Overview of search

PolicyCenter provides two types of search:

Database search: Searches the relational database for policies, accounts, producers, activities, and contacts by using Structured Query Language (SQL). You access these searches from the Search tab.
PolicyCenter also includes database search from screens besides those accessed through the Search tab. For example, you can do a database search for policy form patterns, policy locations, regions, and other entities and objects.
Free-text search: Searches an external, full-text database for policies, by using the APIs of an external full-text search engine. PolicyCenter includes free-text search for policies and submissions. You access free-text search from the Search Policies > Basic screen.

Database search is fully enabled by default. Users can search policies, accounts, producers, activities, and contacts with database search. Users can choose to include archived policies with each database search request. The user interface for database search is known as advanced search.

Free-text search is available as an option that you must enable and configure. Free-text search is available only for searching for policies and submissions. Free-text search results never include archived policies. The user interface for free-text search is known as basic search.

The following diagram illustrates the PolicyCenter database and free-text search architecture:

Important: The PolicyCenter base configuration does not allow free-text search of entity types other than policies and submissions. Guidewire will support customers in their development of additional search types.

Free-text search involves two sets of data flows in which a user selects and reviews policies as well as updates them. In the policy review data flows, the user searches, selects, and reviews policies with the PolicyCenter user interface. Searching policies entails sending queries to and receiving policy results from a full-text search engine. Selecting and reviewing policies entails requesting and receiving policies from a relational database. The following diagram illustrates the first set of free-text search data flows for reviewing policies:
The PolicyCenter application processes a search by using the full text search engine. The user selects a policy from the search.

In the policy update data flow, the user updates policies with the PolicyCenter user interface. Updating policies entails sending updates to a relational database as well as sending an index document with the updates to a full-text search engine. The following diagram illustrates the second set of free-text search data flows for updating policies:
Changes that the user makes to a policy update both the relational database and the full-text search engine.

If you enable free-text search, the Search Policies screen displays two tabs:

Basic: Displays fields on which to search policies and submissions. The Basic screen uses free-text search to return policies and submissions that match criteria users enter.
Advanced: Displays fields on which to search policies and jobs. The Advanced screen uses database search to return policies and jobs that match criteria users enter.

If you enable free-text search, the Search Policies screen displays the Basic and Advanced search screens. Otherwise, the Search Policies screen displays the Advanced screen only.

Reasons that users choose the Basic or Advanced screens include:

Users want to search policies with commonly used criteria and receive results quickly, which the Basic screen provides.
Users want to search policies with highly targeted criteria, which requires the Advanced screen.
Users want to search policies with partial names, phonetic names, or sounds-like names, which the Basic screen provides.
Users want to search archived policies, which requires the Advanced screen.
Users want to search for specific job types, such as all policy changes bound within a certain period.

An administrator hides the Basic search screen while the free-text batch load command runs, but users still can search policies with the Advanced screen. The following diagram illustrates the PolicyCenter database and free-text search architecture during the batch load process: