Structures and discovery mechanisms for the items in the CPS-VO are provided to help find them. These are based on vocabulary tagging and term labeling. There are file browsers and search functions that aid in finding those items that you are looking for. An important distinction between the file browsers in the CPS-VO and one on your computer is that the same item maybe found under different folders. This increases the chances for you to find items that have been placed in more than one category. There are two main search engines that also help you to find material.

The CPS Portal includes two search facilities: Keyword search and Guided Search. The keyword search finds strings in item descriptions and the item body. The guided search looks for Portal items based on the label it has been marked with. Some items may have been marked with more than one label allowing the guided search to be refined. The organization of labels and terms is called taxonomy.

The portal organizes files in a repository according labeling terms. The labeling terms form a taxonomy that arranges the terms as a tree structure, similar (but not the same) as a folder hierarchy. When a file has one or more labeling terms, the file will be shown in the tree at those nodes that have the same labeling terms. In other words, a file may be found using more than one path in the tree. For example, a report on cybersecurity research may be found by navigating through Document Type -> Report path or Topics -> Foundations -> Security path.

Portal items that are associated with a label can be found from a tag cloud. A tag cloud is an image of words whose sizes are varied by how many associations it has. They can be clicked through to bring up the list of items that are marked with them.

The CPS-VO calendar displays event notices that can be clicked through for more information on them. Events can have a specified audience, in which case only for those group members will the notices show. If no audience is specified then they will be global events visible by all authenticated members of the portal.

CPS-VO members can be searched by first name, last name, topics, keywords and author.

Groups are either public or private. The listing of public groups will show some basic information about the group (like the group name which links to the group's home page, a short description about the group, the group manager and the number of posts and members, and options for joining the group (covered in the next segment of this tutorial).

CPS-VO provides access to news under the headings Federal Agency, Industry, Legislative and Noteworthy. The first three are searches of news items with specific labels indicating their context, and the latter is a list of items based on recency. Resulting searches with specific labels can normally be refined with options on the right hand side, such as narrowing the list with more tagging labels. Reading the News occurs in the following steps: Step 1: Pull the curser over NEWS and select the desired news item type from the roll-down menu