HomeMy WebLinkAboutLF 8 Step-by-step Awards Search Instructions 1
LASERFICHE AWARDS DATABASE - INTRODUCTION
1. Go to www.opseu.org, then click on For Members:
2. From the menu on the right, click on Grievance Awards
3. Select the folder you wish to browse/search:
4. You can now Browse or Search the awards database:
BROWSING
1. Though you must select a specific category of awards in order to access the database, once you are in you
can navigate through any of the available categories by clicking on the subfolders listed or the links to the
containing folders shown above:
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2. To change your Browse options, click on My WebLink, select Browse Options, change Choose
Displayed Columns to “Template”, select from the left column the fields you wish to see in your window and
click the arrow to move them to the right column. You can order your selected fields by using the Up/Down
arrows.
3. When you click back on the Browse tab, you will see the fields you’ve selected displayed. You can then
navigate through the folders and browse the awards files for whatever category may interest you. You can
sort the information any way you wish by clicking on the column headers (e.g. Name, Case Name, Award
Date, etc.)
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SEARCHING
1. You can just enter your search term in the general Google-type Search field that is now available (you
have the option to search just the folder currently selected or the entire repository – see below. Please note
that any “Entire Repository” search will be extremely time-consuming and may get timed-out, so you should
make sure you’re in the folder you wish to search and select “Current Folder”) or click on the Search tab for
more advanced search options.
IMPORTANT: When using this search field or the default “WebLink Search” method, you need to enter
search phrases in quotation marks (e.g. “sick leave”) to search for occurrences of the entire phrase. If you
enter sick leave without quotations, LaserFiche will search for each individual word in the phrase (i.e. “sick”
and “leave”). The lack of quotation marks will also remove any selected folder restrictions and search the
entire awards database.
2. The default search methods automatically selected when you click the Search tab should be “Within
Folder” and “WebLink Search”.
IMPORTANT: If the “Within Folder” search box is not open, your search will not be limited to the folder
you selected when you first entered the database but will instead search all the available awards folders.
You can change the folder that appears under “Within Folder” by going back to the Home or Browse tab and
selecting a different folder or overwriting the folder name that appears at the extreme right of the folder
address (you can scroll through the address using the left and right arrows on your keyboard). Make sure the
“Search subfolders” box is checked.
“WebLink Search” is essentially the same as the above-mentioned general Search field, allowing you to
search for words or phrases (separated by “and”, “or”, etc.). This search will find instances of those words or
phrases anywhere in the text of all the documents from the folder you selected.
3. Various other search method boxes can be added from the Customize Search drop-down menu and
combined to narrow down your search.
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4. This is a quick overview of some other search methods you might find useful. A complete description for
each search method is available via online Help.
Text – this will also search the text of the documents for the words selected but phrases do not need
to be in quotation marks and you may use wildcards (*) if unsure of the exact wording or spelling. Checking
the “Fuzzy Search” option will allow you to find anything that approximates your criteria but that can yield
too many results.
You can search for documents containing one or two phrases (“And”), one phrase or another (“Or”), one
phrase but not another (“Not”) and one phrase within a certain distance of another (“Within”).
Document/Folder Name – this will search the filenames of the documents for the words/numbers
selected. Use wildcards (*) before and after your criteria and browse the documents you’re searching
beforehand to find out how their filenames are formatted (e.g. CAAT awards filename = ‘Grievor’s Last
Name’ ‘Award date’ (yy-mm-dd); OPS awards filename = ‘GSB #’.‘Grievor’s Last Name’.‘Award date’ (yy-
mm-dd)).
For example, if you know the GSB number of a case for which an award was issued, you can type it into this
field followed by a wildcard to find any awards for that case.
Field – this will search the document template for the criteria selected (e.g. Employer Name, Case
Name, Award Date, etc.). If you select a Field Search, you will also need to select a template (‘Awards” is
the default) and enter criteria in one or more fields you want to use for the search. If the Field template is set
to No Template Assigned, LF will look for documents without a template attached and this will return
ZERO hits since all our documents have a template attached.
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IMPORTANT: Please note that some older award templates have not been completed and this type of
search would overlook those documents.
5. To close a specific search method box, click on the red “x” in the upper right corner of the box. To close
all search method boxes and start over, click the Reset button (see above). This will also remove any folder
restrictions.
VIEWING SEARCH RESULTS
1. In addition to a link to the award itself, if you’ve done a WebLink or Text search you will also see a list
of links to the specific context in which your search word or phrase was used . Very often, context lines can
help you determine whether this is indeed the award you were looking for.
If you use these context links to access the award, your search term(s) will be highlighted within.
2. Clicking on “Show more information” will display thumbnails of all the pages in the award:
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3. Search results can be sorted by the number of Hits (i.e. context lines for your search term), Relevance,
the Date Modified (i.e. the date the document was last updated) or the Date Created (i.e. the date the award
was uploaded to the database).
4. Once you have accessed the award record in Laserfiche, you can click the “Print” button to print the .pdf
file or the “Download” button to save it to your computer.
For the older awards that are not in .pdf format (they are displayed with a light blue icon instead of the red
and white Adobe one), you need to first use the “Print (as PDF)” button on the left to create a .pdf version
that you can then download or print as above.