Searching external sources
Your system administrator can enable you to search multiple external data sources for information that is relevant to your investigation, in various different ways. Analyst's Notebook presents all of the available queries in the External Searches window.
About this task
In general, you can categorize queries for external data sources according to three criteria: Whether you can (or must) provide parameters, whether you can (or must) specify seeds, and whether you can define a structure for a Visual Query.
- When a query supports parameters, you can customize the query before you run it, with the aim of seeing more targeted results. For example, a query that searches for people might be configured so that you can specify ranges of birth dates. A query for cars might allow you to enter a partial license plate.
- When a query supports seeds, it changes its behavior when (or does not work until) you select items that are already on the chart. A query might use information from selected items for several purposes:
- Some queries search for information in external sources that is related to information that is on the chart. For example, they might try to find bank accounts that are known to be operated by a selected person.
- Some queries use the information from a selected item as a starting point. For example, they might search for telephone calls that happened at around the same time as a selected call.
- When a query in the External Searches window advertises itself as a Visual Query, you can control how it searches the external data source and what types of records it finds. Visual Queries enable you to look for data structures as well as for single records.
Procedure
In Analyst's Notebook, the External Searches window contains everything that you need in order to understand, configure, and run the queries that search external data sources.
Results
After the query runs, the External Searches window gains a Results view that contains the search results. From here, you can select results and copy them to the chart surface. You can filter the results by type, or use the search bar for text filtering. This gives you several different ways to refine your search, and this is particularly useful when your searches yield a large number of results.