Using Filters

Filters appear throughout ExceedFurther, any place you wish to limit the number of names, gifts, memberships, or other information that you see on the screen in a list, in a report, or in a mailing.

These filters may be listed as "Additional Gift Filter" or "Additional Bio Filter", indicating that they apply to a particular set of data. Some filters are called "Advanced Filter", meaning that you can use them to filter across a wide array of fields.

Using filters, you build a set of criteria that is used to find the names or other details that you need. The criteria are built by selecting a field, like last name or gift amount, and then specifying what values you wish to use for your filter. For example, you may wish to find people named Smith or everyone who has made a gift over $100.00.

You can add additional criteria - in fact, you can add any number of conditions to be satisfied. Each criterion is added to the list using AND or OR.

Use AND to narrow down the list. Someone has to meet both criteria to be included. For example, you may want to find everyone who lives in Palo Alto AND attended last year's gala.

Use OR to widen the list. Someone only has to meet one or the other criteria, but not necessarily both, to be included. For example, you may want to find people who live in Palo Alto OR have given more than $1,000.00.  This would find all of your big donors no matter where they live, plus everyone in Palo Alto, even if they have never donated anything.

Sometimes when you string together several criteria, mixing together AND and OR, the interpretation may not be evident. For example, if you are looking for a college, you may want one that is top-tier or small and affordable. Does this mean your college must be affordable but could be either top-tier or small? Or does it mean that if your college is top-tier, it doesn't have to be small and affordable, but if it's small and affordable, it doesn't have to be top-tier?

To make the distinction between various interpretations, you use parentheses as you build the criteria. In this case, placing the parentheses like this: "(top-tier or small) and affordable" leads to the first case (must be affordable). Placing the parentheses like this: "top-tier or (small and affordable)" leads to the second case.

A criterion is built in three steps: by selecting the field, selecting the operator, and selecting the value. The field is the piece of data to consider, like gift date or zip code. The operator is something like "equals" or "is greater than". The value is what the field is being compared to, like "12/22/2013" or "94305".

What operators and what values are available depends on what type of field is selected, as shown below:

Field type

Example

Operators

Text

Last Name

Equal, Starts with, Ends with, Contains, Range, Not equal

Number

Gift Amount

Equal, Range, Greater than, Greater than or equal, Less than, Less than or equal, Not equal

Date

Gift Date

Equal, Range, Greater than, Greater than or equal, Less than, Less than or equal, Not equal

Code

Source

Include, Exclude. A list of codes appears where you can select one or more to include or exclude.

Tag

Mailing Tag

Include, Exclude, Require. A list of tags appears where you can select one or more to include, exclude or require.*

Check box

Do Not Mail

Equal. You can select "Yes" or "No" as the value for your filter.

When filtering on tags, where someone may have many values at once if they have been assigned multiple tags, presents a special case. When you select certain tags to be included, do you mean someone has to have all of these tags or only one? And what if you want to leave someone off the list if they have a particular tag?

When filtering on tags, use "Require" when they must have that tag or tags to be included. Use "Include" for tags when someone only needs one of several tags. Use "Exclude" if someone should be excluded based on a tag. These are interpreted as follows:

"Exclude" takes precedence - that is, anyone with any one of the "Exclude" tags is excluded, not matter what other tags they might have.

Next comes "Require" - only people with all the required tags are included.

Last comes "Include" - those who made it through the Exclude and Require filters are now checked to see that they have at least one of the Include filters.

To use a filter to build a set of filtering criteria, do the following:

  1. From the list on the left, select a field to use for filtering.
  2. From the list of operators, select the operator to use.
  3. Type in a value or select from the list presented.
    1. If your field is a code or tag, you can select any number of values from the list.
  4. Click on Add to add this criterion to your filter.
  5. If you have additional criteria to add, click on AND or OR.
  6. Repeat from Step 1 to add additional criteria.
  7. If you have both AND and OR conditions, you probably need to add parentheses to clarify the interpretation. Click on the left parenthesis to add it to the bottom and then drag it up in the list to the correct spot. Repeat for the right parenthesis.
  8. If you need to make changes to your criteria, use the pencil icon next to the criterion to edit it, or use the X to delete it.
  9. Check that you have AND or OR between each criterion and that your parentheses match up and are in the correct positions.