Video Tutorial With Text Instructions Below
Govly uses several search operators and logic, these can be employed individually or with each other. When combined with the top-level filters covered in "Govly Basics: Filtering using the Search Dashboard" you are able to focus your searches and find exactly what you are looking for. Here are the operators used, I'll cover each and show the logic when used alone and in combination:
Spaces between words or phrases default to an AND operator. You may also type "AND" explicitly (case insensitive) or use the buttons to insert the AND.
| (pipe operator) signifies an OR operation. You may also type "OR" explicitly (case insensitive) or use the buttons to insert the OR.
- negates a single word or phrase. You may also type "NOT" explicitly (case insensitive) or use the buttons to insert the NOT.
"" wraps a number of words to signify a phrase for searching within the quotes. You may also use the buttons to insert the quotes.
* at the end of a word signifies a prefix query, the traditional wildcard.
( ) signify precedence, enclose like operators within parentheses. You may also use the buttons to add the ( ) but be sure to then place the cursor inside the parentheses to add other operators.
~N after a word signifies edit distance (how many letters of a word can be from your query to match).
~N after a phrase signifies slop amount (how many extra words are allowed between words in a phrase).
All searches are case insensitive.
Let's take a closer look at each of these.
The AND operator is simply a space or the word AND. For example, using 'Dell Servers Storage' will return all matches that have the words Dell, Servers, and Storage in them. The matches must contain all three words, though they do not have to be in the same sentence or even the same part of an opportunity. Here is an example of this search:
By excluding attachments, the results will show opportunities that have these three words in the body of the email, which usually means in a Requirements section. Here is an example of those results:
Using the OR operator, '|' and the same terms yields many more results:
This is because the search engine is looking for all opportunities that contain any of the three search terms.
The minus sign or NOT is used to exclude opportunities that have terms you are NOT looking for. In our three word example:
In this example, the search is looking for Dell, but excluding results that have the words Servers or Storage in them. Thus, the results are for things like desktops as shown here, or laptops and other Dell products; just not Storage or Servers.
Quotes enclose phrases. The words within the phrase are not case sensitive, but all must be there unless you use fuzzy logic which will be discussed in a bit. Let's use a different example for this one:
There might be fewer results than you were expecting for this search, as it is looking for the literal phrase "Dell Laptops". Since opportunities can use the words laptops or laptops, let us use the OR function and combine two phrases:
See how the results increased? The search caught both ways that contracting shops may request Dell laptops. Now is a good time to introduce a bit of fuzzy logic, so we will jump ahead and return to the operators list in a bit.
The fuzzy ~ when used with phrases allows up to a specified number of extra words to be in the phrase:
Note how the number of results increased again. The search is now allowing up to two extra words in each of the phrases (using the OR operator to separate them) which shows up in the results, the first hit as an example. Note the extra words in between Dell and Laptops. These results are completely valid in what you are looking for, but would be missed without the use of the fuzzy logic.
Fuzzy logic can also be used with single words to compensate for misspelled search terms or if you are not sure how a term is spelled. Look at this example:
"Atlassian" is a project management application used by many government agencies, and is also one of the most commonly misspelled names. As you can see in the search, we misspelled it and had no matches. Not realizing our mistake, we might have thought that there were simply no current requirements and thus missed opportunities.
Using the fuzzy logic and allowing up to two different or extra letters we found there are actually 35 matches. This also works with spaces, as storagehawk~2 returns both 'storagehawk' and 'storage hawk'.
Going back to the operators list, let's now look at the asterisk. It is used as a wildcard in a prefix query:
The difference between using an asterisk and not using one is that by using the asterisk it caught opportunities requiring "Dell/EMC" which would have been missed using Dell alone.
Finally, parentheses are used to designate precedence in a search and group like search terms together:
The four terms in the first set of parentheses are similar terms and use the OR operator. The second set of two terms also use the OR operator and are enclosed in parentheses, but are terms that are excluded as shown by the "AND NOT" operators. In other words, the search is looking for pandemic-related RFQs but not from the DoD and not any that request Cisco. This would be used by a company that is looking for short-notice pandemic requirements but is not a Cisco reseller and not interested in any pandemic requirements from the Department of Defense.
You can combine any and all of these operators and work with parenthesis to create searches that really narrow down the results to what you are looking for.