What is the difference between searching on Subject or Summary/Thread?
Environment:
Thread phrase searching
Oracle B2C Service
Resolution:
There are differences in phrase searching for the Subject and Summary/Thread options when used to search for incidents from the administration consoles. Both the Subject and Summary/Thread fields from the incidents table can be added as run-time filters in a report or view to allow staff to search for incidents.
Due to the different nature of the searches used with these fields, incidents are much more likely to be returned if you search using the Summary/Thread field than if you search using the Subject field.
When searching by Subject: Searches on the Subject field do not automatically include a wild card before or after the word or phrase you are searching for -- regardless of the operator used in the filter. As a result, searches on a specific word only returns incidents with the keyword matching the first word of the subject. When searching by the Subject field, you can manually add a wild card (*) before and after your word. For example, to search for an incident with "apple" in the Subject line, enter *apple*. If you are searching for Subjects that include two words that are not sequential, include a wildcard between each word, such as *apple*banana*.
Searches on the Subject field are not case sensitive, so searching on *apple* and *Apple* and *APPLE* all give the same results.
When using the Subject field as a filter in a view, consider including a wildcard (*) both before and after your search string or before and after each word. The only time you do not need a wild card is if you are searching for the word at the beginning of the subject line.
When searching with the Summary/Thread: By default, searches using the Summary/Thread use the complex expression method of searching. Complex expressions include wildcards around the word or phrase, word-stemming, and the use of logical operators. This method searches the incident phrases table and does not search a specific field in a database table such as the Subject field.
Note: System reports that include the Summary/Thread (incidents.search_thread) field use an operator of complex expression in the filter.
Searching the Summary/Thread is the recommended default search method when searching incidents since it includes a search of the content of both the Subject field and discussion thread. As a result, when you search for incidents by searching for a word or phrase in the Summary/Thread, incidents are returned regardless of case and where the word is located. That is, there is an assumed wild card preceding the word or phrase.
Searching the Summary/Thread uses the words stored as phrases for that incident. This search option ignores case sensitivity, plurals, verb tenses and other word endings. For example, searching on "WALK" returns incidents containing any of the words "walk", "walked", " Walking", "walker", and "Walks".
