Search criteria must contain at least two characters.
You can search for:
- Data in most field types
- Item IDs
- Notes and e-mail messages attached to items
- Information in most file attachments that contain text (PDF and
Microsoft Word, for example). For large documents, only the first 1 million
characters are searchable.
- Titles in linked items
The following information is not included in search
evaluations:
- Values for
Date/Time,
Numeric, and
Summation fields
- Change history records
Tips for Searching for Work Items
Use the following tips to help you find work items:
- Maximizing Keyword Searching
Values in most field types can be searched. For example:
- Include a user name in a search to find items the user
submitted, owned, updated, or is referenced in any field.
- Include a project name along with other search criteria if you
know which project contains the work item you need.
- Include a state name along with other search criteria if you
know which state an item resides in. Note, however, that a large number of
results may be returned if common words, such as New and Assigned, are used for
state names.
- Item ID
Search by the ID and prefix or just by the ID's numeric portion.
For example, if you are searching for DEF00115, you can type 115 to return this
item. Leading zeros are automatically prepended to your numeric search
criteria.
- Keyword
Search for work items by single words or phrases.
To maximize your search:
- Use an asterisk (*) at the end of the search criteria as a
wildcard character. For example,
upgrad* returns results for upgrade, upgrades, upgrading,
etc.
- Use a question mark (?) in the middle or at the end of a word to
replace a single character. For example,
pro?ect returns results for project and protect.
- If the search contains any of the following common words, they
are ignored by the search engine: "a", "an", "and", "are", "as", "at", "be",
"but", "by", "for", "if", "in", "into", "is", "it", "no", "not", "of", "on",
"or", "such", "that", "the", "their", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this",
"to", "was", "will", "with". Note that when "and" "or" and "not" are
capitalized (AND, OR, NOT), they are treated as operators and not common words
in the search criteria.
- Use quotation marks to search for phrases.
- Terms that are inside the quotes are treated as though an AND
is used. Terms that are outside the quotes are treated as though an OR is used.
For example, if the phrase is:
- "SocketException connection refused" — Any matches must
contain "SocketException", "connection",
and" refused"
- SocketException connection refused — Any matches must
contain "SocketException" or "connection" or " refused", but not necessarily
all three terms
- In the search results, higher relevance is given to phrases
that have fewer occurrences of common words between key terms in the search
phrase. The relevance score also applies to the order of terms; phrases with
ordering that closely matches your search phrase are given higher relevance.
- Key terms (words that are not ignored) must be in close
proximity (within 10 words) to one another in an item. For example, in a search
that contains a phrase like “label in transition form”:
- Any matches must contain the terms “label”, “transition”,
and “form”
- The terms “label”, “transition”, and “form” must be in
close proximity (within 10 words) to one another in an item
- If your search contains a hyphen or underscore, the search
engine treats these characters as whitespace. This enables the search engine to
return results for “wifi” whether you specify wi-fi, Wi-Fi, Wi–Fi, or WIFI. If
you want results that contain “wi-fi enabled” and “wi-fi ready” you could
append a wildcard character wi-fi* to return both terms.
- Creating Search Expressions
Your search criteria can contain any combination of Item IDs, user
names, and keywords. Use quotation marks, parentheses, and operators (AND, OR,
NOT) to maximize your search. For example:
- Darren AND "Log File" may find items that reference
Darren and that contain the phrase "log file."
- (Darren OR Laura) AND Release Project may find items
that reference Darren or Laura in the Release Project.
- Search for
"Connection refused" AND SocketException may find items
that contain the phrase
Connection refused and the word
SocketException.
- (Laura OR Darren) AND "connection refused" may find
items that reference Laura or Darren and contain the phrase "connection
refused."
- (Laura NOT Darren) AND "connection refused" may find
items that reference Laura, but not Darren, and contain the phrase "connection
refused."
Note: AND and OR operators must be capitalized. If these words are
not capitalized, they are treated as common words. In addition, NOT cannot be
used with a single search term, such as
NOT Darren.
- Searching in Sub-projects
When you search for items in your preferred projects, sub-projects
are only included in the search if you explicitly added them to your preferred
projects. To quickly add sub-projects to your preferred projects list, select
the checkmark for a parent project.
![image](images/wc_preferred_subprojects.png)
For details, refer to
My Projects.
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