In my previous tip on searching effectively for emails, I mentioned a FileSite feature that I think deserves more attention: the Restrict Search selection.
This selection allows you to say whether WorkSite should
- ‘return only emails’
- ‘exclude emails’ or
- ‘return all documents’. This last one means both emails and non-emails.
Why Exclude Email
Choose to Exclude when you know that you specifically want to find a non email result.
Between 60% and 90 % of what’s saved in iManage is email, in my experience. From that point of view, it’s great to exclude all those potential false matches when you want a ‘non email’ result.
In theory you can default to ‘Return all documents’ and then sort by type and browse only the Word or PDF documents as a group. In practice though if there are a large number of results, you’d probably rather search by author, or date, etc.
Once you find the specific document, you can then use its history to find out when it may have been shared by email, etc. It’s not always as easy to find the original document if all you have is an email from the client with an attachment.
Why Only Email
You may say ‘since my DMS has mostly email, why bother searching just for email?’ The reason is: FileSite chooses the display format for the list: based on whether it’s an email-specific search. By telling WorkSite to give you only email, you ensure that the results are displayed with columns for ‘To’ ‘From’ and ‘Date Received’.
If you leave it as ‘Return All Documents’ the columns are just those used for document searches, with no adjustments to show the email information when present.