Using the myWPI Search Tool

Why?

The Search tool in myWPI is the fastest way to search for content in course or community sites and it can find documents that would otherwise not be searchable by other search tools, such as Google. Within myWPI sites, the Search tool searches most types of content, including Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, HTML, blogs, and wiki pages. Currently it does not search the discussion board, although the discussion board has its own search tool. When searching, you can search a specific course or organization site, all of the course or all of the organization sites you are a member of, or all of the myWPI sites at WPI. When searching all myWPI sites, the results retun only items which you have privileges to see based on your membership in sites and your institutional role. The Search tool is re-indexed once each night, allowing you to find up-to-date content.

There are two types of searches. A course search is conducted within a course site and only searches that site. An institutional search is initiated outside of a course site and allows you to search multiple sites.

Conducting a Course Search

The course Search tool only returns results in the current course.

Click on Course Tools and then select Search from the list of tools.

Enter a search term in the Search for: box and click Search.

Note

If you have recently conducted searches, the terms you have searched on appear as Recent Searches below the Search for: box, making it easy for you to return to previous search results.

Conducting an Institutional Search

Click on the Home tab in myWPI.
In the Tools area in the upper left of the Home tab, click Search.

Enter a search term in the Search for: box and then select use the dropdown menu to indicate where you want to search.

Click Search.

Conducting an Advanced Search

If you need want to narrow the scope of the search, use the Advanced Search tool.

Access either the course or the institutional Search tool.
Click the Advanced button. The Advanced Search page appears.

In the Keywords area, select keywords you want to search on.

All these words returns only documents that contain all of the keywords entered.
This exact phrase returns only documents that contain the exact phrase entered.
Some of these words returns all documents that contain one or more of the keywords entered.
None of these words returns all documents that do not contain any of the keywords entered.

If you are conducting an advanced search within the institutional Search tool, you have the option of selecting where you want to search. You can search in all of myWPI or only in specific courses or organizations. Select the appropriate search locations.
In the Types column on the right of the Advanced Search page, check off the types of content you want to search.
Click Submit.

Searching Tips

Choose good keywords. Use words that are likely to appear in the document you are looking for.
Exclude common words, such as "the", "where", "how" and single digits and letters. The Search tool ignores these common words and characters and including them in your search criteria slows down the search without improving the results.
Search queries are not case sensitive, so capitalization in keywords is ignored. For example, searches on "SHAKESPEARE" and "Shakespeare" return the same results.

Maintained by itweb@wpi.edu
Last modified: Jun 15, 2007, 11:42 EDT