CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Seems like a bug indeed, can you file an issue on the Issue Tracker?

i will troubleshoot this further and see if i can understand what is the actual problem.

i think civicrm needs to offer the ability to do IS NULL and IS NOT NULL searches. that is the main reason i use the Search Builder. would be happy to do it some other way, if that were possible.

PTP is developing some custom searches, for the Engagement Index and some more advanced fundraising ones. i am starting to investigate the extension mechanism as a way to contribute them back.

maybe along the way i can get some of our folks to think about more generic searching, and even propose something for the Search Builder.

--josue

Sorry if I'm hijacking a thread, but I hit the issue where users couldn't do an "IS NOT NULL" (they wanted organisations without a fax number) and while the error doesn't appear in the latest demo, the search continues not to work.

I'm happy to spend time on getting this to work or working towards something better but would need a bit of direction to get going.  For example, is going down the views path the best option?  While I think views is a great piece of kit, I don't necessarily think that it's the same use case as what search builder does, even if you expose a standard set of filters.  And doesn't this leave the Joomla users out in the cold? (which is fine with me btw as I'm purely a Drupal person

Having just typed that, I think the way forward if using views is to provide a default view (a view created in code) that would replace the search functionality.  As Donald states then the major missing piece is the tasks/action integration, which to be honest is why my users are doing a search in the first place.  I've also found the tasks/action bit, and writing custom tasks/actions, one of the best integration points for new function.  You could use views bulk operations to provide a similar function I think, but then I also think that this view would have to live outside of Civi because of clashes with jQuery etc.

Is this the right place to have this discussion btw?

Malks.

OK, I'm going to explore that option then.  It kinda dovetails into something else I was playing with, i.e. creating new Rules that integrate with Civi (mainly around Event workflows, i.e. when someone is marked as attending an event, generate an activity to follow up etc.)

I have a Drupal 7 install that I can play with so will get Civi/Views on it and see what I can come up with.

My biggest concern with this though is how are you envisaging a view to have the enter more search criteria function?

hmm, I'm not so convinced.  Views is good for returning lists of data, which could be construed as search results, but the interface for changing the criteria, beyond exposing filters, isn't for the faint hearted.  And the filters exposed don't have the expressiveness of the search builder IMHO.  Happy to discuss where you see views slotting into the bigger picture and spending some time working through it, but is it for a separate thread?  Where should that thread go?  I have now officially hijacked this thread.

Getting back to the OP's topic, the IS NOT NULL function doesn't work (at least for phone) on http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/ at the moment even though no error is raised.  e.g. (and this is a search a user wanted), show me individuals who have a fax number, show me contacts where Individual->Phone->Work->Fax->IS NOT NULL.  If you do this you get records that don't have a work fax defined.  Am I doing the query right?  I'm going to poke around and see if I can work out what is going on but guidance would be welcome.