Search behavior

When you perform a search, specific rules determine how matches are found and ranked in the search results. For example, your search text will be split into smaller parts called tokens, and it may be treated as if it ends with a wildcard (*) even if you don’t explicitly add one. These rules use the following methods to process your search text:

  • Standard matching: Processes your search text as a whole by identifying complete tokens to find broader matches.
  • Enhanced matching: Process your search text by splitting any complex tokens into smaller parts to find additional matches. The final search results combine matches from both standard and enhanced matching methods. This ensures that you receive comprehensive and relevant matches without having to modify your search text.
Tip 
  • Both standard and enhanced matching methods are automatically applied whenever you perform a search.
  • The enhanced matching method looks for matches only in the Name and Tag fields.

In this topic

Search behavior explained with examples

The following examples explain how a search text is processed in standard and enhanced matching methods to return comprehensive and relevant matches. The examples assume that the UI search appends wildcard setting is disabled.

Why does loan return loansize but not sizeloan?

  • Standard matching: loan is treated as just loan. This doesn’t return loansize and sizeloan.
  • Enhanced matching: loan is treated as loan*. This returns loansize but not sizeloan.
Search text Matching method Treated as Returns Doesn't return
loan Standard loan loan

loansize

sizeloan

Enhanced loan* loansize sizeloan

Why doesn’t size loan return sizeloan?

  • Standard matching: The space in size loan acts as an OR operator, treating the text as two separate words. This returns results that contain either size or loan, such as size case or loan amount. This doesn’t return results that contain both size and loan, such as size loan or sizeloan.
  • Enhanced matching: The space in size loan acts as an AND operator, treating the text as a single phrase, size loan. This returns results that contain both size and loan in that order, such as size loan. Additionally, the text is treated as a single phrase with a wildcard at the end, size loan*. This returns results that start with size loan, such as size loanamount. However, this doesn’t return sizeloan because it doesn’t contain a space.
Search text Matching method Treated as Returns Doesn't return
size loan Standard size or loan

size case

loan amount

size loan

sizeloan

Enhanced

size loan and size loan*

size loan

size loanamount

sizeloan

Why doesn’t size_loan return sizeable loan?

  • Standard matching: The underscore in size_loan acts as the literal character, treating the text as a specific phrase, size_loan. This returns results only if there is an exact match, that is, size_loan.
  • Enhanced matching: The underscore in size_loan acts as an AND operator, treating the text as a single phrase, size loan. This returns results that contain both size and loan in that order, such as size loan. Additionally, the text is treated as a single phrase with a wildcard at the end, size loan*. This returns results that start with size loan, such as size loanamount, size_loanabc, and size.loanabc. However, this doesn’t return sizeable loan because sizeable isn’t treated as a match for size.
Tip Enhanced matching applies only to the Name and Tag fields. For example, if size loanamount exists in a Comment field, enhanced matching can't detect it.
Search text Matching method Treated as Returns Doesn't return
size_loan Standard size_loan

size_loan

size loan

sizeloan

sizeable loan

Enhanced

size loan*

size loan

size loanamount

sizeable loan

How different search texts are interpreted

The following table shows how complex tokens are processed in the standard and enhanced matching methods.

Search text Standard matching Enhanced matching
sizeLoan sizeloan size, loan
size_loan size_loan size, loan
size.loan size.loan size, loan
size-loan size, loan size, loan
size=loan size, loan size, loan
size123loan size123loan size, 123, loan