Searching for Custom Properties

Optimize custom properties to make them searchable with clients like Data Navigation. Optimizing custom properties also speeds up your search and reduces the size of the physical index.

1. In Data Indexing, click DataFinder Instances.
2. Select an instance and click »Manage»Custom Properties.
3. Choose whether to optimize custom properties on the File, Group, or Channel level.
4. Optional: Optimize custom properties with a high occurrence and sort them by the number of occurrences. To do so, click Calculate Occurrences and then click the Occurrences column header.
5. Select the property, or several properties, you want to optimize and click Optimize.
   

   Tip  

   Make sure you select all custom properties you want to optimize before you run the optimization process. The instance will be blocked during the process, which may take some time.

6. Optional: To schedule regular optimization, click Index»Index Optimization Schedule.
7. Exclude properties from the index to save disk space and keep the properties display in Data Navigation as short as possible.
   1. On the Custom Properties tab, select properties and click Exclude to remove the properties from the index.
   2. To reduce the physical index size after excluding properties, click Reset Index on the Index tab.
8. Optional: If you want to reinclude properties, complete the following steps:
   1. Select the excluded properties and click Deoptimize. Wait until DataFinder re-indexes all files to re-include them in the index.
   2. Then select the properties you want to reinclude and click Optimize.
9. Click Apply to accept the settings.
   

   Note  

   A custom property may be of a different data type in different files, for example, if they were written by another device. In this case, DataFinder uses the data type with the highest occurrence to optimize the property across all files.

The custom properties you optimize display in the list of searchable properties in the search configuration in Data Navigation. Choose the properties for your search from the list and start searching for files