DocuWare Quickfire Shortcuts

When demonstrating, training or just discussing the use of DocuWare I often refer to using a wildcard to search.

"What's a wildcard?" is asked often enough for me to write this post.

And as a bonus, I'm throwing in a handly little tip around dates. But first...what's a wildcard?

When searching in DocuWare you may not always know the exact spelling of what you're searching for or you may want a broader set of results. This is where using a wildcard - either an asterisk or a question mark - comes in very useful.

• Asterisk (*) represents any number of characters
  Example - searching a company:
  mark* will return results like "Marks Spencer"
  * mark will return results like "Benchmark"
  *mark* will return both
  Where you position the asterisk determines the results in this fashion.
• Question mark (?) represents a single character
  Example:
  Sm?th finds Smith, Smyth – but not  Smooth.

You can use the asterisk and question mark anywhere within a search term and even combine them. Both give you a very powerful way of finding documents when you are unclear of the exact term you need.

Now about those dates...

Date fields are amongst the most common used in searching DocuWare. But typing out a date - especially with DocuWare's annoying habit of trying to predict the date you are after - is a pain.

So instead do this:

• x for today’s date
  Just type x – DocuWare automatically inserts today's date.
• + and - to move forward or back a day
  Use + to jump to the next day or - to go back a day. Perfect for finding yesterday’s documents or reviewing the latest entries

I trust that answers one of the most frequently asked questions and gives you a little more power in navigating DocuWare's very impressive search and retrieval tools.