Finding entities

You can use the Find dialog to find entities of a type quickly and easily. To open the Find dialog, on the New page of the Data Sources Task Pane, click Find.

  1. Select the entity type you wish to find in the drop-down list at the top of the dialog.
  2. Enter partial or complete information about the entity in the appropriate fields for the entity type. For example, if your entity type is Person and you know the last name is Jones, type Jones into the Last Name box.
  3. Click the Find button or press the Enter key and all of the items in the database containing the information you entered will be displayed in the Results area in the bottom left side of the dialog.

    If this takes a long time, a Pause button is available. Click the button to temporarily halt the Find. If the entity you require is already listed, you can chart it. Otherwise, click the Resume button to continue .

    You do not need to type in the complete entry, just the start of it, so in the example above you could just type Jo and the list that appears would contain all of the people whose last name begins with Jo. Whether this search is case sensitive depends on the type of your underlying database. The person who set up the iBridge database for you may have provided this information. To find out, select database > Database Properties where database is the name of your iBridge database.

    Note: When entering information into a date field, you must enter a complete date or a complete date and complete time, including a four digit year.

    You can narrow down the number of items found by extending the amount of text you type or by adding more information. Every time you change the information and click Find or press the Enter key, the list of items matching that information will be updated.

  4. Initially the first entity in the list will be highlighted and its fields displayed in the right side of the dialog. To view the details of a different entity, click on it in the list.
    Note: You may want to chart several entities at the same time from the results list in the Find dialog. To do this, click on the first entity that you want to chart and then hold down the Ctrl key while you click on the other entities that you want to chart. When you click OK all of the selected entities will be charted.
  5. When you have located the entity you are looking for, you can add the entity to your chart by:
    • double-clicking on the entity in the list
    • clicking on the entity to highlight it and clicking OK

    If you displayed the Find dialog by Shift-dragging an entity onto the chart from the database palette, the entity you found will be added to the chart at the position you placed the entity.

    If the entity found is already on the chart, this entity is selected and the chart scrolls until you can see the entity.

    Note: If at any point while in the Find dialog, you decide you need to use more complex conditions to find your entity, click on the Query button to display the Query dialog which allows you to apply more complex criteria. Any criteria you have entered in the Find dialog will automatically be entered into the Query dialog.