Searching for tickets, assets, resources, and people in Smart IT

This topic describes the search options available in Remedy with Smart IT, details of how the search function works, and how to optimize the function for your environment. Full text search must be enabled and configured to use the search feature in Smart IT. On mobile clients, the search function discussed in this topic is available from the main menu. In the universal client, the search function appears under your login name.

The following information is provided:

• Search overview
• Smart IT Console search
• Using special characters and boolean expressions
• Filtering the Smart IT search results
• How administrators configure this feature

Search overview

When searching for customers and contacts in Smart IT, the system overrides the values specified the Customer and Contact Search Type and Customer and Contact Name Format list on the Incident Management Settings window in BMC Remedy ITSM. For example, in the Customer and Contact Search Type list select Last Name, and in the Customer and Contact Name Format list select [First name] [Middle name] [Last name]. In Smart IT notice that you can specify any of the following and search for customers and contacts: corporate ID, first name, last name, internet email ID, phone number, and login ID. In case of the name format, Smart IT supports only the [first name] [last name] name format. Smart IT provides various search options:

Global search

Smart IT uses the Full Text Search (FTS) to search for tickets and knowledge articles, and DB search to search for people and assets. For people and assets search the following fields are matched for the entered search text. 

For global asset search

Smart IT versions before 1.4

Smart IT versions 1.4 and later (if the isExclude_TAG_and_CI_ID flag is set to true)

If the isExclude_TAG_and_CI_ID flag is set to false then the behavior is similar to Smart IT versions before 1.4 ( all 5 fields).

For global people search

Smart IT console search

The Smart IT search function scans your BMC Remedy ITSM environment for records that contain a match for the word or phrase that you type in the Search field at the top of the screen. You can also augment your search by including special characters and boolean expressions. The search results include only information that you have permission to access. Retired articles will not be listed under Recommended Knowledge, or under suggested knowledge articles while creating a new knowledge article. You can search for Retired articles only through the global search or advanced search using the Search for knowledge resources option.

The Search function searches for matches to your query across the following record types:

• Incident tickets
• Work orders
• Change requests
• Problem investigations
• Known errors
• Release tickets
• Tasks
• Service requests
• Knowledge articles
• People profiles
• Asset profiles
• Outages

Using special characters and boolean expressions

You can include special characters and boolean expressions in your search, as explained in the following tables. AND, OR, and NOT operators are applicable only when searching for Tickets and Knowledge articles.  

Special characters and their results

You can use use boolean expressions in your search. Boolean operators include parentheses (), AND, OR, and NOT. The boolean operators must be specified in upper case; otherwise, they are treated as search strings.

Boolean operators and their results

Filtering the Smart IT search results 

The Search function displays the search results in a list that is grouped by record type: tickets, knowledge resources, and so on. You can also apply filters to the list to help narrow the results and more quickly identify what you are looking for. 

To understand how the filtering works, consider the following scenario:

1. To accomplish an assigned task, Ian Plyment, a help desk specialist, needs to look at all of the incident records that were created for Allen Allbrook in the past week, and that are still open.
2. In the Search field, located at the top right of the universal client, or main menu on mobile clients, Ian types Allen, then presses the Enter key or taps Search.

3. The Search returns 520 records that match "Allen" (511 tickets, 1 asset record, 1 people record, and 7 knowledge resources). 

   Because there is a large number of tickets and knowledge resources found by the search, the search results list displays only 4 of the tickets and only 4 of the knowledge resources. Ian can, however, view all of the tickets or knowledge resources by choosing View All.  The number of records displayed on-screen when the search returns a large number of results is controlled by the application.

4. To narrow the list of tickets, Ian needs to filter the list. To filter the list:

   1. He clicks or taps the Filter icon at the top of the list, then clicks or taps Record Type and selects Incident. If Ian were working from a tablet, he would then tap Back to go back to the Filter list.

   2. Ian clicks Filters again to further narrow the results list by showing Created Date and then selecting Past Week from the menu. 

   3. Finally, because he only wants to see incident tickets belonging to Calbro Services, he applies the Company filter. After clicking Filters, he selects Company, and uses the search field to locate the correct company. If necessary, Ian can apply more than one filter of a specific type. For example, if Ian wanted to see all of Allen's Incident and Work Order tickets that were created in the last week, Ian could add a second Record Type filter to include Work Order tickets. Alternatively, if Ian needs to remove one of the filters, he can click the X in the filter tag. To remove all of the filters, Ian would click or tap Clear All. 

      As Ian adds a filter to the search results lists, the system also adds tags beside the filter Icon, so that Ian can see which filters he has applied. This combination of filters (Create Date, Record Type, and Company) reduces the search results list from 511 tickets to 23.

5. With this much more manageable list of tickets, Ian is able to quickly review the remaining records to accomplish his assigned task.

How administrators configure this feature

To perform configurations for BMC Knowledge Management, you need Knowledge Config permissions. The Smart IT Search function uses the BMC Remedy AR System Full Text search and Multi Form search capabilities to search the BMC Remedy ITSM applications and components. The Search feature also uses the search capabilities of BMC Knowledge Management to look for knowledge resources.

As an administrator, you can configure the Search function in BMC Remedy AR System and in BMC Knowledge Management to work optimally with your installation.