IX. Searching in WebBoard

You can search through a particular message or search for a particular user in WebBoard using the tools provided.

1. Searching for Users

You can search for users in your board and view their profiles using the Search Users dialogue. It is accessible by clicking the button and then the option Search Users. Another way to get to this dialogue is by clicking the button in the menubar and selecting the Search Users option at the top of the frame.

You can search by first or last name, or by just a partial spelling of a user's name. A list of users with their first and last names and details (like city, state, country, and information about their last login) are displayed for every selection. The first and last names of the users are hyperlinked to their WebBoard Profile.

The Search Users dialogue appears like this:

Searching on a User's Last Name:

To search for a user with his last name, click on the Last Name radio button and type any portion of the user's last name in the provided text box.

Click on the Search button.

Searching on a User's First Name:

To search for a user with his first name, click on the First Name radio button and type any portion of the user's first name in the provided text box.

Click on the Search button.

Searching by First Letter of Last Name:

To search for a user with the first letter of his last name, in the alphabet presented, click on the first letter of the user's last name. This will display the list of all the users whose last names begin with that letter.

Viewing a List of All Board Users

WebBoard is capable of displaying all the users of the board. To make WebBoard display the list, click on the Search button without filling in any search criteria.

2. Searching Messages

With WebBoard, you can search for messages in your course's board. The search options available are

within a single conference
in several (or all) conferences
by a string in the message subject line
by a string in the message body

To search for a message or messages, follow these steps:

Click on the button on the main menubar. This will open the Message Search dialogue.

Choose the conference under which you want to search.

To select multiple conferences,

(in the case of a PC) hold down the Control-key while clicking on the choices of conferences
(in the case of a Mac) hold down the Command-key while clicking on the choices of conferences.

To select a range (possibly all) of conferences, click on the first conference you wish to select, then hold down the Shift-key and click on the last desired conference.

Select the desired option of the following two :

Topics only - to search only the topics list, i.e. the message-titles (subject lines).

Topics and message bodies - to search also within the messages

Select the type of Display Detail:

Standard results

Detailed results

Detailed results mean that the actual occurrence of the string is displayed in a short context.

Finally, type the desired word or phrase to search for in the text box and click the Search button.

WebBoard will display only the first 25 matches (this number can be configured by the board manager). It will also show a link to the next 25 matches. This was introduced to speed up display of the results.