- 6 minutes to read

Add or manage Search Field

This guide teaches how to add or manage a Search Field. Based on the Logging, these provide end-to-end observability.

The Nodinite Administrator has two ways to create and manage Search Fields:

From the Search Fields Overview in the administration part of the Web Client (this guide)
Using the Search Field Wizard available for Nodinite Administrators within Log Views

Step 1: Add or Manage a Search Field

To get data from a correlation from the Search Fields Overview, Click the Add Search Field button to create a new Search Field.

Here's an example of the add a new Search Field button.

Step 2: Name the Search Field

Now give your Search Field a unique name.

Edit Search Field properties.

Mandatory fields

Name: The Search Field must have a unique user-friendly name assigned. You can safely change this name at any point later.
Data Type is required to provide the proper relational operators when working with the Log Views.

The Data Types are pre-defined; additional data types may be added with future versions of Nodinite. The Search Fields must be set to any of the following:

Data Type	Description	Example value	Example operators
Text			=, Like, Not Like, Contains, ...
Integer	a whole number	1, 42, 1337	<, >, <>, =, ...
Long Integer			<, >, <>, =, ...
Real number with 2 decimals	datetimeoffset (Transact-SQL)	`YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss[.nnnnnnn][{+\|-}hh:mm]` `YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss[.nnnnnnn]Z (UTC)`	<, >, <>, =, ...
GUID			=, <>, Contains, Empty, ...
Double			<, >, <>, =, ...
Date time with offset			=, <>, <, Empty, ...
Bitwise Integer			=, <>, Contains, Starts with, ...

To facilitate search operations in Log Views; Select a proper data type to provide the proper set of mathematical operators.

Optional fields

Description - You can and should give your Search Fields a user-friendly description of their intended purpose.
Web Site - You can provide a quick link for users when working with and viewing the Search Field. This link usually points to a WIKI/Sharepoint site with additional documentation.

Step 3: Manage Search Field expressions

You can Edit the Search Field Expressions for the Search Field.

There can be any number of Search Field Expressions assigned on a Search Field.

Click the Edit button to manage Search Field Expressions for the Search Field.

Click the Actions button; You can either Edit or Delete the selected search field expression.

Edit - Loads the configuration for the selected Search field expression. Next, you can test and then update the configuration.

Expression

The Expression is a statement the Logging Service uses to extract values from the message body or context data on messages matching the Message Type.

Expression Type

Select an Expression Type to suit the format of the data. The result of the configuration yields unique values (code/logic/syntax/format).

Message Type

Select the Message Types that this Expression should be applied on (usually at least one).

Click the Message Types link to open the corresponding message type from the Repository Model.

Global - Use the expression on ALL Message Types.

Important
Use this feature only when you need it. All inbound messages is processed, looking for a value to extract. This will add significant processing overhead to the Logging Service.

Optional - Optional means that messages lacking a value are not flagged in the warning state.

Processing State

From the Test expression tab, you can validate your configuration with actual data.

There are three types of processing states which are expressed as a cogwheel with a green, yellow, or red sign.

OK - green, evaluation gave 1 or more results.
Warning - yellow, evaluation gave no result (failed to find data from provided expression).
Error - Red, some major error either in the expression/plugin or the Logging Service is offline/not accessible.

1. OK	2. Warning	3. Error

Update

When done, click the 'Update' button to save changes to the Search Field Expression.

Warning
If you just click 'Close', your changes might be lost!

Step 4: Search Field Links

A helpful feature of Nodinite helps your business act with ease by adding a clickable link from Log Views where Search Field values are displayed. These values can be more or less simple and/or more or less complex. Either way; For instance, if the ID stems from some internal transaction and that ID is NOT easy to read nor to remember. To avoid error-prone copy/paste operations, Nodinite can take this value and insert it into any of the available Search Field Links for that Search Field (opens the resulting URI in a new tab). Your business users, can thereby quickly, and almost without any instructions, navigate to other systems faster, with the correct data.

As seen in a Nodinite Log View.