When managing list views or creating saved filters, you will need to utilize the filter tool which gives you a great amount of flexibility when filtering data records. You may filter data by any built-in field or custom field. You can add any number of filter criterions. There is no limit.
For example, when managing a list view for the contact database you will need to create a list view filter. After clicking 'Edit' on the List View Filter section while creating a list view, you will be presented with the filter tool.
Filter Criteria
The filter gives you a number of options depending on the type of field selected:
Regular Text Field
You can define a keyword term that is:
- contained within the field value
- is not contained within the field value
- equals (exactly matches) the field value
- does not equal the field value
- starts with a specific value
- ends with a specific value
or without a keyword:
- is empty (there is no value for the field)
- is not empty (there is a value for the field)
Special Text Field
There are some special fields which contain compound filters, which includes name, telephone, address, and placement.
In these cases, you can choose to ignore one aspect of the field (e.g. the title, first name, last name,
and middle name) and only filter on one of more aspects of this compound field (e.g., where the
suffix contains ‘CPA’)
Status
You may customize the different status types for your organization in the setup section of VolunteerMatters. When adding a Status filter you can choose to include those contacts currently assigned to a certain status or those contact current NOT assigned to a certain status. Since a contact can only have one status at a time, when selecting multiple statuses from the list, it will return contacts that have any one of the selected statuses. For example, if you were to set a match type of ‘equals’ and check both Probationary and Active checkboxes as in the example above, the system would return all contacts who’s status is either equal to Probationary OR Active)
You may also set a filter to return all contacts whose status does not equal one or more status types. For example, if you set the match type to ‘Does not equal’ it would only return contacts whose status was neither Probationary nor Active.
Site User
The site user filter allows you to return records have a site user record (is site user equals True) or those who do not have a site user record (is site user equals False).
Dates
You may choose those fields whose date value is on or after a specific date or a relative date. A
specific date is where you define an exact year, month, and day. A relative date is a value relative to
the current date. The options include:
- today
- one year ago
- three months ago
- one month ago
- one week ago
- yesterday
- tomorrow
- one week from today
- one month from today
- three months from today
- one year from today
- last year (calendar year)
- last quarter (calendar quarter)
- last month
- last week
- this year (calendar year)
- this quarter (calendar quarter)
- this month
- this week
You may also choose those records with a given date field whose date value is before a specific or relative date. For example, to return only those contacts whose birthday is from the beginning of the month to today, you could define a filter where:
- The date is ‘On or after this month’ and ‘Before today’
Custom Fields
Along with filtering on built-in fields, you may also set filters on all custom fields you create and
activate for your organization. These will have similar properties as listed above where you may filter on text, dates, numerical data, or data from a list field.
Applying the Filter
When you have completed setting the filter elements or selected the saved filter you want to add, click ’Add’ button. The filter element will now appear in the list above with a red ‘x’ to the right. If at any time you want to remove a filter element, just click .
You may set a “Match Option”, where you can decide to show records that match ‘All Criteria’ (the record would have to meet all filter criteria) or ‘Any Criteria’ (the record only has to meet one of the filter criteria). For instance if you were to have three filter elements:
- A contact’s last name starts with ‘A’
- The contact has an ‘Active’ status
- The record create date is on or after today and before tomorrow.
Setting the match option to ‘All Criteria’ would add all contacts whose last name starts with the letter ‘A’ AND has an ‘Active’ status AND the record create date is today.
Setting the match option to ‘Any Criteria’ would add all contacts whose last name starts with the letter ‘A’ OR has an ‘Active’ status OR the record create date is today.
Click ‘Apply’ ( ) to apply the match option.
Finally, click 'Save' to save the filter settings.
Comments