In search, allow multiple choices for single value custom fields

[samuelsov]

When creating custom fields, you choose the type of widget you want for editing the field which is great.

For the search, the same widget is used but it doesn't have to be.
For example, i have a field "color" with radio button options : red, blue, green or black
When editing, i want to have only one choice of course but when i search, i'd like to be able to find all contact with color red or blue for example. In that case, having the checkboxes widget for search make sense.

In the same way, for select widget, having the multi-select for search seems to be more useful.

Here a table of what i think should be the default :

| Edit Widget               | Search Widget                           |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Radio                        | Checkboxes                                 |
| Select                        | Multi-Select                                 |
| Select Country          | Multi-Select Country                     |
| Autocomplete-Select | Autocomplete-Multi-Select (new) |

Others widgets should be the same in edit and search mode i think.

Some of the core field already use this. For example : Membership Status is a single option value but is a multiple checkboxes in search.
Some don't but i think they should. For example : Preferred Language, State/Province or Country - with advanced search, it's not possible to search contacts with country either United States or Canada for example.

Is there use-cases where this change doesn't make sense ?

For custom fields, i think the change could be quite easy to do with only CRM_Core_BAO_CustomField.php to change.
Should i try to make a patch to core for this ?

[xavier]

I like the idea. As for the UI, by multi-select you mean the same jquery plugin than in advanced search for groups or tags for instance?

[Michael McAndrew]

+1

[JonGold]

Redmine has a good widget that lets the user switch between select boxes and multi-select on the search screen. Given all the work with Select2 that's gone into Civi 4.5, it should be fairly simple from a UI perspective.

[Dave Greenberg]

Samuel - This has come up in the past and currently the only workaround is to use Search Builder. If you can pull together a patch for core against master SOON we can potentially squeeze this into 4.5. Maybe focus initially on custom fields and a few other key core fields (the ones you've mentioned - esp State / Country seem especially relevant).

Note that there's currently a bug in World Region search (doesn't work at all in 4.4 or 4.5) - I think Coleman is looking at it now.

[samuelsov]

xavier: yes exactly

dave: ok, i will start with custom fields - I shoud be able to provide something this week i think

[samuelsov]

@JonGold: I use redmine everyday but i don't see what you mean. Can you provide some screenshots ?

[samuelsov]

See PR https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/3756 for a first step in this direction.

[Coleman Watts]

Thank you samuelsov for the patches. I've worked on them a bit further and decided that it is best UX (and simplifies our code a lot) to have ALL custom fields with options (radio, state, country, boolean, advmultiselect, etc) be rendered as multiselect on search forms.
https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15061

[samuelsov]

Seems like a very good idea
I didn't have time myself to do such a change but i'm glad you did.

Can we test it on sandbox ?

[petednz]

This sounds like a great improvement

[Coleman Watts]

It will be on the sandbox once https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/3781 gets merged.

[samuelsov]

Just tested i little bit.
I like the way Any / All option is now dynamically handled when selecting 2 or more choices for multiple choices fields.
Search with single and multiple choices custom field are now very consistent.

[Coleman Watts]