Getting Started Using PHLAT

Getting Going

•   To use PHLAT you must be running Windows Desktop Search and must have the .NET framework v1.1 installed (this is an optional download from Windows Update--select the custom update button and choose "Optional software"). You can download PHLAT here.

•   When you first install PHLAT, you will need to run it by going to Start-->All Programs.

•   To install the PHLAT Toolbar, right click on any blank place in the Taskbar and select “Toolbars.” Go down the list and select “PHLAT Toolbar.” See the screenshot to see the PHLAT Toolbar.

•   When you click the close button (X), Phlat will minimize to the system tray of the Windows TaskBar (see screenshot). If you click on the PHLAT icon in the system tray, PHLAT will reappear in whatever state you closed it. You can also bring PHLAT back by issuing a query in the PHLAT Toolbar.

Finding Stuff with PHLAT

•   You can search for things in your index several ways.

-   Just type query words into the query box. Typing bike in the query box (and hitting return or Go) will issue a search for any item in your index with the word “bike” in the content or any property (e.g., title, author, etc.).

-   Click on a filter. This will show you all items that match the filter. For example, if you clicked on the PowerPoint Type filter after typing “bike” you would see all PowerPoint files in your index that contain the word “bike.” You can also click on a filter without typing a query. If you clicked on the PowerPoint Type filter without any other query elements, you would see ALL PowerPoint files in your index.

-   Right-click on query result. When you right-click on a query result, you can either expand or narrow the current query based on that result. For example, if you right-clicked on Willie Bobo in the author column in the screenshot below, you could either filter to further narrow the results to only items authored by “Willie Bobo” or replace the query to show all items by “Willie Bobo.”

Query Area

•   Typing query words

-   Each word automatically gets its own line to reinforce the fact that each word is a query element. As you type, words are automatically moved to the next line after a space.
Phrase queries (offset with quotes “”), are rendered on a single line.

-   By default, queries are applied to the full content of your index, including all properties (e.g., for email, the content of the email, to:, from:, cc:, subject:, etc.).

-   You can explicitly limit your query terms to a given field in much the same way as using advance query syntax in Windows DS. E.g., “author:billy” will search for all items with “billy” in the Author property. Please note that we have not implemented ALL of the advanced query syntax that Window DS, only those things that were requested most frequently.

Filter Area

•   In addition to typing queries, you can find information using the Filter Area. Example filters include Date (when something was sent or modified), People (authors, mail recipients, etc.), Type (documents, pictures, music, email, etc), Path (the folder an item is stored in), and Tags (labels that you apply to your own stuff).

•   To apply a filter, you simply click on the filter you’re interested in. That filter will highlight with a button, and a button will also be added to the Query Area.

•   If you have a query that you use frequently or is complicated to specify, you can create a Saved Query. This is just a quick way to execute a query. Once you’ve got a query you’d like to save, simply go to File-->Save Query. This will add a new item to the Saved Queries area (initially, there are no items in this area). Now any time you would like to execute this query, simply open the Saved Queries pane and click on the item—your saved query will be executed. Saved queries are xml .pht files located in My Documents.

•   For many of the filter panes (Type, People, Path, Tags), you can also begin typing in a textbox in that pane to quickly find an item, or to search for a more general word in that field. For example, if you began typing “Sam” in the People pane, you would see a drop-down with all the people matching “Sam” (e.g., Samuel Jackson, Samantha Smith, Gregor Samsa, Sam I Am, etc.). You could opt to select one of these or, by hitting return, you would issue a query filtered by that word in the People field (e.g., all items with the word “Sam” in any of the people fields such as MailTo, Author, MailCc, Album Artist, etc.).

Results Area

•   By default, all results are sorted by Date, and are grouped by some main divisions. You can change the sort order by clicking on any column header. This always maintains a stable sort for the previous sort order (e.g., if you click on Author after Date, the results would be sorted & grouped by Author, with a secondary sort by Date. You can turn off the grouping function by clicking on View-->Collapse groups of results (for very large queries, this functionality can slow PHLAT down a bit).

•   Also by default, we show a short snippet of each result. You can hide this, or change the behavior by playing with Tools-->Options.

Tagging

•   One of the most interesting features of Phlat is the ability to apply custom tags or labels to your stuff--email, office docs, pictures, music, cached web pages, etc. all with the same uniform set of tags. And because these tags aren't "containers," you can apply as many tags to as many objects as you like. This is a very powerful, flexible and intuitive mechanism to organize your stuff.

As an example, you may have a variety of emails, office documents and white board photos all related to a project. You could tag all of them with a single tag for the project and then apply additional tags to different work items that are pending. If one of the documents is used in several projects, just apply several different tags!

•   In order to apply a tag to objects, you can then either drag-to-tag (drag the desired tag onto the target objects/objects onto the desired tag) OR you can click the tag box associated with that tag. See the screenshot to the right — the check mark indicates that the “Personal” tag is already applied to the selected item(s). I’m getting ready to apply the “High Priority” tag to the same item(s).

NOTE: There may be a delay when you filter on recently tagged items while they are re-indexed by the indexer. Depending on your activity level on your PC, this may take some time.

•   There are only a few "seed" tags to start out with. To add your own, open the tag pane & right click on one of the parent tags to add a sibling or a child tag. You can also click on the “+” icon at the top of the tag pane and then drag the tag to the position in the hierarchy you’d like it. We’re still working on the interaction and language here, but for now this is how to do it.

•   All tags are stored as either custom NTSF or MAPI properties with the objects themselves. This means that if you remove PHLAT or you need to rebuild your index, you won't lose your tags. However, it also means that you will lose them if you move the objects to a FAT32 store (e.g., a CD-ROM or USB flash key) and you will not be able to tag items in these stores.

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