Provide a mechanism to search the data in your application, if you can.

Search in plug-ins with Lotus Expeditor and Sametime

Lotus Expeditor does not turn on a search control by default, but there is an extensible search control (called the search center) that you can put in the toolbar, on the far right-hand side (Lotus Notes uses it). The search center can automatically change the scope of a search based on the application that currently has focus.

You can also add new search scopes or choices (such as Yahoo or Google Web Search) to the drop-down control, as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1. Extensible search choices in the Search drop-down

Search in composite applications

Users should be able to search composite applications. Since neither the Expeditor platform nor Sametime provides a truly federated search, use the "search center" in the toolbar to default to the current component that has focus, to the "All things" view if it exists.

In addition,provide an option for the view that currently has focus (if it is indeed a view) and also list each of the components explicitly in the search drop-down because it is not obvious to users of a composite application that they need to put focus on a component to then search it.

For example, suppose that you have a sales leads application in which there are three components, called Accounts, Leads, and History. When the user has focus on Accounts, then Accounts will be the default search, but the others should be listed as search choices as well (see figure 2).

Figure 2. Composite applications should list each of the components available to search

Click here to view a convenient checklist to ensure your plug-ins are consistent.