{"id":148,"date":"2022-01-06T10:18:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T10:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.citrus-lime.com\/crmc\/?p=148"},"modified":"2022-01-06T10:18:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T10:18:34","slug":"how-to-use-the-advanced-find-in-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.citrus-lime.com\/crmc\/how-to-use-the-advanced-find-in-dynamics\/","title":{"rendered":"How to use the Advanced Find in Dynamics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the bad old days of systems, the need for a new report would be sketched out and have to be sent to the Developers, when often this \u2018report\u2019 was simply a handy spreadsheet of data that needed to be produced from the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often when approaching new CRM Projects, we would be warned \u2018we have hundreds of reports\u2019 and whether this was possible within CRM and the Project Budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On investigation, many of these reports would be simple queries of the data in the system that could be solved using the Dynamics CRM Advanced Find and so be built by the Business themselves, not via expensive Developers and Consultants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early days of Dynamics CRM, this helped many a Project come to fruition in allowing the Business to build their own Reports rather than being limited by Development Team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, the Advanced Find has been a mainstay of Dynamics CRM all the way since v3.0. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a great tool that helps us both build these new Reports alongside run Queries against CRM to find certain records or groups of data \u2013 particularly when we can Export and Share the Results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help get started with this, the following Walk Through is aimed at showing how to use the Advanced Find in Dynamics CRM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Step 1 \u2013 To Create an Advanced Find<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
  1. Select Advanced Find on the Command Bar.<\/li>
  2. Select New.<\/li>
  3. In the Look For drop-down, select the Type of Record or Entity we want to query<\/li>
  4. Pick the Field<\/strong> \u2013 In the Search Area now, we can select any particular Field for that Entity that we want to use for our Query.<\/li>
  5. How  \u2013 <\/strong>With the Field selected, we then pick the Operator we want to Query by.  This gets into basic Database Query Operations, so a \u2018Equal to X\u2019 or \u2018Greater than Y\u2019 style query.<\/li>
  6. What \u2013 <\/strong>With the Field and the Operator, we can then pick the Value we are looking to use for the Query.  This can be a selected Drop-down value, a Record in CRM, or simply a block of text, this depends on the Type of Field in CRM and what we want our Advanced Find to return:<\/a><\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    With this all done, we can click the Results button to then flip our Query into the real Data that is in CRM:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Step 2 – Adding Search Criteria to an Advanced Find<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    1. In the select area, choose the field on which you want to search<\/li>
    2. Select your query operator<\/li>
    3. Enter the data you want to filter by<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      <\/a>Note – To select GROUP OR, GROUP AND On the ribbon at the top select the option you wish to choose<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Adding or Removing Columns<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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      From the query screen, choose Edit Columns in the ribbon. (Select the Advanced Find tab if you\u2019re in the results screen).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

       <\/a>To move the columns from left to right, select the column then use the green arrows to move the column left or right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n