CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Use case: client wants to send a newsletter to a group of contacts. About half prefer to receive a hard copy by post (so address labels to be produced), the other half to receive by email. The contacts' Communication Preferences are set accordingly: Method = Phone or Email.

Advanced Search doesn't include search by Communication Preferences, AFAICS. Is there a way to achieve this?

Thanks,

Dave J

Thanks for the reply, Lobo. I've put this to the user and their response was lukewarm, because they want to be able to do searches like:

Organizations in Group X / with Membership Type P, Q or R with Communication Preferences - Method = 'Post'

and possibly other criteria, and would like to do so using the Advanced Search interface rather than explain to their staff & volunteers that they have to use a different search form for Communication Preferences - Method.

AFAICS the sticking point here is the "Group X" - apart from this, if we set up smart groups for Communication Preferences - Method = 'Post' / 'Email', they can select this smart group among their other search criteria in Advanced Search. But if multiple groups are specified, these are combined with 'OR', so they can't search for contacts in Group X AND Group PrefPost.

Approaches that occur to me:

(1) Set up X+PrefPost & X+PrefEmail smart groups for each existing group X - messy.

(2) Set Privacy- Do Not Email for clients with pref Post & vice-versa, and search on Privacy. Not ideal, as users have to remember that these fields are being used in a non-standard way.

(3) Set up a custom field for comm. method & use this in place of Communication Preferences - Method. Again not ideal, as users have to remember to use the custom field instead of the Communication Preferences - Method field.

(4) Try to convince user that they can live without searching on Group X + Communication Preferences - Method.

(5) Add Communication Preferences - Method to Advanced Search - how big a job would this be? It strikes me as a sensible feature, and without it, AFAICS the Communication Preferences - Method field has no function, unless I'm missing something.

Thanks,

Dave J

I should have spotted before that Search Builder allows search by Communication Preferences - Method (specifying the method by its value, not label). This has allowed me to set up smart groups for comm. pref.
Search Builder also allows search on Group X AND Group Y.
This should allow the client to do what they need to, if we can get their heads around Search Builder for searches on comm. pref. plus group. Awaiting feedback.

I'm happy to file an enhancement issue for Advanced Search; whether I'm in a position to implement it depends on whether the client will fund the work, so I'll wait to hear from them.

Thanks,

Dave J