Using Search

For the Search page, each matched person is displayed — with their matching signups if Show Signups is checked. If no info is supplied, everyone will match. (Obviously large groups should do this with discretion).

Click here for how Make/Output Report uses search results, and here for how Email Announcement uses them.

Types of Matches

• Start Of. The beginning of the field must match the text you entered.
• Contains. Any part of the field can match the text you entered. For example, if some person's Roles field contains Cashier, Substitute and you entered sub, that person would be included in the search results.
• One date, or a range. If you enter two date values, any date in that range will match. If you enter one date value, only that date will match. A date-value can be a date, a number, or a *. A number means a date relative to Today; so 3 means three days in the future and -2 means two days in the past, for example. A * means an unlimited endpoint; so a range of (*, 12/31) means all days on or before 12/31/current-year, for example.
• Menus. Select the item you want to match on, if any.

Note that all matches are case-insensitive.

Registration Info

Searches often include all or part of a person's name. For example, if there were multiple people with similar names, you might enter a last name with the intent of clarifying who was who by looking at the address and phone info displayed in the search results.

When a person Registers with your group, the date of the registration is saved. If you want to know who has registered recently, enter a range of (a recent date, *) for Date Registered.

Expiration Date is of use if your registration info can include an expiration date (e.g. your people pay annual dues). When search results are shown, the Expires column is color coded: green for unexpired, amber for expiring, and so on. Conversely if you do a Use Search Results... to setup a TO-list, this field gives you a way to identify the people who need to pay next year's dues soon.

Group-Specific Info is for when you want to search within the fields you added to the Registration Form (i.e. via Import People or Customize Registration Form). By default, the Search looks for the value you enter in any field of the form. You can also use the dropdown menu to tell Search to look for the value in a specific field of the form.

Note that Email Address and Expiration Date allow you to enter the string "none". If you do that, Search will respectively look for people who have no email address or no expiration date.

Signup Info

If you enter/select at least 1 value in the Signup Info section of the Search form, only people and signups with the indicated signup info can match. If you do have signup-info criteria, the unset dropdown menus are set to default values as described below.

Deleted People and their Signups

Normally, searches with signup-info criteria can match deleted people and their signups. This is done because such signups are part of your group's historical record. When a search does involve deleted people:

• For TO-list items and report-is-about items, the number of such matches is displayed.
• On the Search People page: matching deleted people are highlighted in red.

(Note: the webmaster is also displayed in red — since her signups are usually for testing and you may want to delete them).

If you want to exclude deleted-people matches, also set the 1st Expiration Date field to XD. However there is a special case: to display just the deleted people in your group, do a Search Page search whose ONLY criteria is XD in this field.

Types of Signup Info

Signup Form Field enables a search based on a form field. For example, a Party event's signup form might have a field called Bringing. If you entered Dessert in the Signup Form Field text area, you could list just those people bringing dessert.

The Signup Status dropdown menu enables a search based on the signup's status. For example, if you wanted to email a message to all the No Shows for an event, you could do Select a list->Search Results... and choose No Show from this menu.

The default for this menu depends on the current context. For the Search page, it is ANY STATUS. For TO-lists, it is COMPLETED. For reports, it depends on your report's Signup Statuses to Match property. (INCOMPLETE means No Show, Regrets, Pending, or Ready. COMPLETED means any other status).

The Event Signed Up For row enables a search based on the signup's event. You can enter part of an event name, select from the Event Category dropdown menu, or both. The default event category is Current Event for TO-lists, and Not Out-of-Date otherwise.

The Activity Type dropdown menu enables a search based on the type of activity signed up for. On-site Task limits the search to any on-site activity. Planning limits the search to any planning activity. If neither is selected, both kinds match.

The Activity or Project Signed Up For dynamic menu can be used in multiple ways. Example 1: if you wanted to know who had experience as an Art Judge, you would select or enter art judge in the menu. Example 2: if you have created an Election Worker activity and defined 3 Locations for it — Precincts 1-3, you could enter precinct 2 and thereby match only the election workers of Precinct 2.

When Activity Is enables a search based on the date and/or start time of a signup's schedule item.
Example 1: if you want to match just people who were judges in the last year, set Activity or Project Signed Up For as before and When Activity Is to a range of (a year before today's date, *).
Example 2: if you want to match just people ushering at matinees (versus evenings) enter the time range for when matinees might start (or just 1 time if they are always at the same time).