To search the UWA Contact Directory Service, visit the index page. You can search for people or sections. At this time the UWA Contact Directory and the UWA Whois Directory have been merged. The distinction between them has been removed from the search interface.

Searching for people

Enter a string into the 'Search for' field. By default, any item containing this search key as a substring will be matched. The search is case-insensitive. For example,

"Fred" will match "Fred", "Freddie", "Frederick", "Wilfred" and so on.

There is no need to use wildcard characters such as '*'. These are redundant and may make your searches ineffective.

Once you have entered a search string, choose the type of search:

'Full Name' - your search string will be checked against the entire name of each record.
'Surname' - you search string will be checked against only the surname of each record. This is useful to limit the number of results when using a search string that may match many given names.
'Surname, First Name' - your search must be entered in a special format ('Smith, John') which will match the surname and given name of records respectively. For example,
"Smith, Fred" will match "Fred Smith", "Frederick Smith", "Fred Smithson", "Frederick Smithson", etc.

Two more options are available. Selecting 'Exact Match Only' rather than 'Any Match' will require records to directly match the search string. This disables substring matches. The final option allows matches to be restricted selectively to students and/or staff of the University

When you have selected the options you desire, press the 'Search' button.

Searching for sections

Enter the a search string into the input box. This will match any section name containing the string (case-insensitive). In addition, sections with well known abbreviations will often have multiple names specified. For example,

"Education" matches many entries, including "National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)", "CTEC—Clinical Training and Education Centre" and "Faculty of Education".

"ITS" will match 'Information Technology Services'.- a well known acronym for the section.

When you have selected the options you desire, press the 'Search' button.

Advanced Searches

More complex searches are made possible through the advanced search page. This allows people to be found based on several different attributes.

'Full Name' - the name of the person, including their surname and given names.
'First Name' - the given name of the person
'Section' - the name of the section
'Email' - the electronic mail address of the person
'Position' - the job title of the person
'Surname' - the surname of the person
'Phone' - the person's telephone number

Various match types are provided. These denote the type of matches to allow. Note that all match types are case insensitive.

'Matches' - this requires an exact match. No sub-string matching is performed.
'Ends With' - matches all entries where the given field's value ends with the specified string.
Searching for phone numbers ending with "3901" would match "6488 3901".
'Includes' - any entry containing the given value as a substring would produce a match.
'Starts With' - any entry beginning with the given value would produce a match.

Please note that the more complex the search, the longer it will take. The directory server has been optimised to respond to common queries more quickly.