Last date modified: 2025-Oct-31

Using short message search

Short message search uses the short message search index which allows for a detailed search on RSMF documents by examining message-level metadata. For example, it helps to:

Identify conversations between specific participants
Detect messages that were deleted or edited
Track message reactions
Locate messages sent within a specified time period

Once messages are found, message-level coding can be performed on them in the Viewer if necessary.

During processing, message-level metadata is extracted and indexed, enabling precise short message searches across fields like sender, RSMF message timestamp, reactions, edited/deleted messages, and event types (such as someone joining the chat). This means you are no longer limited to metatdata fields tied to the document level, like participants, number of messages, and RSMF document begin/end date. You can search directly at the individual message level to precisely locate results.

The short message search index scans each message within a document and captures its metadata for searching data. You are searching at the message level, but results are shown at the document level, which gives you precise filtering without losing context.

See related pages:

Short message search workflow

The short message search workflow is similar to other searches. You must first build the search index before being able to search it. Elasticsearch is used to create the short message search index within the workspace. For more information on each of these steps, see:

Although Elasticsearch works with messages and events, it returns results at the document level.

Documents returned may contain one or more hits at the message or event level.

Short message terminology

It is important to understand some short message terminology and how it is different from a document.

Term	Meaning
RSMF Document (or Document)	The Relativity Short Message Format (RSMF) for data, like enterprise chats (such as Slack and Microsoft Teams), iMessage, SMS, or social media applications (such as LinkedIn and Instagram). RelativityOne has over 75 different chat applications converted to RSMF. An RSMF document may contain one or more messages.
RSMF Message (or Message or Event)	Messages and events are individual actions within an RSMF document. These can include, for example, a sent message, a reaction, joining or leaving a change. Messages have message-level metadata. For example, sent messages have sender display metadata attached to them with the sender's screen name. Timestamp metadata tells you the exact date and time somebody sent the message.

Term

Meaning

RSMF Document (or Document)

The Relativity Short Message Format (RSMF) for data, like enterprise chats (such as Slack and Microsoft Teams), iMessage, SMS, or social media applications (such as LinkedIn and Instagram).

RelativityOne has over 75 different chat applications converted to RSMF. An RSMF document may contain one or more messages.

RSMF Message (or Message or Event)

Messages and events are individual actions within an RSMF document. These can include, for example, a sent message, a reaction, joining or leaving a change.

Messages have message-level metadata. For example, sent messages have sender display metadata attached to them with the sender's screen name. Timestamp metadata tells you the exact date and time somebody sent the message.

Considerations

Before you run a short message search, consider the following regarding message-level conditions:

Are treated as an index search condition.
Cannot be combined with other index search conditions.
Can only be searched with other field conditions using the AND operator.
Can only be used as the first condition within a search. From here, you can run your search, and it will return RSMF documents matching the supplied search criteria.