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PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS
Filters can be a very powerful business tool. They help you look at your data in new ways, give you insights into your clients, determine the effectiveness of your marketing promotions, and do custom financial analysis. It is well worth your time to learn how to create more advanced filters! |
There are three different types of conditions you can create in the Filter Builder, based on the complexity of the filter you want to create.
Elementary conditions consist of a field, an operator, and a constant. These are conditions you use to filter your data by comparing a specific field to a constant. First, you choose a field from those available for the filter type you're creating. Then, you choose an operator such as equal to, not equal to, greater than, less than, empty, not empty, contains, or starts with. Finally, you enter a constant that defines the scope of your filter.
We want to create a filter that will find all invoices with open balances greater than $1,500 and with phone numbers in the 612 area code.
Select Invoices from the filter type drop-down list.
Select Invoices-Open Balance as the field (*).
Select Greater Than as the operator.
Type in "1500" as the constant (*).
Click 
and select Add New Elementary Condition.
Select Client-Home Phone as the field (*).
Select Starts With as the operator.
Type in "(612)" as the constant (*).
These are conditions where you can filter based on a field and a constant (such as in elementary conditions), or based on two fields. You must define if you want to filter based on a field or a constant. If you're comparing two fields, they must contain the same type of information. For example you cannot compare a date field to a non-date field.
We want to create a filter that will show us when we are billing clients who are not the main session client.
Select Invoices from the filter type drop-down list.
Click
and select Add New Advanced Elementary
Condition.
Select Field.
Select Invoices-Bill To ID as the first field (*).
Select Is Not Equal To as the operator.
Select Field.
Select Invoice-Client
ID as the second field (*).
Complex conditions are those that group Elementary and Advanced Elementary Conditions. If you want to group two conditions that are both required with another condition that is not required, you will need a Complex Condition.
For example if you want to see all clients who are in the wedding group OR the family group, AND have an email address (so that you can send an email to all of those people), you will need a Complex Condition between the two group conditions that are OR conditions and the email condition.
We want to create a filter of all portrait or wedding sessions that occurred after January 1, 2002.
Select Sessions in the filter type drop-down list.
Select Sessions-Session Date as the first field (*).
Select Is Greater Than as the operator.
Type in "1/1/2002" as the constant (*).
Click
and choose Add New Complex
Condition.
Click All in the New Complex Condition you created and select Any.
Click
from the new complex condition you just created.
Select Add New Elementary Condition.
Select Session-Session Type as the first field (*) in the new elementary condition.
Select Is Equal To as the operator.
Select Portrait from the drop-down list as the constant (*).
Click
from the complex condition again.
Select Add New Elementary Condition.
Select Session-Session Type as the first field (*) in this condition.
Select Is Equal To as the operator.
Select Wedding from the drop-down list as the constant (*) for this condition.
Click Update
Records.
Tips:
next
to the condition.
