SkyKick – Advanced Search options
Note:
The information contained in this article has been provided by Cloud Direct's partner, SkyKick.
SkyKick Cloud Backup supports a number of advanced search options and queries, including:
This article describes these three search options and their uses.
Elasticsearch
In Elasticsearch, when a string is analysed it gets tokenised by white space and certain special characters.
For example, if an email subject line was "The big red ball", then Elasticsearch mapping would index it in two ways:
- The analysed version would index this as ["the", "big", "red", "ball"]
- The non-analysed version would index this as "The big red ball"
There are two types of queries you can use when searching: a Match Query, or a Term Query.
Match Query
To perform a Match Query, enter the word or words without quotations. Elasticsearch will analyse the query string and then do a check to see if any of the query terms match any of the field terms. So a Match Query where the query is "big ball" will actually tokenise the query into ["big", "ball"], then go and look at the analysed version and try to find a term that matches. It would successfully return "The big red ball" because both "big" and "ball" match the query.
This is useful if you are not sure of the exact phrase you are looking for, but will potentially return more results than you are looking for, requiring you to sort through the results.
Term Query
To perform a Term Query, enter the word or words in quotations. In this case, Elasticsearch will not do any analysis at all. It will simply take the query you give it and try to match it against a term in the index. So "big ball" as a Term Query, won't return "The big red ball" because "big ball" was not an indexed term.
This is useful if you know exactly what you are looking for because it limits the results you may have to sort through. However, if it is not an exact match, it won't return what you are searching for.
Wildcard Search
SkyKick Cloud Backup also supports wildcard characters. These are a simplified version of the Regular Expression Search, and include two characters; the Asterisk (*), and the Question Mark (?).
Wildcard: Asterisk (*)
- Description: Matches any character sequence after the *.
- Use: When you know only the beginning of what you are searching for, or know that the first few letters are all you would need to enter to find the data.
- Example: If you are not sure if the name you are looking for is Matt or Matthew, then you could search for Matt* which would return both Matt and Matthew. However, it would also return any data including other words starting with Matt.
Wildcard: Question Mark (?)
- Description: Matches any single character.
- Use: When you aren't sure of a letter or multiple letters in a word or phrase.
- Example: If you are not sure whether the person you are looking for is Kristen Jensen, Kristin Jensen, Kristen Jenson, or Kristin Jenson, you could search for Krist?n Jens?n.
Regular Expression (RegEx) Search
SkyKick Cloud Backup now supports Regular Expression (RegEx). This is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern, mainly for use in pattern matching with strings, or string matching. The three examples below are the most common. For more information please see Regular Expressions.
To perform a Regular Expression search in Exchange or OneDrive for Business, enter "RegEx:" before your query (e.g. RegEx:gr.y).
Note:
To perform a Regular Expression search in SharePoint, be sure to check the Regular Expression checkbox on the Advanced Search screen.
RegEx character: Full stop (.)
- Definition: Matches any single character (similar to the Question Mark in a Wildcard search).
- Use: When you aren't sure of a letter or multiple letters in a word or phrase.
- Example: If you are searching for the word that could be spelled "grey" or "gray", you can search for both spellings by searching for gr.y.
RegExp character: Plus sign (+)
- Definition: Matches any number of the preceding character.
- Use: When you aren't sure how many repeated letters were used.
- Example: If you don't remember how many o's you used when you described something that was really gooood. You can search for any number of o's by searching for "go+d".
RegExp character: Pipe symbol (|)
- Definition: Acts as an "or" operator.
- Use: When you want to query more than one word or phrase.
- Example: If you aren't sure if the subject line of an email was Team Collaboration Kickoff, or Kickoff for Team Collaboration, and you don't want to return every email that includes any of those individual words, you can search for both possibilities by searching for "Team Collaboration Kickoff"|"Kickoff for Team Collaboration".
