Documentation forSolarWinds Service Desk

Advanced search and syntax rules

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Introduction

SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) does not use a specific language for searches. It provides a search bar that lets you search the platform based on free text or by property, for example:

  • Incidents
  • Service Catalog Items
  • Problems, Changes
  • Release
  • Solutions
  • Other objects

By default, the search function matches the whole term entered. You can also perform wildcard searches using ? and *:

  • ? replaces a single character
  • * replaces zero or more characters

Exact phrase matching

Use Exact Phrase Matching when you want SWSD to return only exact matches to your search input by adding double quotation marks around your search term. For example:

  • ""quick brown fox""
  • ""AB-DFG250-MALTA""

The search query displays only results that contain the search term, exactly as written in the search bar.

Properties searches

When searching for a specific term you can search by the following properties.

  • name. You can enter a specific Incident Name, or perhaps the word keyboard.
  • number. You can enter a specific Incident Number or any other Object number.
  • tag. You can search through an object’s tags, for example, Los Angeles.

Properties are searched using the property name and value. If you are searching for incidents with the tag Los Angeles, write:

tag: "Los Angeles"

In addition, you can use the following properties, which must be entered in lower case:

  • description
  • department
  • user
  • type
  • category
  • status
  • variables
  • manufacturer
  • networks (to search for one of the following networks-related fields, use this example: networks:192.168.103.126) 

    • ip_address

    • mac_address

    • dhcp

    • gateway

  • serial

Boolean operators

The preferred operators are + and -.

  • If you add a plus sign [+] to a search, the words are included as part of the search.
  • If you add a minus sign [-] to a search, the words are excluded from the search.

A search containing quick brown +fox -news returns matches where:

  • Fox is present.
  • News is not present.
  • Quick and brown are optional (but their presence increases the relevance).

Grouping

You can group together multiple terms or clauses with parentheses to form sub-queries.

The following is an example of how to use and/or combination to search for incidents under the UK site where the description is either UAT or Workaround.

(description: UAT OR description: Workaround) AND site: UK

AND and OR conditions must be written in capital letters.

Number ranges

Inclusive ranges are specified with square brackets [min TO max] and exclusive ranges with curly brackets {min TO max}.

For example, to search for all incident numbers between 4000 and 4400 write:

number:[4000 TO 4400]

Reserved characters

Reserved characters are: + - = & || > < ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ /

If you need to use any of the characters which function as operators in your query itself but not as operators, preface them with a leading backslash.

For example, to search for (1+1)=2, write:

\(1\+1\)\=2