Searching

The fastest way to find anything in the DAMS is the search bar at the top of the screen. Search runs against entity titles, descriptions, and a few key relations (keywords, marine regions, partners) at the same time.

Screenshot to add

Top bar with the search input highlighted and a search-results dropdown showing 3–5 hits.

Quick search (top bar)

1. Click the search input at the top of the screen, or press / on your keyboard.
2. Start typing — results appear after about 3 characters.
3. Each result shows the entity type (e.g. Media, Album, Partner), its title, and a short context line.
4. Click a result to open its detail page, or press Enter to land on the full results view.

What gets searched

Quick search hits the most common fields: title, description, and titles of linked Keywords, Marine regions and Partners. It does not look inside file contents (binary file text isn't indexed). For that, see Searching inside files below.

Full results view

Pressing Enter from the search bar (or clicking See all results) takes you to a full list with:

• Type tabs at the top — restrict to a single entity type (Media, Album, Map, Publication, Partner, …).
• The result list itself, with thumbnails for media and a summary line per entity.
• The filter panel on the left — see Filtering for how to use it.

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Full results view: type tabs at top, filter panel on the left, list with thumbnails on the right.

Searching inside a specific entity type

If you already know what you're after — say a Person record — open that section from the left sidebar first, then use the search bar inside that list. The scope is then automatically limited to that type.

For example: Sidebar → Persons → search "van Koksijde" finds only the Person records, not unrelated media that happen to mention Koksijde.

Searching inside files

The DAMS does not full-text-index binary file contents (PDFs, Word, etc.) by default. To find a media by its content:

• Use Description or Keyword values that you've added to the entity.
• For documents that have been processed by OCR, OCR text is searchable through the description / keyword pipeline that the OCR service writes back.

Tips

• Title is king. The search ranks title hits higher than description or keyword hits, so keep titles meaningful.
• Wildcards aren't needed. Partial matches work automatically (koksij finds Koksijde 2014).
• Quote phrases. Wrapping a multi-word phrase in double quotes ("coastal management") requires the words to appear next to each other.
• Case is ignored. KOKSIJDE and koksijde give the same results.
• Combine with filters. A free-text search inside a filtered list is the most powerful combination — type your search after applying filters and the results stay narrow.

Saved searches

If you find yourself running the same query repeatedly, save it:

1. Apply filters and (optionally) a search term.
2. Click Save search at the top of the results view.
3. Give it a name (e.g. Marine debris 2024).
4. Saved searches appear in your sidebar / personal area and can be re-run with one click.

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Save-search dialog with a name field and Save / Cancel buttons.

What to do when you can't find something

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
You know the entity exists but it doesn't show up	You're filtered down to the wrong context	Clear the Context filter or switch to all contexts
Search returns "no results" for an obvious title	A typo in the indexed title, or the entity was created very recently and hasn't been indexed yet	Wait ~30 seconds and retry; or open the entity by ID directly
Too many irrelevant results	Use the type tabs to restrict, or add a filter on Keyword / Marine region	See Filtering