Removing the clutter: De-duplicating Mail Search results

In general, mail files contain a lot of duplicated data, due to the 'Reply With History' function. 

So if you search for a phrase in the first email of a thread, you'll probably receive results from ALL the other emails in the thread as well, which clogs up the result set and makes it harder to find your target.

The IONET FT Search Manager now optionally allows users to de-duplicate mail results, displaying only the latest entry in the thread, containing all information from the rest of the thread.

This makes it much easier to find target data, as you don't have to wade through a lot of very similar, repeated results. Of course you can still search normally if you're looking for a specific email.

Without De-Duplication

With De-Duplication

You can also use our 'Navigate to Query' option to automatically move to the first instance of the search term used, which speeds up the target identification process.

And seeing as email is person-person communication, specifying a name in the query (or a domain name) increases search accuracy significantly.

Try it out free of charge and with no obligation, and we think you'll be surprised at the results.

The IONET FT Search Manager - Targeted Notes searching

The limitations of Notes Mail searching

Lotus Notes is great at many things, but the native search capability is not one of them.

A majority of Notes Mail users will have personal silos of information, most of it corporate, stacked up in their mail file and possibly also contained in several archive databases.

When they want to search that information, they have to know roughly where the target resides, i.e. their production mail or whatever archive, because there is no central index. That means opening each database manually and searching it individually.

Furthermore, the results of a Notes Mail search are quite poor - you get the same row-based information as a Notes View - so if you're searching on a common word, i.e. the name of a major client, you might get hundreds of search results. If all you see is basic summary information (Sender/Recipient, Date, Subject), how do you find the email you want?

The answer is you open each email and scroll through to see if it's the one you want. If you can't find it, you widen your search and start again. 

That's horribly inefficient, and means users can take a long time to achieve something as trivial as finding an email.

What Notes has long needed is a multi-database/file system personal search tool (think a Site Search for your mail, archives, local databases and local file system), where the search starts from Notes itself, and the results show you your search phrases in the context of the document. You can then perform only one search, scan documents from the result set via document-context information, and quickly find the target email.

As an example, if you were searching for an email you received last year, which mentioned something about a major client 'ACME' starting a project, you might search using a query like 'ACME and Project'. Using the result set, you'd then have to guess from the brief summary information provided which document it might be, and open each one to check the contents.

However if the result set showed the search query in the context of each document, then it's pretty simple to identify the email you want.

This is exactly what we've done with the FT Search Manager, and it makes finding information in mail (no matter it's location) much, much faster. Until IBM provide better search tools in Notes, solutions like this can save you a lot of time, and therefore money.

Free Notes Domain Search Extension

Many Notes environments will have tried the Domain Index/Domain Search at some time or another, but few will actually use it.

This is because while it's fast and free, the User Functionality is poor and the User Interface is not great. It hasn't noticeably changed since it was first introduced.

So to improve it, we've added a free Domain Search Extender* to our FT Search Manager tool, seamlessly integrating with the existing Notes Client & Web Browser Domain Search. This means you can now search the Domain Index using our product as below (you can change the logo, colours, fonts, labels etc)

and Browser

and get back more useful results in the Notes Client;

or Browser (including Tablet, Smartphone etc);

You can re-sort the results by column, export results and re-search, directly from the result pages.

Instead of getting a barely usable result set, you get much more useful search experience. For example;

• Seamlessly replace the standard Notes Domain Search.
• Configure the information returned per database, including the amount of summary data.
• Easily prevent 'rogue' documents from appearing in the result set, such as hidden or lookup documents.
• Control all aspects of the User Interface - Labels, Logos, Colours, Fonts, Font Sizes, Highlighting etc.
• Translate the UI to different languages - for example the Search button shown here is in Dutch.
• Click column headers to re-sort the result set.
• Search again using wider or narrower criteria.
• Export the result set via Notes or Browser.
• Take advantage of a host of other usability features, such as a web-style search syntax, many different user options, and just pressing Enter to search.

The result is Domain Searching as it should be - fast, easy, and powerful for both Notes Clients and Browsers, and most importantly, free.

Extend your Domain Search today, and make the most of your existing Notes infrastructure.

To download the Domain Search database and try it out, free of charge or obligation, please Click Here.
For information on other types of searching, please visit our FT Search Manager Page.
And for any other information or queries, please Contact Us.

*The Domain Search Extender is the only free component of the FT Search Manager, by default it does not include support or maintenance, and specific license conditions apply.

50% Discount on Notes Search Tools

We think we have the best Notes Search Tools currently available, and this video shows why.

But it's not just us who think this - many users have said so also;

- "FT Search Manager is really the 'killer app' we have been searching for."
- "Great tool - saves heaps of time and is so quick in searching and finding results."
- "This is a great product at a great price and something everyone in the Notes/Domino community should be using."
- "Love it :)"
More testimonials available here.

There's no point in having our search product just sitting on the shelf (albeit a virtual shelf), so we're offering a massive discount of 50% off the list price, providing your interest is registered during July 2012.*

All you need to do is register for a download, or contact us during July of this year. If you eventually decide to purchase (even if it's not in July), you realise the discount. If you don't decide to go any further, no problem.

So please feel free to try out the demo - we think you'll be surprised at how much more effective it makes your Notes environment.

For more information on IONET products & services, or to contact us, please visit http://www.ionetsoftware.com.


* Full discount might not apply to reseller-brokered sales.

Speeding up Notes applications

Our FT Search Manager product (http://www.ionetsoftware.com/search) has been around for a while now, and being a search tool, we're always trying to increase it's search speed. The latest version (4.6 - sound familiar?) is a lot faster than previous versions - FYI here's a short YouTube demo showing the faster speed achieved http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFcxSQ8PaIM.

If anyone's interested, here are the main methods we used to speed it up;

1. Each multi-threaded search agent only populates up to the first page of results (e.g. 10 results if that's how many results are displaying per page) then writes it's full result set to a storage document. It only populates the first X results because that's the slow part - getting data from each document. The last agent to finish assembles all the results, re-sorts them, then presents them. The first couple of pages are already available, and the remaining stubs are then populated in the background, which means the first page displays in the shortest possible time.

2. Concatenating evaluate statements. We use fields & @formulas to return document data. If there are 4 fields & @formulas required, it's much faster to execute one evaluate statement, e.g. Evaluate(@formula1 : @formula2 : @formula3 : @formula4, NotesDocument), rather than repeating it 4 times.

3. Using NotesDocument.Save only when necessary.

4. Using NotesRichTextItem.GetUnformattedText instead of GetFormattedText.

5. Using Lists to store commonly used databases, views & variables.

6. Using the LS 'Split' function as much as possible.

7. Moving everything unnecessary out of loops.

8. Performing only one @DBLookup to get all required data in one operation, then splitting the results into separate fields.

9. Storing data in Profile documents and only retrieving new data if the relevant option changes.

Hopefully someone finds these points useful.