How can I search for articles (events, news, projects, etc.) and documents? (eo1)

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Team Polaris

The various possibilities to search for member, events, projects, newsletters, bulletins, articles and documents in Polaris have one starting point. It is the magnifying glass in the top right corner of the page.

When you click on this icon, the following possibilities are shown:

  1. Search Members (Yearbook) - allows you to find members in any club in your country. Follow this link.
  2. Search New members - shows members joining Rotary or Rotaract in the past 3 moth in your country. Follow this link.
  3. Search Members | In Memoriam - shows members for which their club has written and published an in memoriam article. Follow this link.
  4. Search content - allows you to search the entire web content ( events, projects, newsletters, bulletins, articles and documents) for any word = Google like search

Location of the search element

Content Search (as with Google)

The result list is empty at the beginning. You need to define what you are looking for and set restrictions. The search then started by using the v8OuhgtXhpO6BEUA4vFLgN02UI4apIQSBICSUIA8AcIUFTkK0K80gAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==button.

Important Notes:

  • The search only considers content that has the same language as the current page. Example: articles in French will not be found if your current language is German. If you want  articles in French , you have to change the language in the upper right corner and repeat the search.
  • Searching for words like "Lunch" or "Vorstand" which are used in many titles may return large number of hits.
  • If you create new content in Polaris, it will take 2-3 days until the article will appear in the result list. This is because The content must be scanned and indexed first. This process happens over night and in hours of low utilization.
  • The result list is in random order. Maybe the article you are looking for is on the bottom of the list. If the result list exceeds 100 hits, then it is advisable to apply additional criteria to restrict it or to repeat the search with a more specific term.


You should enter at least 3 characters (but more are advisable) in the first field (marked red). It does not matter if the characters are at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the word you are looking for. Also upper-, lowercase, umlauts and accent marks are meaningless. If you enter multiple words separated by space, AND operator is applied.


Word or words you are looking for

In the second field (marked blue) you can restrict the resulting list by time and look for articles only in the given period.

By default no restriction is applied.

Hint: If the result list is very long (>100), then reducing the time period is the most effective measure to reduce it.






Time period restriction

In the third field (marked green) you can restrict the scope of the search to:

  • your home club only (default)
  • all clubs in your district
  • all clubs in your country

If you chose all clubs in your country, the result list may be huge and not useful.

Note: Only articles which are visible to you will appear in the result list. What you can see depends on the visibility of the article and on your rights. If you have more access rights, you may see more articles.



Scope restriction

The fourth field (marked yellow) allows you to restrict the search to a specific type of articles.

  • Newsletters and bulletins
  • Events (calendar)
  • Projects
  • President and governor letters
  • News
  • Photo Galleries (text only)
  • Various
  • General club information
  • Files / Documents

By default all content types are scanned.

The search works also in the content of the files (i.e. inside the document), not only for their names. Only content of documents in the format PDF-A, MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-Powerpoint is scanned.

Files in archived folders are excluded from the search and will not appear in the result list.

Note: The visibility of the folder may be a reason why you will not find the file.

Content type restriction


General recommendations:

  1. Use specif terms, don't use short or abstract terms

  2. Pay attention to the language you have set for the current page.

  3. If the result exceed 100 hits, apply restrictions to narrow the target.

  4. Use multiple browser tabs to preserve the result list and open the found club, person or article in a new tab.

  5. If you do not find what you are looking for, it may have many reasons:
    • The file you are looking for is in a archived folder.
    • The document has not the right format and cannot be scanned.
    • The article is not visible for you.
    • The term you are looking for is in other language
Play around with the tool to get better feel for how it works.