TrackVia's search feature is fast, simple, and powerful. This article explains the basics of searching a database, and includes some tips that will help you quickly find just the data you're looking for.

The Basics

To search a database, go to the Database Overview page (click on the TrackVia logo in the upper right to go to the Home page, then click on a view icon next to the database name). You will then find the search box towards the upper left corner.

The search box works just like your favorite Internet search engine: type in one or more words, click Go, and TrackVia will display all records in your database matching those terms.

TrackVia looks through all of the fields in your database to find a match. If you search on Texas, for example, TrackVia will return records that contain Texas in the City field, or the Company Name, Description, or any other field in your database. TrackVia also searches numbers, dates, drop-down fields, checkbox groups, and so on – so you can search on 17.5 or January 23 or just about anything else.

If you type in more than one term, TrackVia will return records that contain all of the terms. For example, searching Dallas Texas will return records that contain both Dallas and Texas. Separate your search terms with ordinary spaces – you don't need to use commas or other punctuation. There is no limit to the number of terms you can include.

Tips and Tricks

You can increase the power of your searches by using any of the following advanced search features:

Phrases. Use quotation marks to group terms into a phrase. For example, searching on New York returns any records containing New and also containing York. That means it would match a record that contained the phrase, "her Yorkshire terrier has a new collar," which probably isn't what you meant. Changing the search to "New York" will return only those records in which New and York appear together, as a phrase.

Exact match. Put an equal sign in front of a term to require an exact match. For example, searching on Bob would return a record whose First Name is Billy Bob & Susan. If instead you search on =Bob, the matching field must contain Bob exactly.

Negative match. Put a minus sign before a term to indicate "not." For example, -Bob will return records that do NOT contain Bob in any field.

Dates. You can search on days of the month, months, years, or any combination of those. For example, December will return records with dates in December, and "Jan 18, 2007" will return records containing that exact date. TrackVia is flexible about how the different date parts are ordered, so 2008 Oct 17 (or just parts thereof) will work too.

Blanks. You can search for blank fields by searching on (none). That is, the word none with parentheses around it.

Specific fields. To require a term to match a specific field only, use the field name and a colon, like first_name:bob or State:CA. Capitalization doesn't matter, but you must change every space in your field name to an underscore (the _ character), and remove any characters in the field name that aren't numbers or letters. For example, a field called Is Married? would become is_married:yes in a search.

TrackVia's built-in fields can also be searched this way, for example:
    created_by:Jason
    created_date:2006
    updated_date:"Jan 18, 2005"

If you use an equal sign instead of a colon, the match must be exact. So first_name=bob will match records where the First Name is exactly Bob (uppercase or lowercase). Without the equal sign, first_name:bob will also include records whose First Name contains Bob but does not exactly equal it, such as Billy Bob.

Examples – Combining All of the Above

You can combine any of the above tricks together to get exactly the data you're looking for. Here are several examples.

Other Search Options

By default, TrackVia does not search a record's History section (notes, changes, or attachments), nor the automatically-captured fields Created By, Created Date, or Updated Date (unless you specify them in your search terms, of course). However, you can broaden what TrackVia will search using the options you'll see displayed on a search results page. The options are:

      Search notes
      Search change history
      Search attachment names
      Search Created By, Created Date, and Updated Date fields

(These options only appear after you've already done a search, or clicked Go from the database overview page.)

Note that even with these checked, words tied to specific fields will not be searched for. For example, if you search on Johnson first_name:Bob and you check Search notes, only the word Johnson will be searched for in the notes. The word Bob will not be searched for in the notes, since it's tied exclusively to the First Name field.

Finally, checking Include attachment names will not search inside of attached documents – it only searches on the name of the document.

If you can't find exactly what you're looking for with TrackVia's Search feature, you should consider using a filtered view instead.