Troy Vision offers straightforward lookups and also powerful database searching for all of the major sections of the database.
From the Home screen, click on People, Companies, Jobs, Contracts (if in use) or Invoices as required. You can also click on the drop-down menu folder icon above the People icon and select ‘Open’ and make your selection there.
Both actions will take you to the same screen. Whichever section you are searching on, the lookup or search process is the same.
Here you can enter full or partial values for whichever fields you want to search on. It is NOT necessary to put an ‘*’ or any other symbol at the end of a string; searching will match on whatever characters have been entered.
Tick any of the boxes as appropriate to further refine the search.
Please note: If you are familiar with the Person lookup in Troy Enterprise, Troy Vision asks for the First and then Last names, which is the other way round.
Clicking on the Database tab allows you to search on words and phrases in candidate CVs, company profiles or job profiles as appropriate. Note that this searching is performed against indexes of the content of these documents that are updated by means of the Text Searching screen which is reached from Settings / System Settings / Search Settings / Text Searching Index.
If the House Style CV is just the same text as the candidate’s original with a company logo added then there is no need to index it as it won’t yield any extra results. However, if it has been rewritten or had other text added then it is worth indexing so that this additional text is also searched.
Because the index is held in the central database, it is only necessary for a single user’s Vision to keep it up to date. This needs to be a user who is typically logged in to Vision for most of every day so that the indexing is running while they are logged in. If that user is on holiday or otherwise absent, you can temporarily switch to another user.
The program will then cycle round at regular intervals to add the content of new documents, update where a document has been edited or to remove content where a document has been deleted. Searching the index is much faster than inspecting each document individually.
Ticking the Index CV automatically box will cause Vision to add the new CV to the document index as soon as the person’s record has been created, but will tie up the user’s screen until the process is complete. It may be preferable to leave the box unticked so that adding people is quicker and accept that the new person will not appear in text search results until the next scheduled cycle has run.
Some CVs may not be successfully indexed if the text is corrupt, the document is not actually in Word or .PDF format or if it is a .PDF that is an image rather that text. The Text Search Index Errors tab will show these documents and they will need to be individually inspected to determine the problem.
To perform text searching, you can enter individual words in the CV Text box, but more powerful searching is also available.
Phrases and Wildcards
As well as individual words, phrases can be entered (without the quotes). E.g. ‘managing director’ will return those CVs with that string in them. Wildcards can be used to match any number of characters: ‘project man*’ will match both ‘project manager’ and ‘project management’.
Complex logic
‘and’ and ‘or’ can be used between words. ‘athletics and sprint’ will return just those CVs with both words in. ’athletics or sprint’ will return those with either or both. Multiple terms can be linked with brackets: ‘(athletics or sprint) and (running or jumping)’.
Again, wildcards can be used, so this could be broadened to
‘(athlet* or sprint*) and (run* or jump*)’
If you have a text search containing several terms that is used frequently, you can click on ‘Save Text’ and give the query string a title. The query will be saved and can then be loaded at a later date by clicking on ‘Pick Text’.
As well or instead of using the text search, you can search on fields in the person (or company or job) records.
Click on ‘Configure’ in the bottom right of the window to add or remove fields from the search list.
Double click on an item on the left to add it to the search terms, or double click on one on the right to remove it. Terms are added to the bottom of the list, but you can then highlight it and click the up and down arrows to adjust its position in the list. For ease of use, position the terms used most frequently towards the top.
You can add as many terms to the search list as you wish, but if it becomes too long, it will be difficult to locate the ones you want to use.
Highlight the term you want to search on and tick or complete the boxes, depending on the type of field. Select ‘Must have all’ or ‘At least one’ or ‘Exclude’ as required. If the field has levels, or years of experience then select those as needed.
You can then highlight another field on the left and repeat the selection process.
Clicking the arrow on the right of the window will allow you to see the whole query as it builds up.
Finally tick or clear the boxes for Placed, Archived etc and select the types of people (candidates and / or contacts) and permanent / contract jobs or both.
Note: You may not have options for candidates and contacts, or for permanent and contract jobs. This depends on the configuration option used when your database was initially set up.
If you do not have the options above but wish to use the Exec Search or Contracts functionality, please contact Troy Support. This can be easily configured, and there is no additional charge.
Once a search has been configured, it is possible to click Save Search so that the search terms are saved for future use. This is very useful if you need to run a complex search on a regular basis and avoids the danger of selecting the wrong search terms.
The ‘Advanced Search’ tab allows you to enter SQL syntax directly. This will typically be done in conjunction with Troy support, in very specific situations. Only administrators are allowed to enter new searches, but other users can load a search that has been run previously.
