Author Topic: A tricky advance search challenge (Read 7922 times)

MarionCLA · August 21, 2013, 12:41:41 am

Hi Civi community,

I am starting using CiviCRM and am quite confused with the organizations/individuals relations. Can you explain me how, for example, I can solve the following problem:
Let's say I have an organizations subtype called "Press".
Let's say I have put 2 kinds of tags for all my press organizations: 1 kind of tags would be local English / local French / international for example (for local press speaking English, local press speaking French, and press based outside my country), and the other kind of tags would be daily newspaper / weekly newspaper / monthly magazine for example. These press organizations are recorded as employers of a certain number of individuals, therefore editors, journalists etc. who have their own email addresses/contact details.

Let's say I want to email all journalists from press organizations that are taged as "local English" AND "daily newspaper".

The issue is: how do I find these individuals? I found 2 challenges here:
- how do I find individuals who are employees of PRESS organizations
- how do I make a search for 2 tags at the same time (AND operator, not OR)

I guess there's is something to do with the search builder but I wasn't able to do the right thing. Thank you!
Marion

xavier · August 21, 2013, 03:38:28 am

For 1, you can search all the press org with the criteria you want, and display related contacts (employee of) as a result instead of the org. (that's on the top right corner on advanced search)

For 2, AND between tags, not sure. I tend to avoid the problem by either writing custom search code or by using custom fields instead of tags

X+

krypto · August 21, 2013, 04:06:44 am

If it's only a couple of tags then you could create a smart group that includes everyone in tag1, then search on that group and tag2. Only works for two tags, though.

Guy Iaccarino · August 21, 2013, 08:52:01 am

I'm a big believer that if you plan your categorization of your constituents correctly, there are less times than people tend to think that you even need tags. That being said, there is usually more than one way to categorize your contacts, depending on what you are going to be doing. So this is one way, but not the only way (nor even necessarily the best way, depending on other ways you are using the system).

Types and Subtypes are all about the data you are storing. If there are custom data fields for your Press organizations that you have created, than having a subtype makes sense. If you don't have custom fields, I wouldn't even have a subtype.

Groups and Smart Groups are all about the interactions these contacts have with your organization. So I tend to think that whether or not Press is a subtype, you should have a group called Press Organizations. (Keep in mind as well that Parent / Child Groups can be very helpful, which I'll address.)

Next, I would do an Advanced Search (not search builder) using the Relationships tab, for employees of the group Press Organizations, and put them in a smart group called Press Employees. That answers number 1.

This next part depends on how you reach out to your groups most often. Are you more likely to occasionally send to all english press, or all daily press? If it's all English, then I would create a child group of Press Employees called English Press, and then three child groups of English Press called English Daily, English Weekly, and English Monthly. Put the contacts into the correct child groups. Do the same for French and International. This allows you to easily send to whatever group or groups you need to. And remember to have it defined in your workflow that when you create a press contact to put them in the correct group. They will go into Press Employees automatically, but not the English / French / International and Daily / Weekly / Monthly.

I hope that helps. If you would like to discuss this, and how the best solution might be impacted by other considerations of your workflows, feel free to contact me. And remember, this is only one way. Custom fields at the Press Organization level, combined with all smart groups using the Relationships Search, could be another. It really depends on your users skill levels and your workflows.

Best,

Guy

MarionCLA · October 22, 2013, 08:43:38 pm

Sorry for my very very late reply. Just wanted to say a huge thank you, that was helpful

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Author Topic: A tricky advance search challenge (Read 7922 times)

MarionCLA

A tricky advance search challenge

xavier

Re: A tricky advance search challenge

krypto

Re: A tricky advance search challenge

Guy Iaccarino

Re: A tricky advance search challenge

MarionCLA

Re: A tricky advance search challenge