use, but we’ve expanded data/time searching for some common scenarios.

Search for items created today: created:today

Search for items created in the last 30 days: created:30days

And that number (30) can be any number: created:7days, created:365days, etc.

And, of course, you can combine this with other properties and keywords, and even save it as a favorite.

Here’s my search for all Franchise Support cases created in the last 30 days:

search

Distinct Queries

We’ve added the ability for Distinct Queries in the Query module.

This is probably best explained with an example.

Lets say I want to show all of the cases touched today by a particular user.

Without a distinct query, it’s possible that I would see the same case in the report multiple time. For example, if the same user logged multiple notes to the same case on the same day. Or if they did multiple workflow operations, which is also common.

This could result in a query output such as this:

touched_today_not_distinct

Notice that in the above query results, the same case is repeated.

Annie really didn’t touch 7 cases. She really only touched 3 distinct cases.

By making the query distinct, we get the desired results:

touched_today_distinct

And the way we make a query distinct is by checking the Only show distinct rows checkbox when creating/editing the query:

query_edit

Summary

That highlights some of the search and query improvements.  There’s still a few more improvements and features I want to highlight, so Part 3 will be coming soon.