Using full-text search to find work items

You can use the Jazz® full-text search method or the Team Artifact History search method to find work items.

About this task

You can use the Jazz full-text search to search the entire repository and specify the type of artifacts to search. If you recently viewed the work item in the Eclipse client, you might prefer the Team Artifact History search because the search time would be quicker.

Procedure

  • To search all work items in the specified repository:
    1. Click Search > Jazz Text.
      Note: Non-alphanumeric characters, such as @, are discarded from the search text string.
    2. Enter the text string or phrase to use in the search operation.
      • You can include wildcard characters in your search string. Use the asterisk (*) to represent any number of characters in a string, and the question mark (?) to represent one character in a string. You can also enclose a phrase within double quotation marks () to search for that exact phrase.
      • You can select the scope of the search. You can limit the search to work items, plan items, attachments, or attached pages.
    3. Click Search.
  • To search recently opened work items:
    1. Click Navigate > Open Team Artifact History.
    2. Enter the text string or phrase to use in the search operation.
      • You can include wildcard characters in your search string. Use the asterisk (*) to represent any number of characters in a string, and the question mark (?) to represent one character in a string. You can also enclose a phrase within double quotation marks () to search for that exact phrase.
      • You can select the scope of the search. You can limit the search to work items, plan items, attachments, or attached pages.
    3. Click Search.
    Table 1. Example search entries and their results
    Search entry Search results
    read* Artifacts 1, 2, 3, and 4. These artifacts have the words reader and reading, which start with the search string read.
    held No artifacts. None of the artifacts have words that start with the search string held.
    *held Artifact 2. This artifact has the word handheld, which contains the search string held.
    "collect data" Artifact 1. This artifact has the exact phrase collect data.
    auto* Artifacts 1 and 2. These artifacts have the words automatic and automatically, which start with the search string.
    automat Artifacts 1 and 2. These artifacts have the words automatic and automatically, which have a root of “automat” and will match the search string.
    auto No artifacts. The word stems for the words automatic and automatically, which do not match the search term.
    scenario Artifacts 3 and 4. These artifacts have the word scenario, which starts with the search string scenario.
    press*coll* Artifact 1. This artifact has the words pressure and collect, which start with both the search strings press and coll.
    Restriction:
    • Full-text search does not support special characters. If any of these characters ( ){ }[ ] <> / \ : ; ? ! _ - | & . , ' « » ~ ^ are included in the search string, the results are unpredictable. Also, since these characters are not indexed, they do not affect search results. For example, if your search entry is test, you get matches for <test>, {test} even though the search is a starts with search.

      For more information on this limitation, review the workarounds and limitations article on jazz.net.

    • Full-text search does not index * and ". For more information, see Table 1.
    • Full text search does not index these common words: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, and with. When you perform a search by using these common words, the search does not return any result.
    • Full text search does not index single letter words. For example, if an artifact has the name "Requirement X", searching for "x" does not return a match for the artifact.

Results

The results appear in the Search view. The value in the Score column indicates how likely it is that the work item matches the text that is specified in the query.