Advanced Searches - And/Or, Not & Group

Advanced searches can combine multiple criteria. When using AND, OR or NOT, both the way the criteria are connected and whether they are grouped will affect which records are returned.

Understanding And, Or & Not

And

AND returns only records that satisfy all of the connected criteria. For example, the following search returns tasks that are both Design Requests and for Arden Software UK.

Type: Design Request And Customer: Arden Software UK

Adding additional criteria to your search will then continue to further refine the results.

Type: Design Request And Customer: Arden Software UK And Site: Marple

Or

OR returns records that satisfy either of the connected criteria, so it will normally broaden a search. For example, the following search returns all Design Requests, together with tasks of any type for Arden Software UK.

Type: Design Request Or Customer: Arden Software UK

Not

NOT excludes records that satisfy the specified criterion. For example, the following search returns all tasks except Design Requests.

Not Type: Design Request

Using the Same Filter More than Once

Using the same filter more than once often requires OR rather than AND. For example, we might describe a search as "all tasks for Arden Software UK and Arden Software North America". However, an individual task cannot belong to both customers at the same time. The intended meaning is therefore usually "tasks for Arden Software UK or Arden Software North America".

Customer: Arden Software UK

Customer: Arden Software North America

Customer: Arden Software UK And Customer: Arden Software North America

This will give no results as a task can't belong to both UK and North American customers. The correct format is therefore:

Customer: Arden Software UK Or Customer: Arden Software North America

"All tasks whose customer is Arden Software UK or Arden Software North America"

Grouping Fields Together

Grouping determines which criteria are evaluated together. Consider a search for Design Requests whose customer is either Arden Software UK or Arden Software North America. Without grouping, the search could be interpreted as follows:

(Type: Design Request And Customer: Arden Software UK ) Or Customer: Arden Software North America

This would return Design Requests for Arden Software UK, but could also return tasks of any type for Arden Software North America. To require the task to be a Design Request for either customer, the alternative customer criteria must be grouped together:

Type: Design Request And ( Customer: Arden Software UK Or Customer: Arden Software North America )

As a general rule, criteria that represent alternatives should be grouped whenever another criterion must apply to every alternative. For example:

Created On: Within date range And ( Created By: User A Or Created By: User B )

Without the group, one of the Created By alternatives could return records that do not also satisfy the date criterion.

Example Searches

My Approvals

If you want to see a list of all types of approval tasks that need to be reviewed by you, there are a number of ways of achieving this.

Search by Approval Task Types

The Task Type filter is a multi-select so you can simply choose all approval type tasks that you're interested in. The Status is also a multi-select so you can exclude all tasks that are completed or cancelled.

When it comes to selecting the assignee, there are multiple ways of achieving this. The 'relative user' options in square brackets apply to whomever is connected. While you're logged in, that would be tasks assigned to you or your user groups. If you share the saved search with a colleague, it applies to them and their user groups. You can just pick your own user name and specific user group. If your colleague was to then view that saved search, it would show them tasks assigned to you and your user groups, not theirs.

Type: Design Approval, Artwork Approval, Production Approval And Not Status: Completed, Cancelled And ( Assignee: [Connected User] Or Assignee: [Connected User's Groups] )

Search by Approval Outcome

A more efficient way of doing the same thing is to use the Approval Outcome instead of the Task Type. Because you're searching for tasks with an approval outcome, it will automatically exclude all tasks that aren't of an approval type. An Approval Outcome of Pending is all tasks that have not been approved or rejected. This also means it will automatically include any future approval type tasks. As the tasks are Pending, it also means they've not been completed so we don't need to include the Status filter. The third 'relative user' option includes the user and any user group they belong to. This gives us a much simpler search of:

Approval Outcome: Pending And Assignee: [Connected User or Their Groups]

Open Tasks I've Requested

A common requirement for salespeople is to see all open tasks they have requested. Without a Status criterion, this can become a very long list containing everything they have ever requested. Excluding tasks that are completed or cancelled gives a clearer view of work that is still active.

It can also be useful to include tasks that were completed recently. These two requirements can be combined as follows:

( Requested By: [Connected User] And Not Status: Cancelled, Completed ) Or ( Requested By: [Connected User] And Date Completed: Within the previous n days.. 2 )

Customers Viewable Designs

WEBcnx can be configured to only permit customer users to view designs of a given status, such as active or approved. If you have permissions to view all designs for all customers, of any status, how can you verify they're seeing what you want them to see? You can log in as them if you have permissions to do this. Alternatively, you can create an advanced search that uses a group for each of the statuses that you want them to view. 

Customer: Arden Software UK And ( Status: Active Or Status: Approved Or Status: Pending )

Combining Groups

Taking the above example, "Customers Viewable Designs", any number of additional criteria can be added to further filter the results. The following adds Site filters for the two specified sites.

Customer: Arden Software UK And ( Status: Active Or Status: Approved Or Status: Pending ) And ( Site: Marple Or Site: Park City )

Further Reading

• Project & Layer Status