Welcome Page

The Welcome page is what users see when opening the Public Portal site. The Welcome Page section lets you customize the page's title, text, and whether or not the quick search box is displayed. You can also add custom links and customized search forms to this page.

In the Title option, you can specify a title for your website, and you can optionally include additional text about the site in the Text option. The Search Box option determines whether a search bar will be displayed by default on the Welcome page.

When customizing custom links and search forms, you will first need to select a repository in the Repository option, as these elements are repository-specific.

Custom Links

Custom links let you provide easy access to parts of your repository, search forms, or external URLs. For example, you might want to provide links to a commonly-accessed folder, to a specific search you have configured for users, or to your organization's main website.

To create a custom link, select the Custom Links tab, click the New Custom Link button, and then choose one of the following options:

  • Folder or document: Link directly to a specific folder or document in your repository. Specify a title for the link in the Title option, and then navigate to the document or folder to which you want to create the link. Note that while all users will see the link, only users who have appropriate rights to the folder or document will be able to open it; other users will receive an access denied message.
  • Search form: Open a specific search form. Specify a title for the link in the Title option, and then select the search form to which you want to create the link. Note that the search form must be created before it can be added as a link; see Search Forms, below, for more information.
  • External URL: Link to an external website. Specify a title for the link in the Title option, and then provide the URL to the website to which you want to link.

You can edit custom links by selecting them and then selecting the Edit button, or remove custom links by selecting them and the selecting the Remove button. To rearrange the order in which they will be displayed, use the up or down arrow buttons.

Search Forms

Search forms let you create custom searches based on the information your users are looking for. The search box on the Welcome Page can search text, entry names, fields, and annotation text. This may not be specific enough for your needs, however, or you may want to provide easy access to another search type.

You can create a search form, for example, that only searches for documents in a specific folder or documents assigned to a specific template. You can also create a search form that lets users quickly perform a search for documents created during a particular time frame.

You can control how many search types you want to include and how you want the form to look. Users will not have to configure the searches in the Search Pane. As an administrator, you decide the most useful searches and create them for the users.

Once you have created a search form, you will need to add it to the Welcome page as a custom link. See Custom Links, above, for more information.

Creating a Search Form

To create a search form, select the Search Forms tab and then select the New Search Form button. You will be prompted to provide a title and an optional description, which will be displayed to the user when they open the search form. Click Create. The custom search form configuration page will open.

On the configuration page, you can select which search types you want to add to the search form by double-clicking or dragging and dropping the search type name. You can also add the same type more than once (for instance, to add multiple fields, or to add both creation and modification date search). They will be displayed to the user in the order in which they are added to the form. Each search type has options that you can configure to suit your users' needs.

Quick Search

Quick Search lets users search across multiple elements of a document from one search box. You can configure the following options for quick search:

  • Field Label: The label that will be displayed to users next to the search box. By default, this is "Quick Search."
  • Required: Whether or not the field is required. If a field is required, users cannot perform the search until they have specified a value.
  • Search Options: Which search types will be included. You can choose any or all of Name, Any Text, Any Field, and Annotation Text.
  • Input Type: Whether you want the user to be able to type any text they want into the search box, or be constrained to a list that you have provided.
    • If you select Text, you can optionally provide a default value that will be pre-populated for the user.
    • If you select List, you will need to define your list. Select the Define List button, and then specify Text and a Value for the list item. The text option controls what text will be displayed to the user in the list, and the value option is the actual search term that will be used when the search is performed; these can be the same, or different. For example, if your documents are organized by a report type code, you could provide the name of the report type as the text that will be presented to the user, and the code as the actual value that will be searched. You can also determine whether you want the options to be displayed as a dropdown, as a group of radio buttons, or as a set of checkboxes. Dropdowns and radio buttons allow only one option to be selected at a time, while checkboxes allow users to select multiple options from the list.
  • Advanced: If you selected Textas Input Type, you can specify a custom width in pixels or length in characters for the input box. You can also specify whether to use the Match whole word or Use wildcards search options for this search. If you selected Text or List under Input Type, and are familiar with CSS and have customized the style sheet, you can apply custom classes and styles under Show advanced.

Date

The Date option lets users easily search by creation or modification date. You can configure the following options for date searches:

  • Field Label: The label that will be displayed to users next to the search box. By default, this is "Creation Date" or "Modification Date," depending on the search option selected.
  • Required: Whether or not the field is required. If a field is required, users cannot perform the search until they have specified a value.
  • Search Options: Whether the search is a Modification Date search, or a Creation Date search.
  • Input Type: Whether the user will be prompted to provide a Date or a Date Range.
  • Advanced: If you are familiar with CSS and have customized the style sheet, you can apply custom classes and styles under Show advanced.

