Advanced search option in Bot editor

When you edit or view a bot, you can use the advanced search feature to find the exact line of action and the corresponding details where the search text appears, select the search filter criteria, and navigate through the search results.

Search for any text value or variable name within action details across a bot by using the Advanced search feature. You can access Advanced search from the Bot editor in one of the following ways:
  • Click the Assistant icon at the top.
  • Click Search in this bot > Open advanced search icon.
  • Use Ctrl + Shift + F shortcut keys.

If you enter a search term in the Search in this bot field and then click the Open advanced search icon, the search term is carried over and displayed on the Advanced search page.

The Advanced search feature comprises of three components:

Search

In the Advanced search page, you can enter a search text in the search box. You can search for a text value, variable name, or long text that has multiple matches.

Figure 1. Search
Advanced search feature

You can also select the search filter criteria and navigate through the search results.

Note: Advanced search is not case sensitive.
Note: Advanced search method uses spaces to split ordered queries before matching each search term. Each search term then ends up being a substring test. If there is a space between the search query, then there must be at least one space until the next search term.

For example, if your search query is Bob Kin, the search will match all of the following results:

  • Bob Kin
  • Bob and Kin
  • BobBobBob KinKinKin
  • First name is Bon and last name is Kin

Additionally, you can use * to match any character in the search result, and ? to match the specific character. For example, you can search for “user:* test-?x” to find matches such as:

  • user:me test-1x
  • user:0 anything in between test-ax

Search filters

You can use filters to narrow down the search results and quickly locate the search text. The filters can include the following search criteria:
  • Canvas (Flow and List views): to search for any text within the canvas that is displayed in the flow and list views.
  • Text value: to search for any text value within the action details.
  • Variable name: to search for any variable name within the action details.

    You can select or clear one or all the filter check boxes depending on the search criteria.

Figure 2. Search filter
Advanced search feature

When you click a matching item from the action details, for example, if you select the second search result If| Line 6 | 2 matches in the Results tab, you will see the complete line of action that contains the search text highlighted in the canvas, and the details of the selected action are displayed on the properties panel. You can see that the searched text botname is appearing in the if condition, as shown in the properties panel.

Results

When you enter the search text and select the filter criteria, the Advanced search page displays the search results based on action names across the different lines of the bot.

The Results header displays the total count of matched action names and the count of selected action or line item in a bot. For each action name listed, the line number containing the action and the total matching results found within the action details are displayed as Action or Trigger | Line number | Number of matches.
Note: The count displayed in the Results header displays only the count of matching line items (or actions) within the bot. However, each line item can have multiple matches and is not counted in the total matching line items. For individual line items, the count of multiple matches is displayed within the particular line item in the Results tab.

When you select a specific line item against the action name, the action detail page opens within Results tab displaying a list of all matching results within that action.

When there is more than one search result, you can use the Back button to go to the previous line and the Next button to go to the next item. When you select the Back or Next button, the action is highlighted in the canvas, and the detail of the corresponding item is displayed in the properties panel.

The following example shows how Advanced search works. You are editing a bot with lengthy lines of code. Now you want to search with the text botname in the Assistant window. The Results header shows the total count of 10 matched action names and line numbers with the count of matching line items, such as If| Line 6 | 2 matches.

Figure 3. Results
Advanced search feature