CRM Advanced Find

I am still relatively new to using CRM so I keep finding new and interesting things. Today, I was enthralled by the Advanced Find tool on CRM and Jeremy told me to blog about it so all of you can know how to use it to. Trust me, you will also be enthralled.

When using Multi Search you can only search using certain pre-defined search criteria and you can only use one at a time. So, you can search for a person by name and then look at the birthdays to identify which is the person you want, but you cannot search by name and by birthday at the same time. With Advanced find that is not true. By using the Advanced Find tool you can see how many people in the system have the same birthday, and first name as you. Or you can see how many people have zip codes that begin with the same numbers as yours does. The possibilities are endless.

Let me explain to you how to do this. First enter the CRM system, either by tying “CRM” into the web address bar of Internet Explorer or, if you have installed CRM for Outlook, just open your outlook. Now, find the button marked “Advanced Find” that has binoculars beside it.

If you are on Internet Explorer it will look like this:

 

If you are on Outlook it will look something like this:

 

Click this button and the following screen should open up:

 

Now, you can begin your search. To start you must decide what you want to look for. I find it most interesting to look for “Contacts” because then you are finding actual people in the system. But you can look for many other things such as Appointments, High Schools, and Gifts. To set this you will pick something from the “Look for:” drop down. For our example, I will choose to search for contacts.

 

Now, we can add our search criteria. I will follow through an example for you that will help you get the idea. Then, you can try out many different things on your own. For this example, let us search for females who have an e-mail address that is not from hotmail.

1. Use the drop down box to select the first search field.

2. As the first search field, select “is Donor?”

 

3. Now it will say “Equals” and then have a text box. Attempt to type in this box or press the “. . .” sign that comes up beside it.

 

4. A screen will pop up where you can choose which answers are available. Select “Yes.”

 

5. Press the “>>” button to move it to the selected side.

 

6. Now press “OK”.

 

7. Here is how your query should appear now. This would search for all donors in the system.

 

8. Now, press the drop down menu and add a new condition. Find “Address 1: State/Province” and select it.

 

9. Leave the “Equals” as it is, although this can be changed as we will see later, and type “VA” in the text box. Your search should now look like this. If you pressed “Find” now you would find all Donors who live in Virginia.

 

10. Now, we want to add the condition that they must have made a donation last year or this year. We also should make sure the donation is not $0.00. Select the drop down menu again to add a new condition. Scroll down towards the bottom of the list and you will find a “Related Fields” section. Under this heading, select “Transactions (Recipient)”. This will add a new section to your search.

 

11. Again select the drop down menu and you will notice that the available search fields have changed. This is because they are now searching through transactions not a person’s record. Select “Payment Date” then click where it says “Equals.” This will become a drop down menu and you want to select “Last Year.”

 

12. Click the new drop down box and again select “Payment Date” but this time set it for payments “This Year.”

 

13. Since both of these conditions cannot be simultaneously true, we must say you want the payment to have been last year OR this year. To do this, click on the tiny arrow beside one of the rows.

 

14. The arrow will bring up some options and you want to click on “Select Row.”

 

15. Do this for the second row (under Transactions) as well.

 

16. Now that both Payment Date rows are selected, click the “Group Or” button at the top of the search.

 

17. This is how you search should now appear. This means you will be searching for Virginia Donors who donated either last year OR this year.

18. We have one final condition to add. Again you want to select the drop down menu (under Transactions) and find “Transaction Amount” as the search criteria.

 

19. You will want to click on “Equals” and change this to “Does Not Equal.” Then, type “0” in the text box.

 

20. Now, just press “Find” to see your results.

As you can see this tool can be very useful for targeting specific marketing groups and figuring out who may be interested in different campaigns. Try using Advanced Find for yourself and see what searches you can do!
 

Thank you for keeping up to date with the CRM team. Good luck with your current and future CRM endeavors.
 

 

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Posted at 9:48 AM | Comments (0)