Troubleshooting issues with search in BMC Helix Digital Workplace
Data matches
For each type of record that is searched, the following table indicates the fields that are searched and other factors that determine the search results. Records marked with 
require a BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced license.
In the global search field on the My Activity, Catalog, and studio pages, users can initiate a search by typing just one character and clicking Search or pressing Enter.
Record searched | Fields | Partial match or full match | Additional information |
|---|---|---|---|
BMC Helix Digital Workplace records | |||
User profile |
| Partial match | Not applicable |
Group profile |
| Partial match | Not applicable |
How-to links |
| Partial match | Not applicable |
|
| Partial match | Not applicable |
|
| Partial match | Not applicable |
|
| Partial match | Not applicable |
BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog records | |||
|
|
| The search is case insensitive if the FTS setting is enabled in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog platform. For more details about search options, see Multiword search. |
|
| Partial match | Request ID and Order ID are numeric values. The search by answers does not work for hidden questions. Submitted answers are included in search only if this setting is configured in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace application settings. For information about how to configure search for enhanced catalog, see Configuring-search. |
|
| Partial match | Not applicable |
BMC Helix ITSM records | |||
Quick links |
| Partial match | Not applicable |
SRDs from BMC Service Request Management |
|
| Important: Starting with the 21.3.02 patch, BMC announces changes related to the availability of BMC Service Request Management that might affect your use of BMC Helix Digital Workplace. For more information, see Deprecated-and-discontinued-features. By default, search returns all services that have at least one of the specified keywords. You can configure the SRM provider to return services that have all search keywords in their metadata. For information about how to configure search for the SRM provider, see Integrating-with-other-applications-by-using-providers. Word stemming is supported. For example, the search term globally returns all results that contain global. For more information about word stemming, see Searching for variations of word stems. |
Knowledge articles from BMC Helix ITSM |
|
| By default, search returns all knowledge articles that have at least one of the specified keywords. You can configure the RKM provider to return knowledge articles that have all search keywords in their metadata. For information about how to configure search for the RKM provider, see Integrating-with-other-applications-by-using-providers. Users can append a wildcard symbol (%) to a searched word. The wildcard symbol matches any remaining characters or words. For example, if a business user enters printe as the search term, a knowledge article with the title printer problem is not found. However, if the business user enters printe% as the search term, the knowledge article with the title printer problem is found. If you enable the rkm.search.force.wildcards parameter, you do not need to insert the full title of the knowledge article and a wildcard. For example, if a business user enters printe as the search term, a knowledge article with the title printer problem is found. If a business user enters incre memor, a knowledge article with the title increase memory will be found. Important: Leading wildcards are not supported if the search is performed on fields that are indexed for Full Text Search (FTS). Only trailing wildcards are supported for these fields. For more information about wildcards, see How search with wildcards works. |
Submitted requests for services in BMC Helix ITSM |
| Partial match | The search by answers works only if the search.by.answer.enabled flag is set to true for the SRM provider. For details about how to enable search by answers for SRM pluggable provider, see Integrating-with-other-applications-by-using-providers. The search by answers is not supported for hidden questions. |
Approvals from BMC Helix ITSM |
| Partial match | Not applicable |
Multiword search for enhanced catalog items
Multiword search relies on the full-text search (FTS) capabilities of BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. The following table describes how the multiword search works for enhanced catalog items in BMC Helix Digital Workplace:
Multiword search logic | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
Not a full phrase match | Multiword search does not return a full phrase match but uses an OR condition for multiple search words. For Catalog Requests, an OR condition is applied only if search queries are separated by a comma. | The search phrase Employee on-boarding process returns all results that contain any of the following terms: Employee, on-boarding, process. |
Stemming | Stemmed search reduces inflected or derived words to their word stem. | The search term employees returns all results that contain employee. |
Phrase as one item | Search supports phrase as one item. Search terms are not stemmed for this search type. Word order matching can be achieved by surrounding words in double quotes (" "). | The search phrase standard request returns all results that contain services with standard request but not request standard. |
Case sensitivity | Search is not case sensitive for title, version, tag, and description metadata of a service. | Not applicable |
Ranking | Search ranks according to the Keyword Field Weight values set in Mid Tier configured for BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog. | Not applicable |
For information about how to configure the multiword search in BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog, see Configuring-search.
Case sensitivity
Search for records in BMC Helix Digital Workplace is case insensitive. An AR System administrator can set up case sensitivity for the records that exist in AR System.
Case insensitive records
Search is case insensitive for the following items:
- Group profiles
- How-to links
- Submitted requests for services and bundles from the enhanced catalog
- Appointments
- Assets
- Locations
Records with configurable case sensitivity
Case sensitivity depends on the underlying AR System database setting for the following records:
- User profiles
- Quick links
- Approvals from BMC Helix ITSM
- Submitted requests for services in BMC Helix ITSM
Case sensitivity depends on the AR System FTS case-sensitivity setting for the following records:
- Articles
- Knowledge articles from BMC Helix ITSM
- SRDs from BMC Service Request Management
- Services and bundles from the enhanced catalog
- Approvals from BMC Helix Digital Workplace Catalog
Search in BMC Helix Digital Workplace is accent sensitive. If you type Jose, you will not see José in the search results.
To check the stop words
Stop words can affect search results because stop words are ignored during search.
To check the stop words used by BMC Helix Digital Workplace:
- On your BMC Helix Digital Workplace server, navigate to DigitalWorkplaceInstallationFolder/dwp/WEB-INF/lib.
DigitalWorkplaceInstallationFolder is the location where BMC Helix Digital Workplace was installed. - Copy myit-server-version.jar to myit-server-version.zip where version is the version of BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
- Extract the .zip archive or navigate within the .zip archive.
Navigate to com/bmc/bsm/myit/stopwords/.
The files in this directory contain stop words for the indicated locale. For example, stopwords_fr.txt contains the stop words for the French locale.