8 - Basic Searching: Using the Results View

Throughout this exercise, you’ll build increasingly complex object searches and visualizations of the results. The final objective will be to build a dynamic, sharable view of all aircraft in operation at Frontier Airlines. Such a view might serve as a point of departure for our team, customers, or managers to better understand or analyze the health of the fleet. Let’s begin with basic search examples to understand how results are retrieved.

🔨 Task Instructions

• Open Object Explorer by selecting it from the list of apps in the Workspace Sidebar.
• In the main search bar (“Search object types and properties...”) type [Example Data] Aircraft.
• As you begin typing, object sets that match your criteria appear below the search bar. Click on the [Example Data] Aircraft result when it comes up (it will appear below the phrase Search for "[Example Data] Aircraft").
  • You’re now looking at an Exploration— a configurable investigation of a set of objects. The page you now see is known as the Explore perspective, and it has loaded a generic collection of basic visualizations of the properties of this set of objects. We will return later to modify these.
• Near the top center of the screen, click the Results tab. This switches our perspective from Explore to Results. This provides us with a tabular representation of the objects in this set.
  • One of our colleagues has configured this table to display some—but not all—of the properties of this object type. Let’s add one or two more.
• Click the “gear” (⚙️) icon at the top right of the results table.
• Choose an additional column to add to the table by clicking the “crossed-out eye” icon to the right of the property name. Then click the blue Save configuration button.
  • You can also get a quick preview of the configured Object View for each item in the results list.
• Tick one of the boxes to the left of a result. The Selection Preview window provides the object’s interactive view.
• Tick the box next to a second object in the list. The Selection Preview now enables you to compare multiple objects by contrasting their views.
• In the top right of the Selection Preview, toggle the viewing option from Preview Single to Compare to allow a side-by-side comparison.

📚 Recommended Reading (~7 min read)

• Throughout this section, we’ll be using the terms Object Type, Object, and Object Set. Review the distinction in the documentation to help clarify the instructions you’ll encounter.
• Take a moment to read more about the search results UI here.
• For more information on the Results perspective, consult this entry in the Object Explorer documentation.