XMS Help Center

Searching in XMS

Modified: 09/24/2007 16:25 by admin - Categorized as: Searching
The Search Menu is located at the right side of the screen and remains stationary.

You may select various combinations of parameters to find the data you need. The names of each of the types of information you’d like to search within are listed vertically on the left side of the search window, from Courses to Invoices. Click the button of the type of record you’d like to find to select it.

There are two pull down menus in which to select the criteria for the data you want to find. The top pull down menu gives you several of the fields within a record. The second pull down window gives you a few different ways to search for the data ranging from general to specific.

When searching for Students, you are able to search by Last Name, First Name, UFID, SSN, StudentID (the number assigned by XMS when student was added), Address, City, State, Zip, Country, Company or Driver’s License. Select the field in which you’d like to search then select the level of specificity you’d like to be displayed, choosing from Begins With, Contains, or Exact Match.

Edit

Search Tips

All Last Name and First Name searches allow full or partial name searching. If you want to find a student named Martha Jones, you could select Last Name from the pull down menu and simply enter "Jones" and then scroll to find Martha from list of every Jones in the database.

But entering more specific criteria, like "Jones, M" or "Jones, Martha" will return fewer results. Searching for general criteria, like "J, M" will return many results. Likewise, if you select First Name from the pull down menu searching for "M, Jones" or "M, J" will both help you find Martha Jones.

If you know the exact name and spelling of the student, you can be as specific as possible and enter, for example, "Kendall, Jonathan". Choosing either "Begins With" or "Exact Match" in this instance will return the same results. If you are not sure of the spelling of "Jonathan", which could also be "Johnathan" you can select "Begins With" and enter "Kendall, Jo" to return more results.

The "Contains" option is valuable when you know part of the name of a section, course or company. For instance, if you know the section had the word "meter" in it somewhere, entering "Title > Contains > meter" will return 8 results to help you find the exact one.

To narrow your search, you have a variety of search options. Each of the following options will help you find "James Douglas". The more specific you are the fewer results will appear.

  • Douglas, Ja
  • Doug, J
  • Dou, Ja
  • D, J

The same options are available for all the other types of information listed. The best way to master searching is to try it out and variations of the criteria you want to find. There are several search options available when searching for dates, which is available when searching for Payments, Invoices and Sections. You could type the date into the field, but you must use forward slashes between the numbers (6/22), rather than dashes (6-22). Entering the year in either short or long form (07 or 2007) is accepted. Clicking on the small calendar icon at the bottom right of the search box will open a pop-up where you can select the date you need. And finally, all date searches accept "today," "yesterday," and "tomorrow" as keywords, which will automatically be mapped to the correct day.