Searching and Retrieving Documents

Searching and Retrieving Documents Using The Document Management System

The Document Management System provides users the ability to search for Board Letters and related documents that have been created and stored within the DOCS Library. Over 20 years of Statements of Proceedings, and Board Letters created since March of 2001 are available on-line. The basic search options are Profile Searching, and Content Searching. Profile Searching provides the ability to search for documents when all you know about a document is profile information, such as a document Subject, Meeting Date, or Meeting Type. Content Searching is a search feature that uses the Profile Search form to allow users to perform searches for documents when perhaps all the information known about the document is a word or phrase used in the document itself or the document profile.
With these search options you will have the ability to perform searches for documents based on search criteria that you define using the Profile Search Form.

Searching for Documents

To Perform a Search for Documents:

1. Open CyberDOCs by clicking on the orange CyberDOCs text located at www.sandiegocob.com. You will be automatically signed on to the system as a guest.
2. Click on the Search icon in the left panel. The Search screen is displayed as shown in the figure below.
3. Click on the Clear All button to clear any previously entered search criteria. All fields are cleared except the Search in, Sort by, and Order fields, which are defaulted to the values displayed by CyberDOCS.
   
   
   Figure 1: Search Form for San Diego Clerk of the Board
   
   
4. Enter search criteria as detailed below. You may use as few as one criteria. If you know the meeting date, this is usually sufficient to locate the results you want. If you do not know the meeting date, perform a "text search." The more criteria you specify, the fewer results will be returned. The following table provides a description of the most commonly used fields:
   

   	Description
   Meeting Date	Date of the Board Meeting. A single date may be selected, or a date range can by typed as follows: 01/02/2003 to 03/04/2003
   Agenda No.	Agenda Item number.
   Search for:	The text you want the system to search for. The fewer words you use, the more results will appear.
   In:	Used with text searches to specify whether the system is to search the titles of documents (Profile), or the full text of documents (Contents), or both.
   Sort by	Specifies what field to sort the list of found documents by. Many users find it helpful to sort results by meeting date.
   Order	Specifies whether to sort the documents in ascending or descending order.

5. Click on the Search button at the bottom of the search screen to perform the search. The following Search Results screen (Figure below) appears with the list of documents that meet the criteria you specified.
   
   

Hints for Entering Search Criteria

• Use the TAB to move form one field to the next.
• Enter multiple search criteria within the same field by separating the data with a comma. For date values use a semicolon to separate the data, or for date ranges use "to" between the two dates (i.e. 3/1/1999 to 3/15/1999).
• The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that can be used to represent one or more characters. For example, if "*Letter" is used in the Subject field, CyberDOCS will search and return all documents with a Subject that ends with "Letter" (i.e. Board Letter), regardless of what the other preceding letters may be.
• The question mark (?) can also be used to represent a single letter. For example, if "Letter" is used in the Subject field, CyberDOCS will search and return all documents with a Subject that ends with "Letter" but the first letter of the subject could be anything, (i.e. Better, Letter, etc.).

Retrieving Documents

CyberDOCS users have the ability to view documents as well as save them to a user's local drive.

Retrieving Documents for Viewing

To Retrieve Documents for Viewing:

1. Perform a search using the Search function.
2. From the results displayed, click on the title of the document you wish to view listed in the Subject column. The Document will be displayed on the screen.

If you wish to print the document you may hit the print icon on your web browser, or follow the steps below to retrieve a copy of the document, then open and print it in Word.

Retrieving a Copy of a Document

A user can also select to retrieve a copy of the document from CyberDOCs.

To Get a Copy of a Document

1. Perform a search using the instructions described above.
2. From the results, click on the icon to the left of the Document title, under the heading, "Details". The Document Profile will be displayed on the screen.
3. Click on the "Get copy" button from the Document Detail screen. The "Download File" window is displayed.
4. Right click on the document title, select "Save Target As" and select the area of your computer onto which you would like to save the document.
5. Click on the Save button to copy the document to the location specified in the previous step.