Over the years, I have been asked by many clients how to base an entity search on the view that the user is actively using, versus having the search be based on the quick find view setup by admins. Well, there is finally a way (with some limitations).
In Settings--> Administration--> System Settings, a new control is found called “Use quick find view of an entity for searching on grids and sub-grids.
When setting this to “Yes”, the users view (system or personal) will be used for search. Alternatively, if “No” is selected, the standard quick find view for that entity will be used. When setting this to “Yes”, the standard quick find view for that entity will be used for search. Alternatively, if “No” is selected, the users view (system or personal) will be used.
The biggest use case I have seen is having the ability to search for inactive contacts without enabling the quick find view to search for the inactive ones because of performance concerns. A user can now search directly in the Inactive Contact view without having to do an advanced find.
This is an all-or-nothing setting; the setting applies to all entities across the organization. I do see some use cases where it would be nice to change this per entity, perhaps something Microsoft will implement in the future.
There are a few other enhancements to the search functionality:
New Advanced Find Feature
The new advanced filter icon is shown on list views for standard and custom entities. Clicking this opens the expression builder panel. Upon clicking the filter icon, an advanced filter with the conditions as per the view will be automatically selected, then user can accordingly modify the conditions per their needs.
An asterisk * will be shown next to the current view title. This denotes that the view has changed but the new filter isn’t saved.
We can save this filter condition as a new personal view by clicking on ellipsis in the ribbon-->Create View-->Save filter as new view.
Improved Grid Filtering
Additional filter improvements are introduced in the latest release wave. New grid column filtering capabilities make it easier to control displays including: 'begins with', 'ends with', and 'contains data' criteria. New date filters include absolute criteria ('before', 'after', 'on', etc.) and relative ('last month', 'older than X months', etc.).
All of these new features make it easier to tailor the search experience for your organization. I cant wait to see what new features are coming in 2020 Wave 2.