CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hey everyone,

I am having problems finding out if and how customized searches as to be specific the contribution aggregated totals search can be combined with other search criteria for carrying out searches. This is especially crucial for me to create a certain smart group of contributors based on their contribution amounts (aggregated totals that is) but also based on some additional criteria, for example that they contributed to a certain campaign.

I couldnt find any information in the net so far on this question. I know i can combine criteria using the search builder, but as far as i can see the search builder does not include customized search criteria, so I cannot make us of it for my purpose.

I thought another way would be to include the customized search "contribution aggregated totals" into the regular extended search -> contribution form. So far, i can look for contribution amounts ranging from a certain value to another, but those amounts are not aggregated totals, thats the problem.

I hope i was being clear in stating my question, if not, let me know. I do have basic computer skills but I am not a trained programmer or an IT person, so I do find it very complicated to get around setting up CiviCRM sometimes.

Best regards from Berlin, Germany,
Anja (posting in the name of the Freya von Moltke-foundation)

First of all, thank you for your answer Lobo. 

I might have been a bit unclear with the formulation of my question, but I think the way you proposed would not work out as I wanted it to. Because if i use the advanced search, chose my smart group and then combine other criteria, the program would only search WITHIN my predefined smart group, which wouldnt help me. I really need to find a way to include the customized searches (some of them, anyway) into the regular advanced search, not only for the purpose of this mentioned smart group to be defined the way i want it to be. Generally, it would be really useful if there was a simply (more or less simple at least) way of doing this, so that if a customized search is useful for me, i can add it to the advanced search form. Especially for finding contributions right now its a pain that you can only look for contribution amounts (from ... to ...) of one particular contribution, but not of aggregated totals. If that was possible, I could for example look for all the contacts that contributed more than 500 € in a given time, may it be this year for example. In the advanced search sheet available now i could only look for people who donated more than 500 € once this year, not aggregated this year. Is it clear what I mean?
Maybe I am also just using the program wrong or misunderstanding the search feature. Let me know if that is so, would be a good information to know anyway.

Best,
Anja

Mmm, ok then, but thanks for your help anyway!

so long
Anja