Summary: This page provides instructions for using the search options in the Engineering Dashboard.

Introduction

The CAST Engineering Dashboard has two search options available for use:

Basic search, providing search on items in the Assessment Model (i.e. rules) and on object names. Results are dependent on the location the search is made.
Advanced search, providing search for objects based on a list of violations. Results are not location dependent.

Each is explained below.

Basic search

Basic search is accessed from the top menu bar:

Clicking this icon activates a search field enabling you to search for names of items (i.e. rules) in the Assessment Model and objects. Results are dependent on the location the search is made.

search results will include items dependent on the location in which you made the search.
search is not contextual and is instead global to the entire current snapshot
search functions in "contain" mode, i.e. search results must contain text matching the search query term
the number of results is displayed
the list of results for object searches contains the following information: object name page, object type and object fullname
results are paginated, scroll with the scroll bar to view more results
clicking an item in the search results will drilldown to the exact location of the item in the dashboard
rules flagged as critical are excluded from the search results when the Only critical violations filter is active. When searching for a non-critical rule and the Only critical violations filter is active, a message will be displayed stating No results were found to match your search.

Technical notes about the Search feature:

The Search feature uses the open source Lucene search software
It relies on the existence of an index which is generated automatically when the application server is started.

You can find out more in Managing the Engineering Dashboard search indexes.

A search made in Home page, Risk Investigation view, Transaction investigation view and Action/Exclusion/Education/Continuous Improvement lists will give results for the following items:

Business Criteria
Technical Criteria
Rules
Measures
Distributions

A search made in Application investigation view will give results for the following items:

Objects

Advanced search

Accessing the Advanced Search feature

The Advanced Search feature can be accessed using the icon in the left hand menu:

Enabling the Advanced Search feature

"Out of the box", the Advanced Search feature is not enabled and the following message will be displayed:

This indicates that a "violations index" (on which the feature relies) has not yet been generated. To generate the index see Managing the Engineering Dashboard search indexes.

Note that following the generation of a new snapshot, the violations index status will change to toUpdate, therefore CAST recommends regenerating the index to take into account the data available in the new snapshot.

Using the Advanced Search feature

When the feature is accessed and the violations index has been generated, the following will be displayed:

Left hand panel

The left hand panel provides a set of filters that can be used to narrow down the search cope. Filters are explained in Using filters for the Advanced Search.

Right hand panel

The right hand panel list the results of the search. Key points:

with no search criteria or filters enabled will show all violations available in the currently selected snapshot indicated by the following text:

a search field is available for you to enter the object name you are searching for. Results in will be updated in real time.

you can download the results to an Excel file for portability requirements:

20 results are shown. Use the Show More button to display additional results:

the result lists uses the following columns:

Option to add/remove the violation to from the Action Plan, the Scheduled Exclusion List. and Education list. Note that to interact with the Action Plan/Scheduled List, your user login must have the role QUALITY_MANAGER/EXCLUSION_MANAGER/ QUALITY_AUTOMATION_MANAGER roles. These can be assigned at user level (when using Default Authentication mode) or via user or group (when using Standard LDAP authentication) - see User roles.

Action / Exclusions

Indicates whether the violation has been added to the Action Plan or the Scheduled Exclusion List:

	Item has been added to the Action Plan.
	Item has been added to the Scheduled Exclusion List.

Object Name Location

Displays the object name, and in the case of file based objects (as oppose to Database objects), the location on disk of the object.

Rule

Name of the rule violated by the object.

Note that when a rule has been added to the Education list an "academic" hat icon will be displayed:

Status

Displays the status of the object in comparison to the previous snapshot - e.g.:

Added
Updated
Deleted
Unchanged

Clicking this icon will take you direct to the object in the Application Investigation view.

Using filters for the Advanced Search

The filters available in the left hand panel enable the search scope to be limited. The following filters can be enabled by expanding the section and selecting with a tick:

Criteria or Rules	Restrict the scope via a Health Measure, Technical Criterion or Rule (or a combination). Displayed results are union of selected Criteria results, with duplicate violations omitted. Sorting is disabled on this section.
Weight	Restrict the scope via the weight of the rule in its parent Technical Criterion.
Criticality	Restrict the scope via the criticality of the rule (Critical or Non Critical).
Violation Status	Restrict the scope to the violation status in the current snapshot: Added, Updated, Unchanged. Displayed results are an OR of selected violation status results and AND of other filters selected values (eg : Criteria or rules, Technologies ,Transactions , Critical ,Module) with duplicate violations omitted. Violation status remains selected even after navigating to other views and coming back to Advanced search.
Transactions	Restrict the scope to objects that are classed as transactions. Transactions are ordered by risk level (i.e. the Transaction Risk Index (TRI) value: TRI is an indicator of the riskiest transactions of the application. The TRI number reflects the cumulative risk of the transaction based on the risk in the individual objects contributing to the transaction. The TRI is calculated as a function of the rules violated, their weight/criticality, and the frequency of the violation across all objects in the path of the transaction. TRI is a powerful metric to identify, prioritize and ultimately remediate riskiest transactions and their objects.) It is possible to filter based on a Business Risk driver such as Efficiency, Robustness, Security or None Click to enlarge
Technologies	Restrict the scope to the technologies that are present in the current snapshot. Displayed results are an OR of selected technologies results and AND of other filters selected values (eg : Criteria or rules, Modules ,Transactions , Critical ,Violation status) with duplicate violations omitted.
Modules	Restrict the scope to a module in the current snapshot. Displayed results are an OR of selected module results and AND of other filters selected values (eg : Criteria or rules, Technologies ,Transactions , Critical ,Violation status) with duplicate violations omitted. Module remains selected even after navigating to other views and coming back to Advanced search.

Note that an indicator will show how many filters have been selected: