Custom Signals

Custom Signals are part of the Intelligence Signal feature. They extend the core capability to enable you to look for user-defined patterns within your content. 

Limits and Known Issues

• There is a limit of 30 signals in total per customer, this includes out-of-the-box signals and custom signals. Contact your account manager if you require additional signals
• You can use the Custom Signal Library to give you some ideas of where to start.
• You can use tools such as regex101 to help you define and test your regex.  
• A signal recognizer will time out if it is taking too long to process. This occurs when a Regex is too complex, or incorrect.  Ensure that your signals are discrete and performant. Please check the Custom Signal Library for some ready-made signal definitions.

Setup a custom signal

You will need the Records Administrator permission to be able to manage signals. 

In this example, we are going to create a custom signal to look for a customer code in any content that is ingested and add a signal to that item. 

The customer code is a code which is used throughout the organisation, it has a common format, such as  CC-1234567A where CC represents two uppercase letters, - is a hyphen, 1234567 represents a sequence of seven digits, and A represents a single uppercase letter.

Custom signals can use what is known as a Regex, which allows for searching of patterns within text, so we can create a Regex for the customer code:

^[A-Z]{2}-[0-9]{7}[A-Z]$

Here's the breakdown of the regex pattern:

• ^ asserts the start of the string.
• [A-Z]{2} matches any two uppercase letters from A to Z.
• - matches the hyphen character literally.
• [0-9]{7} matches any sequence of seven digits (0 through 9).
• [A-Z] matches any single uppercase letter from A to Z.
• $ asserts the end of the string.

This regex ensures that the entire string precisely matches the specified format, from start to end.

Context words increase the confidence that a matched pattern is the signal you are looking for. For example adding "Customer Number", and "CN" if these are usually found near the customer code, 

Create the signal definition

1. Select the Settings icon in the top right hand corner of Records365.
2. Under Configuration, select Signals in the left hand navigation pane.
3. Select the Custom tag.
4. Select the New button to create a new Custom Signal.
5. Enter the Title for the signal, it's important to choose this carefully as it cannot be changed afterwards.
6. Add a description.
7. Enter the Regex or Regexs for the signals, in this case add ^[A-Z]{2}-[0-9]{7}[A-Z]
8. Optionally add some context words in this case we will not add context words. 
9. Select Save
10. The signal definition is now created
11. Enable the signal by selecting the Enabled toggle to start analysing content coming from your data sources. 

Testing Signals Definitions

It is now possible to test your signals before you enable them. 

1. In the Edit Signal page, select Test recogniser, the test dialog will display.
2. Enter the regular expression you wish to test.
3. Enter some sample text, that will be used to test the regex. 
4. Select Test recogniser, if any matches are found they will be highlighted:

5. To use this definition, select use recogniser, this will close the dialog and update your signal definition with the updated information.

Viewing signals on a record

To view the signals on an individual record:

1. Sign in to Records365.
2. Go to the Browse page.
3. Select any record to open the Records Details page.
4. Select the Signals tab.
   1. Any custom signals on the record are displayed in the custom section.

Please note documents created or modified before Intelligence Signaling was enabled will not have been processed and will therefore have no signals.

Using Custom Signals in Rules

The Rules engine is at the heart of Records365. Rules are used to evaluate content created or updated within your Content Sources and to identify how to categorize, retain and dispose of the content.  You can use signals in rules to add additional criteria to your rules.

To create a rule for a signal: 

1. Sign in to Records365.
2. Select the Manage -> Rules link.
3. In the left-hand navigation menu, select Rules. Hover over ‘Y’ or ‘N’ and select ‘+’.
4. Add a new Criteria, select Criteria from the ‘+’ menu.
5. In the Criteria, enter Signals Property, Condition Type, and Condition.
6. Select Apply.

Using Custom Signals in Search

To find records marked with specific signals, use Advanced Search, which has distinct search properties for each signal.

To search for content containing the HasPII signal:

1. Sign in to Records365
2. Select Advanced Search.
3. In the property field, type Has to get a list of all signs.
   1. Custom Signals > HasContractCode, Equals, Yes.
4. Select Search.
5. The results will display all records which match your query.

If the field does not appear then please contact support to have the field added to your search fields.