Using Search in QSToolbox
QSToolbox has search capabilities built in, and it is usually the fastest way to find what you need.
This version of Quality Systems Toolbox is no longer in use. Current documentation for v3 is here.
Rather than trying to navigate down multi-level hierarchical folder systems (only to find you’ve taken the wrong path), use the search capabilities built into QSToolbox – it is usually the fastest way to find what you need.
Filter / Search
Each module has search options at the front to help you to find, list or report on the content you need. Here’s the search at the front of the Documents Manager:
You can filter the results by ‘folder’ (actually more like ‘tags’), owner, workflow status, e.g. show all “Forms”, or show all documents belonging to “Fred”.
To find something more specific, use the “containing text” search box.
To get really, really specific, combine multiple search terms, e.g., find the “Form”, owned by ‘Fred’ that contains “Frog”.
See Finding documents for more details on the search options for documents.
Partial searches
It might first appear that QSToolbox will only find whole words, e.g. typing “audit” only finds “audit” and not audited, auditing, etc. However, if you use a “wildcard” character, you can open up the search e.g. audit* will find them all.
Here’s a search for “nee”, with no results.
Whereas a search for the whole word “needle” gives one result.
(But I know there’s another needle related document in there – where has it gone?!!) A common “gotcha” in the search options is to leave the default search filter of ‘owner’ = yourself. If we change ‘owner’ to “all”, I can see the document I’m expecting to find.
If we use the wildcard character and search for “nee*”, we get all the “needle” documents and several more.
Global search
To open up the search to all types of content throughout your whole QSToolbox site, use the search box up in the top right corner. As you type, the live search will update with your results.
Wildcard characters still work in the global search, but not with the live update.
If you want to search for “nee*” you’ll need to click on the search button to see the results.
