Knowledge Base search help
On this page:
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.
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 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 before you search.
Get help
If you need additional help, contact your campus Support Center for broad-based technical help, or UITS Knowledge Management for help with Knowledge Base searching in particular.
Related documents
This is document aowa in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2022-12-27 09:24:05.