Step by step exploration

In contrast to the interaction you have with other search tools, searching and exploring with AutoFocus Server is not a one-off process . In AutoFocus Server you refine step by step. During the interaction with AutoFocus Server your results list grows, shrinks, grows, grows, shrinks, shrinks until you find the wanted information. Look at the example where you see a list of 2,307 information objects together with facets, like Date and Type. These facets contain values that are specific for the list shown. This means that the list contains 41 Archives and 481 Images, as can be seen in the Type facet.

Full-text search

In this example the user searches for the keyword metadata. When the user searches for a keyword or selects a facet value, the list of results is immediately reduced. Next to that, the values in each facet are changed to match with the informtion in the reduced results list.

The numbers behind each value stand for the number of items in the list that have this value. Please note that these numbers are lower than in the first snapshot.

Drilling down

By entering more keywords or by selecting facet values, the number of items in the results list will decrease. In the example the user restricts the list to items of the type Presentations.

The facet Type has hierarchical values. As you can see, this means that on a level below Presentations, there are other values.

Exploring other paths

By removing an earlier made selection the results list will grow. You can do that in any order that you want. In this example the user removes the first selection, metadata. This results expands the results list to items that are Presentations.

This is an example of how you can explore an information collection. You don't need to return to the top-level. You just remove the selection you don't like and continue from there.