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Search your data in Alloy​

Alloy provides a powerful search feature to help you find the data you're looking for. You can search for any type of object (e.g. items, designs, interfaces, workflows) within the current customer project.

After choosing a category and typing a search term, Alloy will search every attribute of every object in that category. This lets you search for objects based on data that isn't necessarily visible in their title/subtitle. We call this Global Attribute Search (GAS).

Note

Items won't appear in search results if you don't have permission to view them.

  1. Select Search in the right panel menu to open the Search panel.

  2. If necessary, select to clear the previous search.

The search box containing the previous search term
  1. Choose a search context:
Select a suggested category

When the search box is empty, Alloy displays a list of suggested feature categories (which can be customised). Select one to continue.

Note

Locations is a special category that lets you search for any address or landmark and locate it on the map. To learn more, see Location search.

The search box displaying the suggested categories popover
Select a design/interface to search within

To search for items of a particular design or interface, start typing any part of its name and select it when it appears.

Note

If you select an interface, you can search the items of all designs that implement it. However, only their interface attributes will be searched.

For example, searching the Defects interface will search the items of all your defect designs. It will include item attributes inherited from the interface (e.g. Reported Date) but exclude item attributes defined by a design (e.g. the BS5837 Category attribute in your Tree Defects design).

The search box displaying designs that match the typed keyword
  1. Alloy will list the results of your chosen context. If you're lucky, the one you want will be near the top, so you can select it with minimal scrolling 😉. If not, proceed to the next step!
The search box listing items of the Street Lights design
  1. To search the list of results, type one or more keywords into the search box and press the Enter key. You can search for text, numbers, dates or times. Alloy will display all results that contain full or partial matches. For more detail, see Flexible search terms.
The search box listing Street Lights items matching the typed search term

  1. Select a result to open it and view its details.

  2. To return to the search results, select Search again, or use your web browser's Back button.

    The results will be unchanged, so bear in mind they could be outdated (e.g. an item may have been deleted). To refresh the results, select the search box and press the Enter key again.

Note

Want to view items in more detail? Select at the top of the search results to load them in the Data Explorer.

The Street Lights items from Step 5 displayed in the Data Explorer

Recently viewed​

By default, the Search panel shows your 20 most recently viewed objects.

If they're covered by the suggestions popover, press the Esc key to dismiss it (or select an empty area of the right panel menu).

Demonstrating how to dismiss the suggestions popover

Flexible search terms​

After choosing a search category, you can filter the listed objects by typing complete or partial search terms in the search box.

There are three types of search term:

  • Alphanumeric - type three or more characters to search the Text attributes of all the listed objects. Search terms are case-insensitive and can appear anywhere within a matching attribute. If your search term is under three characters, only exact matches will appear (e.g. searching for items with a Grade attribute set to "B").
Performing an alphanumeric search

  • Numeric - type three or more digits to search the Number and Text attributes of all the listed objects. The search term can appear anywhere within a matching attribute. If your search term is under three characters, only exact matches will appear, e.g. searching for items with a Length attribute set to "8".

    When searching for decimal numbers, Alloy automatically takes your locale into account, e.g. searching for 3,14 matches 3.14 and vice versa.

Performing a numeric search

  • Date and time - use the correct format to search different attribute types:

    • Dates - use the format DD/MM/YYYY (or MM/DD/YYYY where relevant) to search for items containing a matching Date attribute. Alloy automatically takes your locale into account, e.g. 10/01/2024 is interpreted as 10th January 2024 in day-first locales and 1st October 2024 in month-first locales.

    • DateTime - use the format DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm (or MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm where relevant) to search for items containing a matching Date Time attribute. While all DateTime values in Alloy are stored in UTC, Alloy automatically takes your local time zone into account, e.g. searching for 22/01/2024 9:00 in New Zealand automatically searches for the UTC equivalent 21/01/2024 20:00.

    • Time - use the format hh:mm up to hh:mm:ss:sss to find items containing a matching Time attribute (or a Date Time attribute matching today + your search), e.g. 12:40 or 20:59:15.876. You can also include AM or PM in your search, e.g. 4 PM or 3:15pm. You must include a colon between the hours and minutes, e.g. 3.15pm is not valid.

    • Seasonal - use the format DD/MM (or MM/DD where relevant) to search for items containing a matching Seasonal attribute. Alloy automatically takes your locale into account, e.g. 10/01 is interpreted as 10th January in day-first locales and 1st October in month-first locales.

Note

When searching a design/interface, you can use the search settings to customise how its attributes get searched.

Search by Item ID​

If you have an Item ID, you can paste it into the search box and press Enter to quickly open that item.

You can also enter a partial Item ID of six or more hexadecimal characters. The search results will list all items whose ID starts with your search term.

Searching for items