Basic searches in Workplace

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This topic is shared by BAW, CP4BA. Last updated on 2025-03-13 12:15
Use basic searches when you want to customize your task, workflow, and case list views by using simple search criteria. As part of the view customization, you can narrow the scope of your search, combine simple filters, and select and sort visible columns.

Basic searches help you to build simple field operator value filters and combine them by using the AND keyword. More keywords such as OR and NOT are not available in basic searches. To refine the results of your search, you might need to define and maintain multiple basic queries. You can also name and save your customized views for reuse or share them with other people or your teams.

If you need more powerful search capabilities where you can combine multiple basic searches into more complex search queries that use and, or, and not keywords together, see Advanced searches in Workplace. Keywords are case insensitive.

Full text search

Use the quick search option Search icon to trigger a full text search of your task list. Notice that the full text search in Workplace is different from the full text search in Process Portal:
  • In Process Portal, the full text search uses the Lucene search index, which does not depend on the Process Federation Server or any external features.
  • For Workplace in Business Automation Workflow releases earlier than 24.0.0.0, the full text search is enabled only when the Process Federation Server (either external or embedded) is configured.
  • For Workplace in Business Automation Workflow 24.0.0.0 and later, which has the Federated Data Repository configured, the full text search is also available.
For more information, see Searches and saved searches.

Customize your views

The highly customizable Workplace helps you tailor your own custom views to display the most relevant information, search for specific items in larger sets, and save queries for reuse.

To customize your views Customize view icon, you can scope your search, and build and combine filters that refine your search results. When you are done, name and save your customized views for reuse or to share them with other people or your teams. To share a saved view with another team, duplicate, rename, and share the view.
Scope the search
The search scoping section is available for the task list view. You can scope the search around a specific workflow definition or workflow application that generated the tasks.
Select the filters to use
A default filter narrows down the search based on the state of your tasks, workflow, or case instances. To the default filter, you can add more basic field operator value filters until you obtain the results that you want. The fields that you include in the filters can be process business data, task business data, system data or all the three.
Select the column to sort by
You can select the field by which to sort the information and also specify the sorting order.
Select the columns to show
You can customize the columns that are displayed on the Workplace page by selecting business data or system data values.
In a federated environment or when the Federated Data Repository is enabled, the business data section splits into two parts, one for process data and another for task data. When a business variable shares the same name as both a process and a task variable, the headers indicate (Process) and (Task) alongside the variable names for you to differentiate the variables. At hover over, you can view the source of the exposed variable, as shown in the following image:
The figure illustrates the tooltip that indicates the source of the exposed variable.
For more information on how to expose business data at task activity level so that you can include business data in your searches in Workplace, see Declaring variables.
Tip: For task business data searches to work in basic searches, the Federated Data Repository indexing must be configured. For more information, see Enabling the Federated Data Repository process indexing.

For concrete examples, refer to the following section.

Examples

The following examples illustrate a few basic queries.

Example 1
Search for all the claimed and available tasks that are part of the Hiring Sample and have a very high priority.
Example 1 of a basic search: in the Scope the search section, the Enable scoping checkbox is selected, and the scoping filter is set to Workflow app acronym is HSS. In the Select the filters to use, three basic filters are added: Task stateisClaimed and available + Activity typeisUser task + PriorityisVery High. Under the Select the columns to sort by section, the field is Due on and the sort order is Ascending.
Example 2
Search for all tasks that are due before 15 May 2024, whose task name contains "Approval".
Example 2 of a basic search: in the Scope the search section, the Enable scoping checkbox is clear. Under Select the filters to use, four basic filters are added: Task stateisAll + Activity typeisUser task + Due onis before5/15/2024 + NamecontainsApproval.
Example 3
Search for all the completed tasks that are assigned to John, which are sorted in a descending order based on the completion date.
Example 3 of a basic search: in the Scope the search section, the Enable scoping checkbox is clear. Under Select the filters to use, three basic filters are added: Task stateisCompleted + Activity typeisUser task + OwnerisJohn. Under Select the column to sort by, the field is Completed on and the sort order is Descending.
Example 4
Search for all tasks where the Department is set to Finance at the task level and for tasks where the Department is not set to Marketing at the process level.
Example 4 of a basic search: in the Scope the search section, the Enable scoping checkbox is clear. Under Select the filters to use, four basic filters are added: Task stateisClaimed and available + Activity typeisUser task + Department (Task)isFinance + Department (Process) is notMarketing. Under Select the column to sort by, the field is Due on and the sort order is Ascending.