There are several ways to search for information within the Arxspan ELN. This user guide focuses on both Quick Search and Advanced Search, which can both be accessed in the left-hand navigation bar. Please note that as a user, you will only be able to query contents within the ELN that you have permissions to view. If you are unable to query content that you believe you have access to, please either contact Arxspan Support or your system administrator. Please note, this user guide does not include information on using our Search and Reporting Module. For information on user guides specific to the Search and Reporting Module, please refer to the “Arxspan Search” Section in our Knowledge Base.

 

Quick Search

The Quick Search bar is located at the top of the left-hand navigation bar, as outlined in red in the screenshot below. By using this, you can search experiments by the contents of the Experiment’s (1) Notebook Page, (2) Experiment Name or (3) Experiment Description.

 

To use, type in key words of interest (Notebook Page ID, etc.) in the Quick Search bar; results will automatically appear, do not press "Enter" on your keyboard. In the example below, doing a Quick Search for the word “searchable” results in numerous experiment results, along with HYP0002 – 031, the experiment from the example above. Please continue to the Advanced Search portion of this user guide for information on searching outside of the scope of the Experiment’s Notebook Page, Experiment Name or Experiment Description contents.

 

 

Advanced search

As shown in the screenshot below, Advance Search can be accessed from two spots within the left navigation bar. Either by clicking (1) Advanced Search under Tools, or by typing information into the (2) Quick Search bar and pressing enter on your keyboard. Either way will direct you to Advanced Search. This feature allows users to build complex queries to search for content within experiments, notebooks and projects that are, as previously stated, out-of-scope for a Quick Search.

 

After clicking on Advanced Search, the user will see a screen resembling the screenshot below. It is important to note that this screen has not fully loaded until the search criteria boxes (outlined in red below) have appeared.

 

Advanced Search Using a Single Criteria 

To begin, set the criteria for your search by clicking on the dropdown labelled (1) in the screenshot below. Advanced Search allows a user to search the system for a variety of different data which are sorted in the dropdown menu by category. In addition to the search criteria shown below, users can search by chemical structure data, data within Custom Experiments, etc. As shown in the screenshot below, users also have the option to select either contains or does not contain from the dropdown labelled (2), while the text box labelled (3) provides a space for the user to specify the data/keyword they are searching for. Please note, the text entered in (3) is not case-sensitive.

 

In the example below, the user, Charles Darwin, is searching for all experiments that meet the following criteria: (1) “Experiment Owner” (2) “Contains” (3) “adrienne”. Once the single search parameter has been specified, the search will run once the (4) Search button is pressed. As highlighted in red, the search below generated 32 results (experiments) in which the Experiment Owner’s name contained “Adrienne”. As shown below, the results from an Advanced Search will be displayed just below the search parameters and can be sorted by the following: Notebook ID, Experiment ID, Experiment Creator, Last Saved Experiment, Experiment Status, and Revision Number. Both the (5) Notebook Number and (6) Experiment Number are live links and will open the respective Notebook or Experiment when clicked on. It is important to note that the size of your organization’s database, along with a broad search may significantly impact the time it takes for the search itself to run. In addition to this, please note that Advanced Search Results cannot be exported.

In this example, the system will search for experiments in which the Experiment Owner Contains “Adrienne”

 

Advanced Search Using Multiple Criteria 

In addition to a single search option, users can include multiple criteria to query more specific results. This can be done by pressing the (1) Add search criteria option, as shown in the screenshot below, and defining the parameters as described in the Advanced Search Using a Single Criteria section of this article. Once the user has added at least two search criteria, they may also use the (2) AND/OR function as labelled below to specify the relationship between the two⁺ criteria that exist. With this function, whichever operator is selected (AND vs. OR) will be displayed with a darker blue background. In the example below, it can be seen that  AND  has been selected by the user, meaning that the search will query results that only meet each/all of the collective specified criteria. In this example the user, Charles Darwin, is searching for results that are true for the following parameter: “Experiment Owner | contains | adrienne” AND “Experiment Status | equals | Saved” of which can be seen outlined in red below. As you may notice, the use of AND narrowed the search parameters while only pulling 20 results (outlined in red below), rather than the 32 results produced using just the first search criteria in the example shown in the Advanced Search Using a Single Criteria section of this article.

In this example, the system will search for Saved experiments in which the Experiment Owner is Adrienne.

 

Alternatively, a user can use the OR operator with multiple criteria to widen the range of a search. As shown in the example below the user entered the same criteria as used in the previous example, however  OR  has been selected, as indicated by the darker blue background. This example is querying any experiment in which the “Experiment Owner | contains | adrienne” OR “Experiment Status | equals | Saved.” As this search will now pull any experiment where “Adrienne” is the owner, as well as any experiment with a status listed as “Saved,” regardless of the experiment’s owner. Because of this, it is not a surprise that this search produced an increased number of results, 95, when compared to each of the previous examples.  

In this example, the system will search for any experiment with a Saved Status as well as any experiment in which the Experiment Owner is Adrienne (regardless of the experiment’s status).

 

As previously mentioned, the results can then be sorted by the following: Notebook ID, Experiment ID, Experiment Creator, Last Saved Experiment, Experiment Status, and Revision Number. Please note, Advanced Search results can only be sorted by one column at a time.