This article will review how to use the Retrieve Tab in DocStar.
Folder Panel:
On the left side by default you will see inboxes and folders. It’s recommended to not use these if you don’t have to. You can hide this section to give you more viewing space on your screen by clicking on the arrow ‘<’ at the top left.
Thumbnail Preview Panel:
On the right side will give you a thumbnail preview of the documents.
You can scroll up and down to zoom in on pages here. You can also click and drag to pan around the document image.
You can also skip around pages from here as well.
If you don’t need this you can hide it by clicking the ‘>’ button at the top right.
Quick Search:
NOTE: There are two search buttons; the top right is for the quick search only. If you click the quick search button it will replace everything you have set in the sections below with the text from your quick search box.
At the top right corner there is a search bar where you can type any text to search. When you use this search it will look for that string of words in any field for each document.
This is the most effective way to find your specific document.
TIP: If you are ever wondering why a certain document showed up in your search results. You can see by opening the document in question, then do “Actions” -> “Show” -> “Show Hits”
To narrow down the search use the three sections in the retrieve tab to help:
NOTE: If you click the section header on any of these three it will collapse/expand that section, do this if you don’t use a section often to have more viewing space. But know that there could be data in these sections still when minimized.NOTE: There are two search buttons on the retrieve page. The bottom right search button will search by all 3 sections when you modify them.
TIP: If you click the bottom right search button with all sections blank it will do a search and show you your default search settings (see below for user preference recommendations). This doesn’t work for the quick search button at the top.
Items & Locations:
You can check or uncheck Folders, Inboxes, Documents and or Packages. To remove them from the search results.
You can choose a specific folder if you are using folders in Docstar (not recommended)
You can use the Content Type drop down to narrow down by the type of document it is.
You can use the Predefined search section to filter out and see only Workflow Items, Approvals or Recent Documents (Documents added in the past 5 minutes is default)
Search Fields:
There are two drops downs and a text box to search by specific fields
The first drop down is the name of the field, these include builtin fields like “Created On” as well as custom fields that your company uses.
TIP: You can see what fields your documents use by opening a document up and looking at the field names in the “Content Fields” section.
The second drop down will allow you to choose a search type
example: Equals, Between, Contains, Does Not Contain, etc…
Lastly you can put your search text here, no quotes are needed.
Text:
NOTE: When you use Quick Search at the top, it will erase everything in the sections below and fill out this text section with what you typed in at the top right.
When you use the text section it will search for your string or characters throughout Docstars metadata. Not just the documents fields, like Title and Keywords but also steps in the workflow.
For example if you have documents processing, you can search for processing.
You can also use some SQL syntax here if you need to get really specific. For example: “Search” AND “This Text”
This will look for Search and This Text separately instead of “Search This Text” in one string.
Search Results:
The very bottom right will show you the total amount of search results.
NOTE: There is a maximum of 10,000 documents per search result.
The search results will show up towards the bottom by default you will see the columns: Title, Created On, Modified On, Keywords. You can modify your columns if you often look for specific data from any field.
To do this click on the “Column Chooser” button (highlighted in Purple) or do Actions -> Column Chooser (at the bottom).
TIP: You can sort your search results by clicking on any column. It will alphabetize or order by number like A-Z or Z-A as you click on the columns. Blank fields may show up at one end and all CAP’s could affect the sorting.
You can set the limit of how many results show up per page, the default is 25.
1000 is the max but no more than 200 is recommended.
If you do a specific search using the 3 sections above, you can save the search to do the search much faster (highlighted in grey).
To do this, set up your search parameters then change –New– to name this saved search and then click the save button (floppy disk icon to the left of the clear button).
You can also save custom columns for specific searches and keep them only for that search by also adding columns, before you click the save button and check off “Incl. Cols.”
Opening and Modifying Documents From Retrieve:
To open a document, either double click on it or check it off and do Actions -> View
If you want to open multiple documents up at once, check off the ones you want and do Actions -> View
TIP: CTRL+Click will check off multiple documents easier. SHIFT+Click will check off an entire group of documents, first check off your top selection and SHIFT+Click the bottom of the group and it will check off all in between.
Merging Documents:
To merge documents together, select the documents in the order that you want to merge them in. Then do Actions -> Merge
TIP: If you hover over the checkboxes it will tell you the order that they are selected (Item 1, Item 2, etc…). Item 1 will be the top document and retain the title, keywords and all data.
Saving, Printing, Emailing, Deleting:
Select the document or group of documents that you want to share or delete.
Do Actions -> Save a copy, Print, Email, Delete.
NOTE: When saving, printing, emailing, it will ask you if you want to include annotations and or redactions; you must choose PDF to have this option.
Workflow Changes:
Select the document or group of documents that you want to change the workflow for.
Do Actions -> Workflow -> Assign Workflow/Change Assignee/Restart Workflow/Terminate Workflow.
NOTE: Terminate Workflow will end the workflow process and say terminated in the workflow section. This is recommended if you want to remove it from the workflow but show what the document was originally set to for workflow. Remove from workflow will now show you which workflow it was originally set to.
Export your search results to a spreadsheet:
Build the search you would like to do this for.
Do Actions -> Batch Actions -> Export all to CSV
User Preferences for Retrieve
To access user preferences, go to the top right of the screen where it says DocStar (this varies per version) and select User Preferences.
It’s recommended to set “Search Sorting Options” to “Created On”. This will make all of your searches show the newest document at the top of your results.
You can also change your recent document time spam.
You can also set your quick search to Auto Quote or Auto Wildcard. (Auto Wildcard is recommended.)
Auto Quote will look for an exact match to your string
Auto Wildcard will look for any order of your string in a search.
