Search for an entry

The search bar is appropriate to use in most cases, to look up directory listings by name, job responsibilities, e-mail address, or telephone number. An advanced search form is also described later that provides a few more search options.

To perform a simple search, follow these steps:

  1. Access the IBM Telephone Directory application by entering the following Web address in your Web browser:
    http://your.server.name:port/ibm-bizApps/welcome/home.do
    where your.server.name is the name of the server where IBM Telephone Directory V5.2 is installed and port is the port number that was specified during installation.
  2. Click IBM Telephone Directory.
  3. Specify your user ID and password, if applicable.
  4. Click Search.
  5. Enter the criteria to search for in the Search on and Search for fields.
  6. Click Search.

Examples of a simple search are provided in the following section. Remember that search text for name searches must always be entered with the last name first. Also, searches are not case sensitive, so you can enter text in uppercase or lowercase characters.

Using the asterisk as a wildcard character:

You may use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character anywhere in your search text (for example Dund*,C). The wildcard character represents a substring of zero or more characters. Using the wildcard character at the beginning of search text (for example, *dee,C) can cause longer response times.

More on searching by name:

The last name must be specified first, optionally followed by a first name. If you use a comma (,) to separate the last name from the first name, then the last name is assumed to be the full last name (for example, McDonald,R). If you want to specify only part of the last name, either use a blank space to separate the last name from the first name (for example, McDon R), or use a wildcard character in the last name before specifying the (,) (for example, McDon*,R).

For example, suppose you want to search for an employee by the name of Frank Santiago.

Advanced search:

Use advanced search form allows for more control, to provide you with more options to search by, and to search on multiple fields simultaneously. However, what you type is used explicitly for an exact match. If you want to do a wildcard search, you must add the wildcards (*s). For example, if you just put a "D" in the "Last name" field, it will not find anyone named John Doe. This result is different from the search bar where "D" would have found John Doe. With an advanced search, you must explicitly type "D*" to find someone named John Doe.

An example of an advanced search:

Viewing the results:

IBM Telephone Directory returns a listing of all the matches to your search, provided that the list does not exceed the maximum search size set up by the application administrator. If a search returns more than one match, select the one that most closely matches the listing that you are looking for. Click the person's name to look up all of that individual's directory information. You can send the individual a note by clicking their e-mail address, assuming that your browser is properly configured to send e-mail. Some browsers do not have an e-mail client so this function does not work on such browsers.

For more information on search entries, see Work with additional functions.