Knowledge Base search help

Important:

In summer 2024, Indiana University will retire the Knowledge Management System (KMS) and move the IU Knowledge Base to the ServiceNow Knowledge platform. For more, see About the IU Knowledge Base transition to ServiceNow Knowledge. If you have questions or would like to have a conversation about the migration, contact the Knowledge Management team at kb@iu.edu.

On this page:

Quick help
Search function
Get help

Quick help

Searching tips:
- Use more than one word
- Use only important words
- Check your spelling
Good examples:
- install duo android
- microsoft exchange forward email
Bad examples:
- email (Too general; will return hundreds of documents)
- How do I locate my cousin's email address at IU? (Too specific; too many words)
- analysis of social change (Not related to technology at Indiana University)

Search function

Basics of searching

The Knowledge Base uses Apache Solr to power its searches. It searches the full text of all KB documents, and returns the documents containing all your search words. For example, a search for computer security would return only documents containing both "computer" and "security", but not documents containing only one of the terms.

Note:

Boolean operators such as "AND" and "OR" are not supported.

Synonyms and stems

The KB uses both the stemming and synonym functions of Solr to match your searches to documents. Stemming allows the term manage, for example, to find documents that contain "manage", "manages", "managed", or "managing". Synonyms will allow a search for license to also match "certify" or "permit".

Neither stemming nor synonyms guarantees perfect results; slight modifications to your searches might find documents that the first search missed.

Log in for additional results

The KB contains many documents that require authentication to view. Some are for groups with particular job responsibilities (for example, IT Pros or UITS staff); others are available to anyone affiliated with Indiana University. To be sure you're seeing all the content available to you, log into the KB before searching. Select Log in toward the top of any KB page to authenticate via IU Login.

Quoted searches

Use double quotation marks (") to match an exact, case-insensitive phrase. Use single quotation marks ('), to find an exact, case-sensitive phrase.

However, you cannot combine a quoted and an unquoted term in the same search (such as "windows 10" vpn). Try these searches without quotation marks.

Ignored search terms

Many common words (such as "the") are ignored in KB searches.

Search by document ID

Every KB document has a four-letter document identifier, or docid, which you can locate in two places. The URL for each Knowledge Base page shows the docid at the end. Also, each docid appears at the bottom of each page in the sentence "This is document xxxx in the Knowledge Base".

If you know a document's docid, you can quickly locate the document by entering in the search box:

docid:xxxx

Replace xxxx with the four-letter docid.

Archived documents

If you cannot find KB documents you have seen in the past, they may have been archived. You can still search for these by selecting the gear icon to access search settings and then choosing Include archived documents before you search.

Get help

If you need additional help, contact your campus Support Center for broad-based technical help. For help with Knowledge Base searching in particular, email UITS Knowledge Management at kb@iu.edu.