Aloha,
Clearwell's (v7.1.1) Advanced Search provides the ability to search on email sent date, subject, from, to, cc, and bcc, and provides the ability to search on non-email last modified date, and file extension.
Desirable is the ability to search on any particular selected native metadata field(s), or at least any particular selected standard ones not already available at the Advanced Search interface. For emails, standard metadata would include at least date and time sent, date and time received, subject, from, to, cc, bcc, native file name, and native file path. For non-emails, standard metadata would include at least date and time created, date and time last modified, title, author, native file name, and native file path. [NOTE 1]
Perhaps the particular metadata fields could be listed as Advanced Search options on a drop-down similar to the existing "Fields to search" one that makes available partial compound scope options (e.g., "Subject, Body and attachment content"), at the Keywords section of Advanced Search. [NOTE 2]
These fields are already identified by Clearwell at some level as they are already available for export to DAT or CSV. What would it take to promote them as scope options within Advanced Search?
Otherwise, I think one has resort to an onerous workaround whereby one must process the native, then export it, and then process it again via load file, in order to access--as custom fields—the standard native metadata not currently made available for searching or sorting through the processing of the original native itself. [NOTE 3]
Thank you for the opportunity to offer these comments.
Meanwhile, if there's a back-end non-GUI means to access/search on full native metadata, please let me know?
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NOTE 1: Forgive if I'm missing something, but I think that since not all non-email files are attachments to emails (some are loose files), there should probably be a "Non-email" section (including both attachments and loose files) on the Advanced Search interface, rather than just the "Attachment" section. Meanwhile, an information bubble would be helpful to clarify whether a search under the "Attachment" section will cover loose files as well.
NOTE 2: By the way, an information bubble would be helpful to define the option "All Clearwell fields and custom fields" at the Keywords section "Fields to search" drop-down. It's not clear to me whether "All Clearwell fields" refers to the fields available at the current Advanced Search interface (mentioned at the first sentence, above), or rather all metadata fields that can be exported by Clearwell. If the latter is the case, that's promising, but the ability to search particular fields is needed.
NOTE 3: Why not provide a table view option in Clearwell, a rich display available in most databases, where metadata is arranged in columns? See attachment.
Elton Johnson