Advanced Customer Search
This is the advanced customer search page. The word customer is a corp-wide settings and may be changed to meet your needs. The page contains three different search forms. Once submitted, the results will show up on a new page. If one or more of the search forms are hidden, use the links at the top to show all three or a different sub set of the search forms.

The top most form deals with the main customer table. Check the boxes next to the columns that you want to show up on the report. This is somewhat of a build your own report dialog box. Checked means show, and not checked means skip or leave out. Below the checkboxes, there are a number of additional filters to help get the data you are seeking. All text fields have build in wild cards to help the search be more flexible.

The middle form deals with the user-maintained customer log. The user-maintained log differs from a history entry due to the fact that history entries are system-maintained and customer logs are user-maintained. If you include a follow-up date range (valid dates), the system will only look at customer logs that already have follow-up or are set to handle follow-up dates. This allows you to set a follow-up date/times for each customer and then see what needs to be done.

As a note about the customer logs, there are a number of both positive (include) and negative (exclude) note filters. The positive filters grab only notes that match the results. The negative filters basically say, I'll get everything except for what your search phrase is. Feel free to mix and blend or even use in combination. An example might be, I want everything that has the word "interested" in it, but I don't want "not interested".

The bottom form deals with the additional contacts and additional addresses that are assigned to the main customers. Once again, all text search fields have built-in wild cards to help keep the search flexible.

If you have the admin permission over customers, there will also be options (from the advanced search form) to export any and all of the data to a Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet) format. If you don't have access to a Microsoft Office product license (which includes excel), we recommend a FREE software solution called OpenOffice.org or view a help file with more info.

Special note about searching for customer birthdays - The customer birthdays are optional but may be searched using the advanced search form. The actual dates, if used, are recorded as a single date in time but as most of you know, they keep on happening... :) What Adilas does to allow searching is it runs some code to convert to a numeric value that takes the year out of the picture. What this means is if you want to physically search for all birthdays between June 1st and July 15th, you would use the current year in your search (say it is 2013 - you would enter 6/1/13 to 7/15/13). If the system sees the same year (as the current year), it will assume that you are just looking for birthdays that fall in that time span (it will strip off the year of the original entry). If you use physical years such as 1/1/1970 to 12/31/1972, the system will physically search the real stored birthdays for the customers (real look-up back in time). Long story, made short, if you want all the birthdays that fall within that range (regardless of age or birth year), use the current year. If you want real birthdays according to years or age, include the correct four digit years as part of the search.

If you happen to have the permission called "Limited Customer Search" (id=133) turned on, the search results will only show you customers that are either unassigned or assigned to you as the main or other salesperson. Both the word customers and salesperson are corp-wide settings. This means that it could be changed as needed. For example: students to teachers, clients to reps, patients to care givers, etc.

The reason for this note is to let you know that if you have the limited customer search, the search results will have an automatic filter built-in to limit which ones you (according to assignments) are able to see. If you know that a customer is in the system but you can't find them, it is possible that you are not assigned to that customer. Not all companies or corporations use this kind of a model. Many corporations have a single customer database and allow all customers to be searched and interacted with. Other companies want to maintain a more rigid customer to salesperson (user) relationship.