Adding search highlighting to Notes documents

As part of a recent upgrade to our FT Search Manager product, we added a workaround/hack to offer (optional) search highlighting to Notes Mail documents.

For quite some time, this functionality has been 'available' in standard Notes Full Text searches, although it seems pretty hit and miss, and usually doesn't work with MIME content. As for the Agent property ''Store highlights in document", we've never found a way to use it (has anyone?)

So to add our own version, we used a Javascript handler on the result document to allow the search result HTML to call a LotusScript function. 

That function firstly backs up the target document, then converts MIME content to Rich Text, then parses the Rich Text using standard NotesRichTextNavigator, Range and Style techniques, adding word highlighting. It then saves the document and opens it, navigating to the first instance of a search phrase. Straight after loading the document, the code restores the original content of the document from the backup.

Hence the document loads with search results highlighted, but if you Reply With History or Forward (or re-open the document from mail), it uses the original document, as normal.

This function is only applied to mail search results, because;
a) mail doesn't generally get modified after delivery.        
b) there is limited chance of conflicts due to other users editing the document at the same time.
c) unread marks don't change.


This makes searching a lot more efficient, because you don't need to read the entire document looking for your target data, and you can use Ctrl-G to quickly move to the next instance of the search phrase.

For example, a search for 'ibm +partner*' might show a result like this;

Opening the result will display all the search phrases highlighted, and also scroll to the first match found, no matter it's location in the document;

The downsides;

1. If you edit/save a document opened from the search results, you'll be prompted with a save conflict.
2. Editing the document means the LastModified/LastAccessed properties change, which may affect archiving and replication. 

It's a hack - but it's optional, and a tradeoff between providing a more useful search experience, and the two downsides mentioned above.

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.

Adding Google-style Category-based searching

The latest addition to our Notes FT Search Manager is (optional) Category-based searching directly from the Results Page, as per most common Web search engines. 

This means the Results Page also displays the available Categories, so users can refine their search, using both Notes or Web. 

If you're using a Category-based search originally, the Category list is the same, otherwise it's based on the Categories defined for your selected Databases (and even documents within each Database can be defined as different categories).

This functionality also applies to Domain Search and Frame/iFrame based searching.

For example, from a Web search like this;

You get results back like this (the 'Category' area, colours, fonts, logos etc are all customisable via CSS);

You can then click each category to search again using the same criteria, but limited to that category only, e.g. here searching only the 'File Systems' category; 

and again in the 'Directories and Bulletin Boards' category;

The same functionality also applies to the Notes Client;

For more information or a demo version, please visit http://www.ionetsoftware.com/search.

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.

OpenOffice support added to our free File System Indexer

We've recently added OpenOffice (*.odt, *.odp, *ods) support to our free File Systems Indexer database.

This Notes database uses Apache libraries http://poi.apache.org, http://pdfbox.apache.org and http://incubator.apache.org/odftoolkit to extract text from and index the following file types: doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, vsd, pdf, odt, odp, ods, wpd, txt, htm and html.

This in turn allows users to search File Systems (server-based or local) using standard Full Text search queries, from their Notes Client or Browser, and see the File System results combined with results from their Notes data, e.g. Mail, Archives, Applications etc.

The result is that all the data they need can be found in one place, and from a single source - their Notes Client and/or Browser (including Smartphone, Tablet or iNotes). File System security is defined by the Administrator, Notes security is as normal.

As an example, several clients make technical information stored in PDFs and Notes 'Knowledge Bases' available to users of their Intranets, via search, e.g:

"Your software is a big hit with our field sales and technical service group, and our product managers.  It saves time answering customer questions around the globe. Thank you for this elegant solution." - Mitch Holtzer, Cookson Electronics, New Jersey.

For more information, and the free File Indexer database, please visit our FT Search Manager page at http://www.ionetsoftware.com/search.

File System Search Results via an iPad

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.

iNotes getNonce change

If you're using the iNotes Extension database (usually forms85_x.nsf) to extend iNotes, and using a 'nonce' (not to be confused with the slang term), you might be interested to know that between 8.5.2 & 8.5.3 the syntax changed.

If you couldn't understand why the call fails with 8.5.3, and you found this post via web search, hopefully it will help.

Change this

AAA.getNonce();

to this

AAA.HHT ?  AAA.HHT() : AAA.getNonce();

and it should be fine.