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e-FAQ Searches

Requirements: You need the View e-FAQ Access Control right to use e-FAQ in an interaction.

You can use two methods, natural language or Boolean, to search within e-FAQ. Basically, you can type anything you want to search for whether it is a natural language question (“How do I send an email?”) or Boolean search keywords (“e-mail requirements”) in the e-FAQ tab Search for text box. e-FAQ automatically detects whether a Natural Language or a Boolean search would be more effective in finding accurate matches, and returns the results accordingly.

Natural Language Query

Formulating a natural language query means typing your question in naturally spoken English. For example, you could type "How can I learn more about e-FAQ?"

Natural Language relies on context in order to better understand what you are searching for. If you enter a phrase or a full sentence, the natural language processor parses the query and takes into account which word acts as the verb, the noun, the subject, etc. It is more precise than a Boolean match. The goal of a natural language query is to return the closest possible match (or matches) to your query. It returns fewer e-FAQ entries, but the entries found are a closer match to the actual query entered. However, if you enter only one or two words, there is not enough of a context for Natural Language query to work correctly, so a Boolean search is used instead.

Boolean Search

In a Boolean search, you type keywords. Boolean searches tend to be more generic, meaning that not all of the e-FAQ entries found are relevant. For example, you could use a Boolean query to find all of the entries that contain the word “requirements” at least once, just by querying with this word alone. Boolean results are less precise than Natural Language results, but with certain types of content, such as technical, medical, or legal entries, Boolean searches may provide better matches.

You can separate these specific keywords with Boolean expressions, such as or, and, and not.

Use and to find answers that contain multiple words in your query. If you separate keywords by and, e-FAQ returns answers that contain all words in the query.
Use or to find answers that contain any of the words in your query. If you separate keywords by or, e-FAQ returns answers that contain any of the words in the query.
Use not before any words you do not want to appear in your answers. e-FAQ does not return answers that contain the word following not.
Use parentheses to group words for complex searches, for example, Interactions and (incoming or outgoing) and not (voice mail or email). If your search query contains parentheses, e-FAQ looks at expressions contained in the parentheses first.

Boolean Wildcards

Substitute the wildcard character * (asterisk) for some portion of the word. The wildcard character can substitute for a single letter or multiple letters at any position in the word.

Expression	Matches
sys*	Any entry containing a word starting with the prefix “ sys”, such as “system”, “systematic”, “systemic”, etc.
*ware	Any entry ending with “ware”, such as “hardware”, “software”, “vaporware”, etc.
req*s	Any entry containing a word that starts out with “ req” and ends with an “s”, such as “requirements”, “requests”, “requisitions”, etc.
ware AND req	Entries that both contain a word that ends in “ware” and also one that begins with “ req”, such as “required hardware”, or “software requirements”, etc.

Boolean Proximity Matching

You can search for a set of a set of entries where two or more words are all present and also meet a further constraint related to their positions in the entry. e-FAQ supports the NEAR and SEQUENCE functions, as shown in the following table:

Expression	Matches
system NEAR requirements	Entries that contain both “system” and “requirements” and have these words close together (within 10 words of each other). Note: The parameter for NEAR defaults to a value of 10, if not specified.
system NEAR/5 requirements	Entries that contain both “system” and “requirements” and have these words close together (within ~5 words of each other).
system NEAR/2 requirements	Entries that have “system” and “requirements” immediately adjacent to one another, in either order. Note: The minimum value for the NEAR parameter is 2.
NEAR(hardware, system, requirements)	Entries that contain all the words listed in parentheses, here “hardware”, “system” and “requirements”, and also have all of these words close together (within 10 words of each other) in any order.
NEAR(hardware, system, requirements)/25	Entries that contain all the words listed in parentheses, here “hardware”, “system” and “requirements”, and also have all of these words close together (within ~25 words of each other) in any order.
SEQUENCE(hardware, system, requirements)	Entries that contain all the words listed in parentheses, here “hardware”, “system” and “requirements”, and also meet the constraint that the first word precedes the second by at most 10 words, the second precedes the third by at most 10 words, etc. Note: The parameter for SEQUENCE defaults to a value of 10, if not specified.
SEQUENCE(hardware, system, requirements)/3	Entries that contain all the words listed in parentheses, here “hardware”, “system” and “requirements” and also meet the constraint that the first word precedes the second by at most 3 words, the second precedes the third by at most 3 words, etc.
SEQUENCE(hardware, system, requirements)/1	Entries that contain the phrase “hardware system requirements”.

For convenience, e-FAQ also supports the following simplifications, all of which reduce to some form of either a “NEAR” or “SEQUENCE” query:

Expression	Same as
system NOTNEAR requirements	system AND requirements AND NOT (system NEAR requirements)
system BEFORE requirements	system SEQUENCE/1 requirements
system AFTER requirements	requirements SEQUENCE/1 system
system requirements	Returns the same set of entries as the query “system AND requirements”, but the entries are sorted to give priority to those that best satisfy “system BEFORE requirements”.
“hardware system requirements”	BEFORE(hardware, system, requirements)/1
NOTNEAR(hardware, system, requirements)	hardware AND system AND requirements AND NOT NEAR(hardware, system, requirements)
NOTSEQ(hardware, system, requirements)	hardware AND system AND requirements AND NOT SEQUENCE(hardware, system, requirements)

Note: These simplifications can all take the optional parameters BEFORE and AFTER. So “system BEFORE/1 requirements” means to search for the exact phrase “system requirements”.

Boolean Frequency Matching

e-FAQ also supports the notions of “at least” and “at most” for Boolean queries. This is denoted as follows:

Expression	Matches
system > 5	Entries that contain the word “system” more than 5 times.
requirements < 10	Entries that contain the word “requirements” less than 10 times.

Note: This syntax work only for individual words (not expressions).