You can link to the University-wide FAQ search page at the following web address through a standard HTML link:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/faqs/result.php

When you link to the FAQ system with the link above, without parameters, it uses the FAQ system's default template and displays all published and public department FAQs, including all published topics, subtopics, and questions.

If you use custom templates, or if you want to direct users to specific levels of the FAQs for other reasons, you must append some parameters to the above web address. These parameters tell the FAQ system to restrict the search page to the specified filters.

The first parameter is a restriction by department. In the href attribute of the link, append:

? category=department name (as it appears in the tree control)

For example, to restrict the results to the Web department and to use the departmental template (if defined), use the following link:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/faqs/result.php?category=Web

The results are displayed in the departmental template if such a template is defined and enabled. The tree control starts at the topic level and all topics are displayed.

Please note that departmental FAQs that are marked as private (and therefore not served in the University-wide FAQ search page) are accessed by using the category parameter. When the category parameter is passed, which is true for all of the following options, no distinction exists between public or private departmental FAQs.

Within a department you can futher restrict by topic. If you want to display only the FAQs for a specific subtopic, you append both the category parameter and the topic parameter to the web address:

&sc = topic label (as it appears in the tree control)

For example, to restrict the search form to the Dreamweaver topic within the Web department and to use the topic template (if defined), use:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/faqs/result.php?category=Web&sc=Dreamweaver

This restricts the FAQs displayed to only those in the Dreamweaver topic within the Web department. The tree control lists all subtopics of the Dreamweaver topic.

The subtopic search is different from the preceding searches. Since you are restricting the search results to a very narrow spectrum of the entire FAQs, displaying the page automatically triggers all questions within the specified subtopic to be displayed. If you want to display the FAQs for a specific subtopic append the previous two parameters, and additionally:

&tc =subtopic label (as it appears in the tree control).

For example, to restrict the search page to the Getting Started subtopic of the Dreamweaver topic within the Web department and to use the subtopic template (if defined) use:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/faqs/result.php?category=Web&sc=Dreamweaver&tc=Getting Started

The results are displayed in the subtopic template if such a template is defined and enabled.

If you need to link to a specific question or instruct someone to look at a specific question, you can append the question I.D. parameter to the search page's web address. For example, to retrieve question #111 and send the link in an e-mail to someone, use the following web address:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/faqs/result.php?id=111

Alternatively, you can use the I.D. parameter in the search box. For example, you can enter the following as if it were a search term:

id=111

That single question is displayed as the search result.

When you pass invalid parameters, no results are returned in the search page. The tree control will show no items and searches will yield no result. Please inspect the href attribute of the link you used to trigger the search.

Parameters are case insensitive, but it is recommended that you type the parameter exactly as the name, topic, or subtopic label was defined in the administrative system.