Tech Bite: Adjust Your Laserfiche Settings to Optimize Search

Have you noticed irrelevant results when searching in Laserfiche? While we are discussing the subject of searching this month, the Cities Digital Support Team shows you how to adjust settings to boost search functionality for the Laserfiche Client and WebLink.

By default, installations of Laserfiche WebLink and Windows Clients, include the Fuzzy Search Option enabled. Fuzzy search applies to full-text searches and is used to find all the words or phrases that are similar to the word or phrase you typed. This feature allows the Laserfiche Search Engine to find words even if they have been misspelled or OCR’ed incorrectly. The degree of accuracy in fuzzy search is determined by either the number of characters or the percentage of the word.

While this feature may prove beneficial for some users or circumstances, it can have drawbacks too. For example, the search needs significantly more time, especially when searching in large repositories and increasing the percentage of the fuzzy search can lead to many irrelevant results.

Knowing that this option setting has the potential to cause an even higher rate of inaccuracy and slowness in results returned, due to the fact that the user is traversing the repository from a Web-Based Session, which means, a combination of Bandwidth, to/from the Laserfiche Server, coupled with the Fuzzy Search option calling a percentage of a word, potentially leads to a lengthy time for results return or even a potential for a Web timeout session to occur, which will return no results.

Given WebLink is a highly used tool, the Fuzzy Search option, becomes a great point of concern for Laserfiche Administrators as disgruntled employees and customers, who find the process inefficient, due to the setting, might decide not to use the Weblink search option altogether.

By disabling this setting, you will be able to search for the keyword(s), in a full string, and the search results will query only what is asked, in the Search String and nothing more.

How to remedy this Fuzzy Search Setting? Two Ways:

Laserfiche Windows Client:

1. Open the Laserfiche Client and connect to your Repository

2. Click on Tools-> Options

3. Click on Search the Options Dialog Box

4. Locate Fuzzy Search at the top of the Setting Box

5. Uncheck the Use Fuzzy Search Option

6. Click OK

Try Searching again and you should an improvement in the accuracy of the named documents returned and speed by which you received your results

WebLink

1. Log onto the Server that houses your WebLink Module

2. Open the Laserfiche WebLink Designer

3. Click on the Search Options Page

4. At the top of the Page, select your Virtual Directory, you wish to change the settings on (There could be multiple to click through and set)

5. Uncheck the Use Fuzzy Search. Repeat this step for any other Virtual Directories you might have.

• Once you close the Designer, it will save your settings for all Directories you chose to update

Test out the change in your WebLink Products.

Hopefully, this helps you and your customer have a more accurate return for your searches and also improves the search performance speed.