Custom Input

The Custom Input lets users search using custom variables. For a custom input search, you must configure the syntax for the search in the Search Results section; see Search Query, below. You can configure the following options for custom input searches:

  • Field Label: The label that will be displayed to users next to the search box. By default, this is "Custom Input."
  • Variable Name: The name of the variable that will represent the user input in your custom search.
  • Required: Whether or not the field is required. If a field is required, users cannot perform the search until they have specified a value.
  • Input Type: Whether you want the user to be able to type any text they want into the search box, or be constrained to a list that you have provided.
    • If you select Text, you can optionally provide a default value that will be pre-populated for the user.
    • If you select List, you will need to define your list. Select the Define List button, and then specify Text and a Value for the list item. The text option controls what text will be displayed to the user in the list, and the value option is the actual search term that will be used when the search is performed; these can be the same, or different. For example, if your documents are organized by a report type code, you could provide the name of the report type as the text that will be presented to the user, and the code as the actual value that will be searched. You can also determine whether you want the options to be displayed as a dropdown, as a group of radio buttons, or as a set of checkboxes. Dropdowns and radio buttons allow only one option to be selected at a time, while checkboxes allow users to select multiple options from the list.
  • Advanced: If you selected Textas Input Type, you can specify a custom width in pixels or length in characters for the input box. You can also specify whether to use the Match whole word or Use wildcards search options for this search. If you selected Text or List under Input Type, and are familiar with CSS and have customized the style sheet, you can apply custom classes and styles under Show advanced.

Text

The Text option lets users provide custom text that lets you specify text that will be displayed to the user on the search form. You can use this option to explain the various search options on the search form. This option does not perform a search.

  • Advanced: If you are familiar with CSS and have customized the style sheet, you can apply custom classes and styles under Advanced.

Template and Field

The Template and Field options lets users search specific fields in the repository, as opposed to searching across all fields using a Quick Search.

To add a Field search to the search form, either select the template to which it belongs, or search for it using the Search fields option. If you select a template, you can drag and drop individual fields into the search form, or click Add All to add all the fields at once. Once you have added a field to your search form, you can configure the following options:

  • Field Label: The label that will be displayed to users next to the search box. By default, this is the name of the field.
  • Required: Whether or not the field is required. If a field is required, users cannot perform the search until they have specified a value.
  • Input Type: The Input Type options depend on the type of field added:
    • Text, List, or Number: You can specify whether you want the user to be able to type any text they want into the search box or be constrained to a list that you have provided.
      • If you select Text, you can optionally provide a default value that will be pre-populated for the user.
      • If you select List, you will need to define your list. Select the Define List button, and then specify Text and a Value for the list item. The text option controls what text will be displayed to the user in the list, and the value option is the actual search term that will be used when the search is performed; these can be the same, or different. For example, if your documents are organized by a report type code, you could provide the name of the report type as the text that will be presented to the user, and the code as the actual value that will be searched. You can also determine whether you want the options to be displayed as a dropdown, as a group of radio buttons, or as a set of checkboxes. Dropdowns and radio buttons allow only one option to be selected at a time, while checkboxes allow users to select multiple options from the list.
    • Date: Whether the user will be prompted to provide a Date or a Date range.
  • Advanced: If you selected Text as Input Type, you can specify a custom width in pixels or length in characters for the input box. You can also specify whether to use the Match whole word or Use wildcards search options for this search. If you selected Text or List or Number under Input Type, and are familiar with CSS and have customized the style sheet, you can apply custom classes and styles under Show advanced.

Customizing Search Results Display

In the Search Results tab, you can specify how the searches are run, and how the results will be displayed to the user.

Search Query

The Search Query option lets you configure the logic used for performing the search. By default, searches will return documents containing entries that meet the criteria of any of the searches performed by the user. For example, if a search form contains both a creation date search and a field search, and a document only matches on the field search, it will be returned. However, you can modify your search constraints to perform the searches differently.

Search query groups allow you to specify whether a specific set of search options will be combined with "any" or with "all." You can change the option from Search for entries that meet any constraint to Search for entries that meet all constraints to restrict your searches; in that case, in the example above, the document would need to match on both the field and the date search to be returned. You can also combine these options, requiring some search criteria to be matched as "any" and others to be matched as "all." To add a new group, select Add Group, and then specify how you want entries to be constrained.

Search queries themselves can also be modified. You can select the search query and specify whether you want it to return results if it Matches the specified value, or if it Does Not Match the value. For Date fields that contain a specific date range, you can also specify that results should be returned Before or After that date.

Custom Input

If you are using a custom input search (see Custom Input, above), you can specify the search syntax here. Select Add to add the custom input search to your search results, and then select enter search syntax to specify the search syntax for your search. The variable you specified in the custom input search type will be replaced in this search with the user input. For example, if you named your variable CustomID, you could create an entry ID search with the syntax {LF:ID=%(CustomID)}.

Sort Option

You can specify the sort order that will be used when search options are displayed. You can select document properties (such as name, creation date, last modified date, and so on) or individual fields to sort by. If you specify more than one sort option, the resulting documents will be sorted first by the first option, then by the next, and so on. To set a custom sort, select Add Sort Option and then double-click or drag and drop the property or properties you want to use for sorting.

Summary

In the Summary option, you can provide summary text that will be displayed with your search results.