question Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again' in ITSM forum

Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

david_erickson — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 18:03:16 GMT

One of our end users was having issues with this while trying to find incidents that contained the words. I tried a similar searches. The ones that worked:

search functionality

search approval

search file

approval functionality

approval search

Only using 'approval file' generated the message. All of my searches brought up the incident and a few other items with one or both of the words. I have not been able to find out why the partiuclar phrase 'approval file' generates the message. Can anyone help me figure out why it generates the message, and how i can make it work as it won't find the incident that has that phrase but finds other ones with different phrases.

Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

shrutityagi — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 19:18:19 GMT

Hi David,

-- Start with to make sure your word is not listed as a stopword in table 'ts_stop'

-- If not a stop word check table 'ts_word' and search for your word in this table and see how many entries you have for this word in this table.

There is a system property 'glide.ts.max_wildcard_expansion' OOB value of this property is 500. If a wildcard search matches more words in ts_word table than this value, system displays this message you are getting.

Check the value of this property and number of entries in ts_word table.

Thanks

Shruti

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Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

david_erickson — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 21:10:14 GMT

Shruti,

Thanks so much for the information. It has led me to a some more questions.

After confirming it didn't show up in the ts_stop table, I checked the other. When I look at the ts_word table, it is hidden. I set it so I could see it in our dev environment and 'approval' is less than 500 (500 is the sys property value) while file is more than 4000.

In production, searching by both words singularly results in the message, which seems to imply that they are occurring more than 500 there. I tried to search the same way in dev as not knowing if there was a reason the table was set so it could not be seen, and noticed that in our Jakarta development environment (we are testing for upgrading) there is no 'keyword' option for my search.

Is there a reason it should be hidden, as I think they are close to the same, but I cannot confirm it without making the same acl checkbox change in production?

Why would the one less than the property generate the same message?

And finally, is the fix simply to set the property to a number larger than the occurrences in the ts_word table?

Thanks in advance.

David Erickson

ServiceNow Administrator | Developer

817-525-7192 (Direct)

4001 Embarcadero Dr

Arlington, Texas 76014

david.erickson@gmfinancial.com<mailto:david.erickson@gmfinancial.com>

Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

shrutityagi — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 22:24:49 GMT

Hey David,

1. I just checked ts_word table is only visible to maint role, so I guess thats why you are not able to see it.

2. This message usually appear when number If a wildcard search matches more words than value in 'glide.ts.max_wildcard_expansion', the system displays a message asking the user to refine the search.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-servicenow-platform/page/administer/search-administration/task/set-global-text-search-properties.html https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-servicenow-platform/page/administer/search-administration/task/set-global-text-search-properties.html

3. Yes for testing purpose you can try to change the value of property to 1000 and see if you are able to search. This will make sure message is appearing from the property.

Larger value for this property can cause performance impact on your instance while you search. So not recommend to have really high value you need to see best for your instance.

Thanks

Shruti

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Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

Aditya Telideva — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 02:17:51 GMT

hI David,

You can always suppress these Info messages by below method:

There is a 'gs.flushMessages();' call that you can make to clear any existing info messages and prevent them from being displayed. The challenge is going to be finding the right place to put the code so that it will eliminate the messages. In your case you might have to hack the UI pages and macros from the KB to make it work. Here's a link to the info message doc I created to explain this, and other info message calls.

http://www.servicenowguru.com/scripting/ui-info-error-message-cheat-sheet/

Also, if you have already deployed KB v.3 , (with stop words activated), it's a very common message. I have search for the source but it seems it comes from the part of ServiceNow "we" can't modify. Message key is ts_query_only_common.

You may choose from one of the following workarounds:

Remove the Similar Cases relationship if it is not required or used.
Update the related list not to execute the search, but only to show cases with the same category.

Hope this helps,

Aditya Telidevara

Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

shrutityagi — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 20:13:40 GMT

Hi David,

I forgot to mention about table 'ts_index_stop' This is stop word table when stop word auto-generate when they reach threshold.

Open this table and search for your word. If your word is there change stop mode to Not a stop word. If your current stop mode is 'Index but don't query' no need to regenerate test index. If your current stop mode is 'neither index nor query' regenerate text index.

Thanks

Shruti

If the reply was informational, please like, mark as helpful or mark as correct!

Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

david_erickson — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 20:35:36 GMT

That table has it. Thanks so much. Both words exceed the automated stop threshold. I really appreciate the help. Now, if I can figure out how to mark this as answered…..

Thanks in advance.

David Erickson

ServiceNow Administrator | Developer

817-525-7192 (Direct)

4001 Embarcadero Dr

Arlington, Texas 76014

david.erickson@gmfinancial.com<mailto:david.erickson@gmfinancial.com>

Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

shrutityagi — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 20:37:11 GMT

Perfect. Check here

How To Mark Answers Correct From Community Inbox

Shruti

Re: Searching by 'Keywords' contains 'approval file' generates message 'Your text query contained only common words or ambiguous wildcards, please refine your search and try again'

david_erickson — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 20:41:36 GMT

I was able to do it. Seems from the logged into HI, even though I though I recalled setting it to log me in from some pop up, it was not, so I did not have the options visible. Had to logon to make them visible. Must have been mistaken about the pop up. Thanks again.

Thanks in advance.

David Erickson

ServiceNow Administrator | Developer

817-525-7192 (Direct)

4001 Embarcadero Dr

Arlington, Texas 76014

david.erickson@gmfinancial.com<mailto:david.erickson@gmfinancial.com>