Table of Contents
Searches
Updated
by Lesley
What are Searches?
A search view is a visual element in your Live App used to search and display multiple records from your app.
Each search view displays records from a single table in your app. Any of the fields from that table can be used as columns in the search. The results of the search can be displayed in grid or list view format.
What do searches look like in the Live App?
Here you can see a search view showing Invoice records:
Each record in a search result can be linked to a child page to edit or view more details about that record.
Manage Searches
Adding, editing, and deleting views are managed the same regardless of view type. To learn how to add, edit, and delete search views from your app, see About Views.
Search Settings
To edit and access the settings of a report view, hover your mouse over the view and click on the pencil icon that appears at the top left of the view. This will open the search view settings in the toolbox to the left. This will show four settings sections:
- Source: define which records to search
- Settings: general view options and settings
- Add Search Inputs: add the fields users can search by
- Search Results: define how the search results will appear
Source
The Source section of the view settings states what records are being used in the view. For example, “This search is summarizing Project records.” Here you can also set internal filters, sort and limit the number of records being displayed.
In the source section, you can:
- View which records are being displayed by the view.
- Add filters to restrict what records display in the search results.
- Define the default sort order of records in the search results.
- Set limits for the number of records that display in the search results.
To learn more about adding filters to a search view, see our article on using the view Source.
Settings
The Settings section is where you can find the general options and settings for your search view.
Search Results
This section allows you to choose how search results are displayed in the live app. You can choose to display records in either a grid or list format.
Options
- Show results to start
- By default a search will start with no returned results; only the search fields will be visible. Check this if you want to also display an initial page of records.
- Hide fields that don’t have values
- Hide fields without values from the search results.
- Allow record exporting
- Exporting allows the user to export all the data from the grid into another format. An export link will appear in the top left, with options for downloading in a CSV, Text, or JSON format.
- The exported data will always reflect the exact data the grid is displaying, including any sorting and filters.
- Inline editing
- Inline editing allows individual field values to be edited directly in the view by clicking on the grid cell. This will open a popup modal that can be edited.
Empty Results Text
The Empty Results Text, customizes what message users see when their search has no results.
Column Summaries
Column summaries display summaries of each column at the bottom of the search results grid.
Column summaries are used to run calculations on all the rows in the column in the grid of the search results. Results will display as a summary at the bottom of the grid columns.
Here you can add four different summary types to your grid: Sum, Average, Minimum, and Maximum.
To add column summaries click the “Add Summary” button in the Search view settings. Then add a title for your summary and select the summary type. By default the title is “Total” and any label you add will be placed in a left column if available.
When row summaries are enabled, you can disable them for specific columns if needed. To do so, hover over the column in the grid preview and click the more options icon. Select "No" in the Allow Summary dropdown to hide the summary for that column.
Pagination
Pagination determines how many records will show at one time. If the total number of records exceeds the number set here, then links will be added to the search results grid to navigate to additional pages, displaying more records.
The Options section contains four features that you can enable to customize your search view:
- Set how many records (10, 25, 50, or 100) to view at a time
- Let the user set how many records to view per page: This allows the user to change how many records they are viewing per page.
- Show pagination controls at the bottom of the grid: this will display pagination controls at the bottom of the list as well as at the top. By default, this will be the "page X of X" display. If the feature to allow users to set how many records to view per page is enabled (see the previous bullet point) this option will also show at the bottom of the grid.
Title and Description
This section allows you to add a Title and Description to your search view. Here is an example of what a search view looks like with no title or description:
Here is what a search view with a title and description looks like:
Add Search Inputs
The Build section of the search settings is where you add fields to your view.
The fields you can add include any fields from the view’s source table, a keyword search, and static elements for organization:
Fields
This is where you can find a list of available fields that can be added to the list of possible search inputs. This will appear above the grid or list view that will display your search results.
Add and Arrange Fields
To add fields and other elements to your search view, click on the field in the left menu:
When a new search view is created, it has only one column displaying all the fields of the source table. You can also create multiple columns of fields by dragging a field to the far left or right side of the list view.
You can have up to three (3) columns in a single search view:
Edit Fields
To edit fields in a search view, hover over the field and select the pencil icon. The left-side menu will update to show the settings available to edit for each field type.
- Field: The name of the field.
- Label: the text identifying the field that will display before the search input.
- Advanced Filters: when unchecked, the field will have a simple input to search by. When set to Yes, advanced filters can be added to further specify the search for that field. Each field type has specific filter options like "is", "is not", "is higher than", etc.
- Match Type: when the Advanced Filters are set to No, you can define what the match type is. Any will act more like a "fuzzy" search where any part of the field can contain the search value. Exact will require an exact match.
- Required: a value will need to be entered for this search field in order to submit the search.
- Default: Adds a default value that will display in the field input.
- Instructions: add instructional text if you want to offer more context or instructions for searching on that field. The text will display in a smaller font below the search field.
If "Advanced Filters" is unchecked, then you can set the default for that search field by selecting an advanced filter drop-down and value. For example, here the default for Sales Manager can be set to ‘Bob Williams’:
Remove Fields
To remove fields or other elements from a search view, hover over the field and select the trash can icon.
Don’t worry, removing a field from your view does not delete the field from your database!
Search
Keyword search is a special option. While each search field will just search that field in each record, the keyword search will search every field in the entire record.
- Keyword searches must contain at least two characters and neither can be a special character.
- "is" and "is not": will return ANY record with an exact match, tokenized (segmented) by word.
- "is apples" will return "apples" and "oranges and apples" but will not return "orangeapples" or "apples123".
- Using the same available records, "IS oranges and apples" will only return "oranges and apples".
- "contains" and "does not contain": will return any record with a partial match within the entire string being searched.
- "contains apples" will return "apples" and "oranges and apples" and "orangeapples" and "apples123".
- Email addresses: Searching on email addresses is currently an outlier and does not obey "is" filters.
Each new search defaults to having a keyword search. If you need to add one, click on the Keyword Search option under Search Elements to add a keyword search to the view:
Static
Static elements are static fields that always display the same content no matter what record you are viewing in the details view.
- Title/Copy: Set a title for your view in the Live App.
- Divider: Add dividers between fields in the view.
Search Results
The search results will display based on the search results setting in the Settings section of the view. This defaults to a grid format but can also be set to display in a list format.
Search Results are separated into three sections:
- Fields: Fields from the source table that can be added as fields to your Search grid or list.
- Connections: Fields from connected tables that can be added as fields to your Search grid or list.
- Actions: Additional inks that can be added to your grid or list. These links can be used to link to different pages (details view, edit form, or another page in your app). You can also add action links to your search results here as well. Click here to learn more about Action Links.
Editing these options are identical to the grid and list views, depending on your settings.
For editing results in a grid, view the grid columns settings here.
For editing results in a list, view the list details settings here.
How-To Guides
Notes & Troubleshooting
Search limits on connection fields: in order to optimize performance, searches are currently limited to searching 10,000 records. Searching on a connected table with more records than this will display inconsistent results. Data source filters can be used to narrow the search criteria to less than the 10,000 record limit.
