Advanced Grouping Multiple Search Criteria
- Brian Banet
While Searches with multiple criterion default to concatenating with the AND logical operator and the order of search criterion applies, you can use the Advanced Grouping setting to change that. Set any combination of AND (both must be true) or of OR (either or both must be true) concatenation between the criteria.
Use parenthesis to group criteria and control the order in which the search process will proceed in the Advanced Grouping text box. The grouping works like a basic algebra expression, following the same mathematical rules.
Please note that when advanced grouping is in use it is expected every prompt will be filled in or will be treated as null.
Example: Advanced Grouping for Invoice Approval
In an invoice approval process, an Accounts Payable clerk needed to flag any invoices that are above a dollar threshold for a given cost center.
Create a Search called “Invoice Approval” which should return any Sales invoice > $5,000 or any IT invoice > $2,500. This Search would be impossible with the standard query logic. By default, the Search will be an AND based search (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5). To enable OR-based searching, change the settings in the Advanced Grouping text box using a combination of parenthesis as well as OR statements to ((1 and 2) or (3 and 4)) and 5.
