The power rule search is a keyword search query built by the user. Instead of completing the separate entry fields and allowing the software to create searches, users construct their own complex search queries. While this is a powerful way to build custom searches it is not without potential pitfalls. Care should be taken to avoid including vague search terms as the safety mechanisms normally included in the basic search construction method will not be enabled. A Power Rule will override a basic search.
Note: All Operators are evaluated in a case-insensitive manner. IE, dog will match on DOG, dog and Dog.
Understanding positive and negative operators is the first step in creating a power rule search. Any word or phrase to be included in the results is a positive operator. Any word or phrase to be excluded in the results is a negative operator.
Using the word party or birthday party in your power rule search will include them in search results. The word or phrase in this example is a positive operator.
Using the word -party or -birthday in your power rule search will exclude them in search results. Any word or phrase with a minus (-) symbol in front, as in this example, is a negative operator.
A single power rule search can support up to 30 positive operators, and up to 50 negative operators subject to the restrictions documented henceforth.
General Search
Single word entry would match activities with that single word in the text body. For example, the following Power Search rule would match activities with ‘happy’ in the text body.
ANDing terms with a white space
Adding another keyword is the same as adding another requirement for finding matches. For example, this rule would only match activities where both ‘happy’ AND ‘party’ were present in the text, in either order – this operates as boolean AND logic.
Note: If the word 'AND' is placed in the rule instead of a white space, it will be rejected in the query string.
ORing terms with upper-case OR
Some situations call for boolean OR logic.
Note: The OR operator must be upper-case and a lower-case ‘or’ will be treated as a regular keyword.
Negating Terms
Some scenarios might call for excluding results with certain keywords (a boolean NOT logic). For example, activities with ‘happy’, but excluding any with ‘birthday’ in the text.
Note: Negating terms should be conducted using the - sign as opposed to the word NOT.
Grouping
These types of logic can be combined using grouping with parentheses, and expanded to much more complex queries.
Exact match
To match an exact phrase enclose it within quotations.
Putting it all together
The above operators can be combined with text filters for a complex query. A query string looking for customer service issues or problem but not those that contain the work fix would be illustrated as:
In this query the terms customer support issue or customer support problem would be returned as results but any statements like "my customer support problem is fixed" or "my customer support issue is fixed" would be excluded. Therefore statements like "my customer support issue is not fixed" or the customer support problem is not fixed" would be included in the results for customer resolution.