Search - Houdini IRIS

Introduction

Search is powered by Houdini IRIS™, LOGICBit's Information Repository and Indexing Server. To open IRIS click the magnifying glass at the top of the Houdini desktop (red arrow). Click the magnifying glass again to close IRIS.

Houdini automatically indexes all your data for you enabling you to perform FULL TEXT searches of your Contact, Matter, Event, Notes, etc including documents (PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, etc) as well as Email and Email attachments.

1. Search criteria field. You can use boolean operators AND and OR as well as the wild cards * and ? in your search. Case is important so use case when necessary. See Search Syntax below for details on how to unleash the raw power of Houdini IRIS.

2. Search rule. Check the [ √ ] Just my Data to search only records and documents that you own or have created. Check [ √ ] Documents Only if you only want IRIS to search documents.

3. IRIS can search public and private CITE databases such as Google Scholar, Lexis and others.

4. Results pane list all matches of your search criteria.

5. You can upload documents in several places in Houdini. From the Matter Form, Matter Dashboard and IRIS.

USE: Enter a word or phrase and hit enter to conduct a search. Click the minus icon to clear your search criteria and the results pane. Double click a item in the results pane to view/edit/download.

 

IMPORTANT Email and Email Attachments are only indexed by IRIS when a Email is linked to a Matter otherwise Email is treated as unimportant information and ignored.

Houdini IRIS is a very powerful tool. We strongly suggest you take advantage of it since it is included in Houdini ESQ.

Searching and Conflict Checking

To perform a search across all data, open the IRIS spring menu.

Enter your search criteria in the field and press the [enter key].

In the example above you can see that a complex search is easily performed by using both a Boolean Operator (AND OR) and a wild card (* ?).

Double click a item to view, edit or download.

IMPORTANT When searching for a client we recommend using the Roster to perform your search first. From the Roster you can quickly find any contact in the system by Last Name, Last Name and First Name, or Phone Number.

eDiscovery and Google Scholar

1. To perform a search across several CITE databases such a Google Scholar and Lexis, open the IRIS spring menu.

2. Click the eDiscovery radio button.

3. Enter your search criteria in the field and press the [enter key].

In the example above you can see that a complex search is easily performed by using both a Boolean Operator (AND OR) and a wild card (* ?).

Double click a item to view its detail.

IMPORTANT You can link eDiscovery searches to a Matter by simply selecting a item and entering a Matter reference in the Regarding field then click LInk to Matter. You may add additional information in the memo field about the eDiscovery item being linked.

Search Syntax - Advanced

The following pertains to performing searches among the many documents you will be storing in Houdini IRIS. When searching Matter, Event and Contact records these powerful syntax rules are not necessary.

When you query Houdini IRIS your search criteria is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

A Single Term is a single word such as "hello" or "test".

A Phrase is a group of words such as "My Fair Lady".

Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query.

-- Fields --

Houdini IRIS stores information about documents in fields. These fields can be queried directly.

You can query IRIS fields directly using the syntax FiledName:Value e.g.
author:frank
or
author:frank AND contents:houdini
or
author:frank AND contents:hou*.

You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon (:) and then the term you are looking for.
Below is a list of Houdini IRIS fields stored with each document.

modified
File Modified Date in the form YYYYMMDD you can use wild cards e.g. modified:2009*

contents
File contents e.g. contents:john*

owner
The user who uploaded the file into IRIS. This is the User Account Name e.g. owner:admin@esq.coms

title
The Title of the document. If defined, given by its author in the native application that generated the document.

author
The author of the document. If defined, not all files support a author field e.g. text files.

name
The name of the File.

 

 

-- Modifiers --

Houdini IRIS supports modifying a query to provide a wide range of search options.

Wild Cards

Houdini IRIS supports single and multiple character wild card searches within single terms e.g. "joh*" or "jo?hn"

To perform a single character wild card search use the "?" symbol.

To perform a multiple character wild card search use the "*" symbol.

The single character wild card search looks for terms that match a single character. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:

IMPORTANT You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy Searches

Houdini IRIS supports fuzzy searches. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, (~), symbol at the end of a single word term.
For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search:

roam~
This search will find terms like foam and roams.

In addition you can specify a optional parameter to specify the required similarity.
The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 means only terms with a higher similarity will be returned. For example:

roam~0.8
The default is 0.5.

Proximity Searches

Houdini IRIS supports finding words that are within a specific number of words away from one another.
To do a proximity search use the tilde, (~), symbol at the end of a Phrase.
For example to search for a "rain" and "spain" within 10 words of each other do the following:

"rain spain"~10
(double quotes required since it is a phrase you are searching for)

Range Searches

Houdini IRIS allows one to match documents whose field(s) values are between the lower and upper bound specified by a range.
Range Searches can be inclusive or exclusive of the upper and lower bounds. Please note that sorting is done lexicographically. For example, using the modified field:

modified:[20020101 TO 20030101]

This will find documents whose modified have values between 20080101 and 20100101, inclusive.
Range Searches are not reserved for date fields. You can also use range searches with non-date fields.

title:{Aqelio TO Jones}
This will find all documents whose titles are between Aqelio and Jones, but not including Aqelio and Jones.

Inclusive range searches are denoted by square brackets [ ]. Exclusive range queries are denoted by curly brackets { }.

Boosting

Houdini IRSI supports boosting the relevance of matching documents based on the terms found. To boost a term use the caret, ( ^ ), symbol with a boost factor (a digit) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.

Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for

Mary Popins
and you want the term "Popins" to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. For example:

Mary Popins^4
This will make documents with the term Popins appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in this example:

"Mary Popins"^4 "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang"
By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 e.g. 0.2

-- Boolean Operators --

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Houdini IRIS supports AND, OR, NOT as Boolean operators.
Note, Boolean Operators MUST be ALL CAPS.

OR
The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document.

To search for documents that contain either "Mary Popins" or just "Popins" use the query:

"Mary Popins" Popins

or

"Mary Popins" OR Popins

AND
The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.

To search for documents that contain "Mary Popins" and "Bang Bang" use the query:

"Mary Popins" AND "Bang Bang"

+
The ( + plus ) or required operator requires that the term after the ( + plus ) symbol exist somewhere in a the field of a single document.

To search for documents that must contain "Mary Popins" and may contain "bang" use the query:

+"Mary Popins" bang

NOT
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. The symbol ( ! exclamation ) can be used in place of the word NOT.

To search for documents that contain "bang" but not "Mary Popins" use the query:

"bang" NOT "Mary Popins"
Please Note, The NOT operator cannot be used alone. For example, the following search will return no results:

NOT "Mary Popins"

-
The ( - minus ) or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the ( - minus ) symbol.

To search for documents that contain "Mary Popins" but not "bang" use the query:

"Mary Popins" -"bang"

Precedence Grouping

Houdini IRIS supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

To search for either "Popins" or "Disney" and "children" use the query:

(Popins OR Disney) AND children
This eliminates any confusion and makes sure you that children must exist and either term Popins or Disney may exist.

Field Grouping

Houdini IRIS supports using parentheses to group multiple clauses to a single field.

To search for a title that contains both the word "popins" and the phrase "chitty chitty" use the query:

title:(+popins +"chitty chitty")

-- Escaping Special Characters --

There are occasions when one of the above characters is used in a filed, title or name of a document. Houdini IRIS supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list of special characters are:

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

To escape these character use the \ before the character. For example, assuming a document has the title mary [popins].txt you would escape the brackets [ ] using the following

title:(+\[popins\] +"chitty chitty")