CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We're running into a frustrating little glitch in profile management (Administer>Customize>CiviCRM Profile).

The problem was first noted in our live 3.0 installation but the exact same problem can be seen on the 3.1 Development Sandbox.

The checkbox labelled "Results Column?" actually controls the "In Selector?" function and there is no checkbox for "Results Column?". Using Firefox and FireBug to inspect the form controls confirms this...
  The checkbox labelled "Searchable?" has name and id of "is_searchable",
  The checkbox labelled "Results Column?" has name and id of "in_selector"
There is no checkbox for turning on or off the profile field in the results display.

To reproduce this in the 3.1 sandbox... go to Administer>Customize>CiviCRM Profile
(http://sandbox.civicrm.org/civicrm/admin/uf/group&reset=1)

Scroll down to "Supporter Profile" and click the "Fields" link
(http://sandbox.civicrm.org/civicrm/admin/uf/group/field?reset=1&action=browse&gid=2)

Viewing the field "Email Address (Contact)"... unless it has been changed since I was in there  it will be listed as "In Selector: No". Now click the "Edit" link for this field...
(http://sandbox.civicrm.org/civicrm/admin/uf/group/field?reset=1&action=update&id=10&gid=2)

If you now check the checkbox labelled "Results Column?" and click "Save", the field "Email Address (Contact)" is now listed with "In Selector: Yes"

Conversely, returning to the edit page and unchecking "Results Column?" resets the field to "In Selector: No".

So, there appears to be two actual problems here.
1) the mis-labelling of the "Searchable?" checkbox as "Results Column?" on the Profile Field Edit page
2) the non-appearance of the "Results Column?" checkbox on the Profile Field Edit page and the resulting inability to control the visibility of this field in results listings
3) once point (2) is corrected, it would be nice to have a "Results Column?" Yes/No column on the Profile Field list page

I'm sure that it will quickly vanish from 3.1  Is there an easy patch to fix this problem in CiviCRM 3.0?
Or is it just something silly I'm doing wrong at this end?

I'm trying to clear up a confusion here...  Let's see if I've got this right.

Profiles in CiviCRM are a mechanism for creating custom-search-forms, search-results-display-tables (AKA results selector) and data-entry forms. The information specifying these is held in the civicrm_uf_* tables of the CiviCRM database.
You can define as many profiles as you like.
You can specify as many standard data fields and custom data fields as you like in any profile.
Administer>Customize>CiviCRM Profile  -  lists the created profiles
The link "Fields" for each profile lists out the fields enabled for that profile.
In the Profile Fields list the selected characteristics for each field is displayed and the link "Edit" displays a table where these characteristics can be changed.

The Field characteristics are as follows...

Visibility defines whether the field is hidden (User and Admin only), visible to all (Public Pages) and whether that field value, when displayed in a detailed record display, is made into a link to perform a search for every member having that value for that field.
Searchable controls whether the field appears in the search form for the profile.
In Selector controls the appearance of the field in the search results selector table
The order of appearance of these fields can be arbitrarily defined using the "Weight" value in the data table, which is automagically adjusted for all fields as they are moved up or down in the Profile Fields table display.
Required controls whether the field *Must* be given a value in the entry form
View Only allows display of the field value but not editing of the value.

Okay, assuming I've got all that right, let's visit the 3.1 development sandbox again.
I go to the "Supporter Profile" field list.
There are five fields defined, all with "Public Pages", "Active" and "Required" set to Yes and with "View Only" and "Reserved" set to No.
All fields have "In Selector" Yes except "First Name", and only "Last Name" is set to "Searchable" Yes.
Now I bring up the profile page (civicrm/profile/reset=1&gid=2)...
I see that the results selector table displays all the selected fields, with the addition of the "Name" field which I would therefore assume is *always* going to display in a profile page as it is not included in the field list for this profile.
Now I click the Search Criteria arrow to expand the search box.
As I understand things, with the setup detailed above, I should only see a textbox for the entry of a value for "Last Name" to be searched on.
Why then, am I presented with search fields for "First Name", "Last Name", "Country" and "State", especially since the latter two fields are not even selected or listed for this profile?

I now go back to the field list and edit the "Postal Code" field settings to "Public Pages and Listings" and select one of the records in the results selector. The Postal Code field for this record is now a link which I click, returning the expected result of records with the same postal code. I now reopen the search criteria panel and see the expected sight of one textbox labelled "Last Name". Why could I not see this previously?

I now enter "Adams" as a last name to search on and find that my search criteria still include the "Postal Code" previously selected. How can I easily clear that?

I clear the search by entering the raw search url (civicrm/profile/reset=1&gid=2), open the Search Criteria panel and it still displays just the Last Name field as it should.
I now go into the field list and set first "Postal Code" and then "Email (Primary)" to be searchable, reloading the Profile Search page each time and each field appears in the Search Criteria panel as it should. Whatever is happening, somehow I seem to have "unstuck" something now and the Search Criteria panel now seems to be updating as expected.

It seems to me that there are two problems here.

First is the apparently intermittent inability of the Search Criteria panel fields "getting stuck" and unable to be changed. In this case, I seem to have "unstuck" things by going into a detail record display and clicking a linked value to restrict/refine the search. This would perhaps seem to be a caching problem of some sort. But which cache, and how can I clear it consistently and easily?

Second is that having a field set to be "Public Pages and Listings" without also having that field set as "Searchable" (thus having it appear in the Search Criteria panel), leaves the user without any direct or easy way of resetting that criterion. This is a definite usability issue.
Would it be possible to, in the section that describes the search just done (e.g. 'Displaying contacts where: Last Name LIKE "%adams%"'), include a link next to it to reset that particular search parameter (unless it also appears in the Search Criteria panel?)

The above described behaviour is exactly what I am also seeing in CiviCRM 3.0.2 on a live site I am trying to configure and it is driving me nuts trying to figure it out. 

Any suggestions/help/explanations etc will be greatly appreciated