CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hello fellow Civi-people!

I'm putting together a membership directory for our NGO (the International Council for Traditional Music, www.ictmusic.org) with Drupal 4.1.5 and Drupal 6.x (and before you say anything about the installation not being the 'latest and greatest', it's a configuration I inherited, and which is won't likely be able to change  ).

Our membership is spread all over the world, where diverse personal naming systems are used. For example, we have members having only one name, others with many given names but no family name, and people with both given and family names, but with alternative display orders (last_name, first_name or last_name, middle_name, firstname). A very challenging issue indeed, but one which I have handled gloriously using CiviCRM's robust addressee options. Whenever we print labels, every field is printed and in the correct order!

However, we're now opening CiviCRM's data to our members using Profiles, and I've been hitting a wall when trying to implement an extensive search.

What I need is a search that presents only 1 text field to our members, but which searches in several fields (i.e., first, middle, and last names, optionally primary e-mail address and nickname). Indeed, having three individual search fields (first, middle, and last name) won't work -- our beta testers are confirming it is too confusing.

In short, what I need to implement is a search very much like the Quick Search found at the top left of CiviCRM's admin console. I have tried many different approaches to make that happen (e.g., creating a custom field updated via a hook to have all the information I need, then adding it to the Profile; using the addressee field as part of the Profile, etc.), but always unsuccessfully.

I think such a 'global name search' in Profiles would be quite a popular option to have, so I wonder whether its functionality is built-in somewhere? An API maybe? If anybody could point me in the right direction, it would help me a lot.

Thanks a lot for reading this, and all the best from Slovenia!

Carlos Yoder
Executive Assistant — ICTM Secretariat
secretariat@ictmusic.org
www.ictmusic.org

Thanks for your reply, Eileen!

What screen are you doing your data entry from - something like that is now part of event & membership forms (in 4.4 with cid=0 on the URL).  Note that 4.4 DOES work with drupal6 - some people have under the impression it doesn't.

I'm using one Profile (id=1) to take care of the Search, Edit, and View operations, as recommended in the CiviCRM book .The profile is set to Standalone Form or Directory, Drupal User Registration, View/Edit Drupal User Account, and -by default- CiviContribute.

The home URL of the membership directory  /civicrm/profile?gid=1&reset=1, and Edit screens have the pattern /civicrm/profile/edit?reset=1&pv=1&id=XXX&gid=1

In order to show only Current members in the Directory, I limit listings to a specific Smart Group (where MemStatus is either Current or Grace).

I'm attaching a screenshot of the current Search form I have, with those three separate search fields (given, middle, and last name) that I need to join into one (and thanks for the tip regarding CiviCRM 4.4 running on Drupal 6. Indeed I was under the impression Drupal 6 had been left behind).

I'm not sure I'm completely following your question though. ie. your member is searching for ?someone? when they fill in their details at a url like http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=14&reset=1 ?

The membership directory searches for individuals only, having a membership status of Current or Grace. They use either /profile/create or /profile/edit to manage their data.

Hope this helps in clarifying the matter!

Thanks a lot,

Carlos

That was one of my first ideas, but display_name is not a field I can add to a Profile -- at least in CiviCRM 4.1.5 and 4.2.4. Maybe that was added to 4.3 or 4.4? If so, I'll update a test installation and check!

Thanks a lot,

Carlos

you could use Views - then you can expose the Display Name - or even make a composite search field off First and Last - at least in D7 you can do the latter but expect it is in latter D6 Views releases

nice solution