Searching Overview

InterAction provides several methods for finding contacts. You can browse through folders using the folders list. Another alternative is to use the Find Bar and the Advanced Find button to find contacts based on their name, phone number, notes, additional fields, and/or classifications (see Using the Find Bar).

For more sophisticated querying, InterAction allows you to build searches.

Shared vs. Personal Searches

Once you create a search, you can save it. InterAction saves the search criteria, not the search results. Whenever you run the search again, InterAction finds all the contacts that currently match the search criteria. You have the option of sharing a saved search or keeping it private.

Searching Capabilities

When you create a search, you specify the folders you want to include in the search and what fields you want InterAction to use when performing the search. You can search on any of a contact’s fields and can build complex searches consisting of multiple search conditions. You can also search for people based on criteria about their associated companies.

A search condition is a “building block” for a search. A condition consists of the field to search (e.g., Last Name), an operator (e.g., “is”), and the value to search for (e.g.,“Smith”). For example, the search condition “Last Name is Smith” searches for all contacts in the specified folders that have the text “Smith” in the Last Name field. Search conditions can be joined together by AND and OR and can be grouped using parentheses. For example, you can search for the following:

Last Name is “Smith” AND (City is “Chicago” OR City is “Oak Brook”)

When you run a search, InterAction looks for contacts sourced or linked in the specified folder(s) that match the search criteria. InterAction displays the search results in a search results window, which behaves like a folder. See Running a Search for more information.

Duplicate Searches and Linked Contacts

Potential duplicate searches only find duplicate sourced contacts (contacts sourced in a given folder). These searches do not find linked contacts.

For example, you are maintaining your organization’s Holiday Card marketing list folder. You want to see if there are any duplicate contacts in the list before sending out the mailing. Because this folder contains linked contacts only (contacts linked into the Holiday Card folder), using potential duplicate searches will not find duplicates in this folder.

To find duplicate linked contacts, use Multi-Contact Duplicate Merge. The first screen of Multi-Contact Duplicate merge displays all possible duplicate contacts in a given folder. You can then decide which contacts you would like to merge.

For more information on Multi-Contact Duplicate Merge, see Merging Multiple Duplicate Contacts.