Selecting multiple groups in Advanced Search

[LindseyM]

If someone wants to select 15 groups at one time in Advanced Search they currently have to select one, see it appear, select the second, see it appear, select the third and so on.

We, like many others, have hundreds of groups and scrolling though an enormous list multiple times in order to select one group and then another and another is time consuming. The complexity of this is compounded by the fact that the display of groups in that select box is by parental hierarchy. This means that that typing in initial letters often doesn't take you to the correct group (as it only alphabetically recognises groups at the first level of the hierarchy).

Could the Groups list in Advanced Search be altered so that you can select numerous groups in one go? The functionality is definitely already possible as it's used in the Include/Exclude Search. An additional win would be if the Advanced Search Groups list displayed fully alphabetically instead of by hierarchy (as it does when you use the action Add Contacts to a Group). Both these would be great time savers.

[Jeremy Proffitt]

This will likely be improved in 4.5, as the current widget used for that will be replaced by the Select2 library. This will let the predictive input search the entirety of the list at once, and is much faster.

[LindseyM]

Thanks Jeremy. It's good to hear that the selection will be predictive irrespective of the parenting hierarchy, but will you be able to select multiple groups all at once like in the current Include/Exclude search eg by holding down the Cmd key and selecting numerous groups in one go?

[Jeremy Proffitt]

It actually won't be replicating the functionality of the Advanced Multi-Select, and I'd say it's likely that will be going away at some point. The field takes up a lot of screen real estate, and there's no situation where it actually is faster to use the mouse to make that selection instead of typing. Being able to get suggestions will always be faster if it can search through all the available options.

[LindseyM]

Ah... the scenario I was thinking of concerning the ability to select multiple groups at once include several use cases:

- when you have lots of groups with similar names. For example all the groups relating to our newcomer integration process start with NC2 so appear together in the list. If the functionality existed I could select one, hold down Shift and select another one 15 down to include them all in one click.

- our weekly groups are hierarchied so are listed very neatly together. Again, with the Shift option I could select 3, 30 or 300 in one go.

Both these scenarios are far quicker with the Cmd or Shift select options rather than alphabetically searching for each group but one win out of two isn't bad! I look forward to the predictive searching. Thanks very much for your responses.

[Eileen]

Lindsay - you can see what is in 4.5 on the sandbox
http://drupal.sandbox.civicrm.org

[LindseyM]

Thanks Eileen. It was really helpful to take a look. Although you can'r select lots at a time it's great to see that the predictive stuff works whatever you select, so writing 'test' in the search box picks up groups even when that's not the first word. Good stuff.

On a different note, remember you kindly introduced an option to search by Group Type in this box a couple of years ago. It's a really helpful option but we have so many mid-week groups that if I search by Woodies Group Type it pretty much stalls the entire database (brought it down last week!) Is it possible to overcome that? Would making it into a Custom Search help at all?

Any thoughts you have would be much appreciated as I'd love to search by Group Type (and also to be able to select 'Not in a particular Group Type' as in the current Include/Exclude search... though I guess I can always do that via smart groups instead.

[Eileen]

Are some of the groups you are searching for smart groups? Searching by lots of groups does put load on the DB - especially if they include hierarchical or smart groups - so changing the way you choose lots of groups might not help there.

[LindseyM]

Hi Eileen
None of them are smart groups but the groups are hierarchied. The 'Woodies' Group Type currently consists of 21 parent groups and 100 child groups spread between those parents. If I do a Woodies Group Type search in Advanced Search it tends to crash the database at present.

All I really want to be able to do is find out which of our Sunday attenders are in a group and which aren't. With 100 groups I don't want to create a smart group of the 100 as, with frequent group changes (eg new groups evolving), we'll constantly have to remember to add/remove groups from the smart group. Group Type was my solution so that I could do a quick search at any point to identify anyone in a Woodies mid-week group (and therefore anyone not connected into one). Do you have any other creative solutions to accessing this info easily? Thanks for your help.