Searching the Demo Portal

You have seen several examples of the types of data and information that can be made available through the SAS Information Delivery Portal. Other types of content that the portal can accommodate include applications, documents, data warehouse views, and webEIS documents. You can further customize the portal to include even more types of content.

The portal's Search tool provides a powerful way for users to locate available content, even if the content is not included in the windows and lists of the user's portal desktop. To use the search tool, you enter search criteria and specify the types of content you are interested in. The search engine examines the metadata (descriptive data) associated with all portal content that you are authorized to view, and it displays a list of content items whose metadata match your criteria.

To see how the search tool works, select Search on the demo portal toolbar. You will see a window that looks like the figure below.

At Containing, enter an asterisk (*). This is a wildcard, indicating that you are interested in finding all of the content items that are available. (Alternatively, you could enter a word or phrase that you want to search for.)

In the list of content types, click on the checkboxes to remove the checkmarks from all of the checkboxes except the Documents checkbox. The window should look like the figure below.

Now click the Find button. The search engine examines the metadata associated with the portal content and finds all documents that the portaldemo user is authorized to see. The documents are listed in the Portal Search Results window, as shown below.

To open a document, click on Demo Document 1. The document appears in a separate browser window, as shown below.

Close the window that contains the document.

Before we log off and leave the demo portal, let's take a look at the Personalize tool.