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Searching for Organisations using Notes

External Posted: 2012-08-28 11:38

Is it possible to search for Organisations using the title and content of Notes attached to them?

I can do it using the Search button on the Start menu but this doesn't show the Organisation name.

Workbooks Support Posted: Sun, 04.08.2013 - 16:04

Hi Brian

Apologies for our delayed response.

You're quite right that when you search for the subject of a Note the search dialogue window doesn't show the name of the record to which the Note is attached. This is quite an unusual requirement but if it's important for you to achieve this, there are two possible approaches:

  • You could incorporate the Organisation name in the subject or body of the Note, but this is likely to be a bit too time-consuming and has a high degree of potential for human error.
  • You could build an Organisation report that shows the Organisation name and then add a calculated column using GROUP_CONCAT to join together the subject of all the Notes related to that Organisation. The formula would look like this:

GROUP_CONCAT(notes.subject)

 

You could do likewise with the Text field too.

In addition, you could build a column that concatenates together the Subject and Text fields for all the Notes for each Organisation using the following formula:

GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT( notes.subject, notes.text))

 

Remember that you should summarise the report to show one row per Organisation.  (I'd recommend adding a column to your report for the Object Reference and summarising by that in case you've got more than one Organisation on your database with the same name.)

Once you've built your report, you could pin it to your Desktop and then use the filter functionality to find the text you're looking for in the concatenated fields. You'd then be able to click on the relevant Organisation name to open that record.

Workbooks Support Posted: Mon, 12.08.2013 - 13:50

In next release of Workbooks, due out in late summer, you can build the same report by undertaking the following steps:

  • Create a new blank report based on Organisations. Within the Details view add a column for Object Reference, Organisation Name, Note Subject (Notes > Subject) and Note Text (Notes > Text).

The details view now shows all Organisations and the Subject/Text of any Notes. A summary view can be built to concatenate together the Subject and Text of any notes.

  • Select 'Add Summary View' and 'Add grouping column'. Group by 'Object Reference'.
  • Add a Calculated column which uses the following formula:

'GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT( PARENT('Subject'), ' - ',  PARENT('Text')))'

Once you've built your report, you could pin it to your Desktop and then use the filter functionality to find the text you're looking for in the concatenated fields. You'd then be able to click on the relevant Organisation name to open that record.