MCO eComms Terms define the pattern-matching rules for Lexicon detection. The syntax is a straightforward but powerful approach to identifying risk within the message text. This article covers the syntax of these term definitions.

Exact Match

Mandatory Wildcard +

Optional Wildcard *

Mandatory Variants (|)

Optional Variants (|)?

Proximity Match w/n

Basic term pattern is to perform an exact match on a text string.

Syntax

search-term

Where

search-term is an exact string to be matched in the evaluated text.

To reduce the number of exact match terms that need to be managed, a wildcard can be introduced that will match terms with a variety of unknown characters. The plus wildcard provides flexibility in detecting text with an unknown but required variation.

Syntax

search-term+

Where

+ is a modifier to the exact search-term string to be matched in the evaluated text. Using this modifier will require one or more alternative characters to be present.

To reduce the number of exact match terms that need to be managed, a wildcard can be introduced that will match terms with a variety of unknown characters. The asterisk wildcard provides the maximum flexibility in detecting text with unknown character variations.

Syntax

search-term*

Where

* is a modifier to the exact search-term string to be matched in the evaluated text. Using this modifier will match zero or more alternative characters.

To reduce the number of exact match terms that need to be managed, one or more variants can be introduced that will match terms with a variety of known alternatives. This is a powerful way to increase the coverage of a single term while minimizing the risk of false positives that wildcards can sometimes produce.

Variants may be used to provide alternative endings, text in the middle of a word, or entire words and phrases variations.

Syntax

search-term(x|y|z)

Where

(x|y|z) is a modifier to the exact search-term string to be matched in the evaluated text. Using this modifier will match the exact search-term only if it has one of the variant ending letters x, y, z. Up to twenty variants are supported.

Note: Text inside the parentheses is always interpreted as literal value. Therefore, it is not possible to include wildcards (* or +) inside the variant options.

To reduce the number of exact match terms that need to be managed, one or more variants can be introduced that will match terms with a variety of optional known alternatives. The optional token adds greater flexibility to the mandatory variant syntax while still limiting the risk of false positive matches.

Syntax

search-term(x|y|z)?

Where

? is a modifier to the mandatory variant search-term(x|y|y) string to be matched in the evaluated text. Using this modifier will match the exact search-term if it optionally has one of the variant ending letters x, y, z. Up to twenty variants are supported.

Frequently, specific search terms may have a number of alternative forms based on a large number of phrase alternatives that differ based on additional words between two or more keywords. Proximity matching provides a means to search for the use of a large number of variations without needing to know or write specific variant forms.

Syntax

search-term1 w/n search-term2

Where

w/n is a modifier to the exact phrase match of search-term1 search-term2 string to be matched in the evaluated text. Using this modifier will identify a match if search-term1 and search-term2 have up to n words in between them.