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Tips and Tricks for searching announcements and sales manuals in IBM Documentation

Searching for (and linking to) announcement letters

2020 and later announcements have a human readable URL, like this: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/announcements/guardium-insights-software-as-service-revised-availability-date

You can also search for or link to them using the RFA, Global Letter Number or Regional Letter Number if you know them, after the word announcements/ and Docs will redirect to the above path. Examples where all 3 resolve to the above path with regional presets in some cases:

Note: there is a known issue with searching by letter numbers, sales manuals, or product IDs with hyphens. If you put quotes around the number, your search results will be more refined.

The announcement letter types filter on IBM Docs search results page

If you select to search for announcement letters, IBM Docs displays a series of filters for different announcement types at IBM that allow you to narrow down your search. A previous understanding of IBM licensing is needed to understand several of your choices. Below is a description of each of these announcement types.

  • TC - Terms and Conditions
  • HW - Hardware
  • HWW - Hardware withdrawal
  • PLA - A form of software - Program License Agreement, Used to announce new products or releases for software licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement (IPLA).
  • PLAW - Software withdrawal - Program License Agreement
  • ALP - A form of software - Agreement for IBM Licensed Program, Used to announce new products or releases for Entitled Software (ESW) or Configured Software (CSW) licensed under the IBM Customer Agreement (ICA)
  • ALPW - Software withdrawal - Agreement for IBM Licensed Program
  • PREV - Preview
  • SVC - Services