Nortel Search can help you locate information on our web site. We hope these tips will help you use Search effectively to find precisely the answer you seek.
Technical Support searches for Partners and Customers can be accomplished through four separate, distinct search utilities that are used in different
ways depending on the type of information being searched for.
The Four Search utilities are:
Utility
Description
Search Nortel / Portal Search
For high-level searching of all content within the Nortel.com portal. Visible from the Nortel.com page in the top right of the screen and
within each sub-menu.
Knowledge Base
For searching the database of Technical Support troubleshooting articles. Available from the Nortel.com/support page for registered external users.
Known Issues Tool (KIT)
For searching public updates to technical cases routed to Nortel's Product Support teams. Accessible from the Nortel.com/support portal.
Partner Information Center (PIC)
For searching on product documentation and bulletins specifically generated for Partner use. Note: PIC contents are not searchable
within the Knowledge Base or the KIT search tools.
Refer to the table below to understand which tool is best to use for the type of search or information you are looking for:
Nortel Content Type
Search Nortel
Search Knowledge Base
Search KIT
Search PIC
Nortel Product Documentation (NTPs)
Yes
No
No
No
Technical Bulletins (including Security, PCN, and Lifecycle)
Yes
No
No
No
Product and Solution Overviews
Yes
No
No
No
Knowledge Base Solutions1
No
Yes
No
No
Service Requests (cases)
Yes
No
No
No
Partner Bulletins
Yes
No
No
Yes
Partner Documentation
Yes
No
No
Yes
Software
Yes
No
No
Yes
CRs (design updates)
No
No
Yes2
No
1Knowledge Base solutions are authored by Nortel engineers to summarize complex, common, Service Request, Documentation, or Bulletin
information. They are usually identified in the format NORTnnnnnn or with a numeric-only identifier. Knowledge Base solutions are different from Clarify
Solutions that have a naming format of Snnnnnnn (such as S00783294).
2KIT searches invoke user-level entitlement to ensure data security across partners and customers.
Use more than one word and choose search terms carefully
Always enter the best search term you can. Successful searches use more than one word and focus on words found in the document to be retrieved. For example if you are looking for information about how to become a channel partner or reseller of Nortel products, use the verb become as well as the noun partner. Think of some other words that might be on the page that answers your question. In this example, words like sales, support, and incentive might appear on the page that answers the question. Choose a few of these words and add them to your basic search term. If more of your terms occur within a document, Search will consider the document more relevant. Notice that the terms you choose do not need to make a sentence.
Example: partner become sales incentive
Example: meridian upgrade succession voip
Choose the most relevant site sections
Search allows querying within the individual sections of Nortel's website, including Products, Solutions, Services, Support, Training & Certification, Communities, Corporate and Partner content. Each time you select one of these areas to search in, you see only results for the selected site section.
Choose the site section which is most likely to contain the answer to your question, i.e. support materials and software downloads are in Support, while course information and certification requirements are in Training & Certification. For example, if you search for CallPilot in the Product area, you will only see content from that section - marketing brochures and product overviews. You will not see content from Support - technical documentation and software. If you do not see the content you expect to find, try selecting a different site section.
Try our search recommendations
When you enter a commonly used search term, Search may offer a recommended result. This recommended result will display directly above the natural search results. The recommended result is the most useful page related to the term in your search.
In most cases, these recommended results are the best starting point for learning more about common topics on our site. Only key terms have a recommended result associated with them.
Turn common words into phrases with quotation marks
Many popular search terms appear in literally thousands of documents on our site, including the document you are looking for and all the documents that refer to it. For example, the words installation and guide separately appear many thousands of times on our site. Enclosing these two words in quotation marks specifies that you only want them if they form a phrase right next to each other. The phrase "installation guide" appears less frequently but is still very common. A successful search for a product-specific installation guide would use the phrase "installation guide" and the name of the product.
Although commonly used products acquire abbreviated names, here on our official corporate web site, we tend to use the full names of our products in our documentation, brochures, press releases and course materials. If you are looking for this type of information about the Communications Server 2000-Compact, it is probably better to spell out the name of the product rather than searching for CS 2000C or CS2kC. Abbreviations are more common in materials written quickly in a support context. With these less formal documents, multiple abbreviation styles may be found. In general, however, we recommend spelling out product names for best results.
Example: "Communications Server" 2000 Compact for most searches
Example: 2000 compact cs2kc for informal support materials
Suggestions for misspelled terms or acronyms
If you enter misspelled words or an acronym in your search term, Search will in some cases provide a ‘Did you mean?' suggestion to get you back on track. For example if you type 'call pilot', Search will suggest you try again using the term 'callpilot'. Just click the suggested term to search again.
Use Advanced Search for more control
Advanced Search provides a quick and easy way to perform more precise searches by letting you specify words to find in a phrase, words that must be present in the results and words which should not be present. You can also search different categories within a site section by using the Filter Results function. Other ways to narrow the scope of your search is by choosing document types, specifying date ranges for content or selecting to include/exclude service requests.
Tip for power users: The functions available in Advanced Search are also available in the main Search, using the Search operators described at the very end of this page.
Get to know the Search operators
When you've mastered all the techniques above, it's time to learn about Search operators. Search operators are punctuation marks and field labels used to control Search. Advanced Search offers an easy way to use most of these functions without using the operators. But for precise control in the standard Search interface, these operators can be very powerful. Search words in phrases, require or exclude words and match partial words with these operators.
Phrases We've already talked about using quotation marks (" ") to request two or more words as an exact phrase. That was an introduction to the power of Search operators.
Example: norstar "upgrade guide"
All Use the plus sign (+) to indicate terms that must be present for the query to match. You can mark only a few of your terms, making some terms required and others optional, or you can mark them all as required terms using the plus sign.
None Use the minus sign (-) to indicate terms which should not be present in the results. Like the plus sign, you can choose which terms should be excluded and mark only those.
Example: metro ethernet benefits -8600
Wildcards Use a question mark (?) to replace a single character in your search term with any character. Use asterisk (*) to replace any number of characters. This approach allows you to match portions of a search term. Wildcar searches may take slightly longer to produce results. Use the longest portion of the term possible
Example: rout* (Matches router, routing, and route.)
Example: ?nter (Finds enter and inter.)
Example: install* (Better than inst*)
Quick Reference to Search operators
Operator
Action
Example
"term1 term2 ..."
Specifies that words should be within a phrase
"optical components"
+term
Requires a term
+"optical networks" managed
-term
Excludes documents containing a term
mobility -release
fieldname:term
Specifies that the term must be found in that field. Available fields include title:, url: and link
title:"dms-100 wireless"
Log in for complete results
Registered users of Nortel's web sites will be able to search secured/entitled materials which are not available to guest users. Remember to log in for full access to secure content. You can also check Remember Me and Search will remember your log in details for the next time you visit. If you search before you log in, you will be asked to log in when you click on a result link to access secured content.
