Search, Sort, & Filter to Find What You Need

SingleOps offers multiple ways to access the information you need quickly, whether from the home page, in Jobs Management, or on a Report. The key tools we are going to cover here are Searching, Sorting, and Filtering.

Searching

The most powerful search feature within SingleOps is the Global Search feature located in the top-left of the app.  The global search allows you to search by reference number, name, address, or phone number, and applies to jobs, visits, clients, items, purchase orders, vendors, and tasks.

Also, because SingleOps allows for a partial string search, an entire number or name is not necessary to gain results. The minimum search characters is three; once three characters are entered, the Global Search will automatically begin displaying results.

If the results you are looking for are not available in the dropdown list, press enter to view a complete list of results. This list is organized in tabs for quick navigation to the element type you are looking for - Jobs, Visits, Locations, Invoices, Contacts, and Tasks.

Search fields also exist within other pages, and are usually found in the upper-right corner of those pages.  Examples include: Jobs Management, Purchase Orders, Invoices, Timesheets, Reports, etc. These fields also allow for partial string matches, and will perform incremental searches - the more letters you type, the more refined your search becomes based on the string you've typed.

Here is a figure showing the in-page search from the All Clients page...

Tips for Using Search

•  The search dialog generally does not support searches for dates or dollar amounts.  Those are difficult to match exactly because of the variants in the format in which they should be entered.  Dates are best handled via the date range filter (which will be discussed in greater detail in the filter section).  It may be (depending on the number of records/rows) that you are able to sort the column and find a date or dollar amount if you know it's value and relationship in the result set.  We'll discuss sorting next.

•  Searches are generally NOT case-sensitive, i.e., enter 'mike' is the same as entering 'Mike'.

•  Within custom reports, it is possible to specify which columns are searchable, and which are not.  If you are requesting a custom report, be sure and specify any column which should be searchable.

•  SingleOps doesn't clear search criteria from one search to the next, so be sure to clear out any previous criteria before beginning your new search.

Sorting

Sorting can be found in tables throughout single ops, and are represented by sort arrows located in the header row.  Clicking the arrows above any column serves to toggle the sort between ascending and descending sorts.  The column by which the list is currently sorted will appear a darker shade of grey than the other titles/arrows.  SingleOps only supports sorting by the current column selected with no regard to secondary, tertiary sorts, i.e., you cannot sort by city, then by client name within the city.  For multiple sorts, you would need to use Excel or some similar software (Excel will be discussed later in this article).

As with searching, sorting in custom reports is something which can be enabled or disabled. If requesting a custom report, please indicate to SingleOps staff which column(s) should be sortable. Default behavior when creating the report is generally to make all columns sortable.

Filtering

Filtering within SingleOps is an effective means of seeing only the desired results within several pages and reports. These include the Job Management Page, Invoices Report, Calendar, and many others. In all pages which contain filtering functionality, the Filter button can be found in the upper right of the page. Expand this section by clicking filter to see the available options.  

Custom reports do not support filters, and must be exported via CSV file to take advantage of the extensive filtering capabilities in a spreadsheet program such as Excel or Google Sheets.  More on Excel can be found at the end of this article.

The filter button, when available,  is typically found in the upper-right corner of the page.  Clicking the button will toggle between show/hide of the slide-down filter section.  Here we'll look at the filter section found at the top of the job page.

FILTER NOT EXPANDED

Tips for Using Filters

• Filters can be applied to the operation, the client, the assignee(s), and the date range.  
• The date range can further be configured to look at either the work start or the work stop. 
• Tags: Clicking any one of the Tag filters will place a border around that tag, and reduce the result set to include jobs bearing that tag.  Clicking a second (or third) tag includes only those jobs which bear Tag A and Tag B. Toggle to "Any" to choose Tags based on Tag A or Tag B. 

• Job Type: display results for only recurring jobs or one-off jobs.  By default, both are included.
• Use the "Save Default Filters" button to save your filter selections for future sessions on that page.
• Each list will differ in the types of filters that can be applied.  Spend some time with each to learn which criteria you can filter to find the records you seek.  

Using Excel

Many reports allow you to export your data as a CSV (comma-separated values) file for use in a third-party application such as Excel or Google Sheets.  For illustration purposes in this article, we'll use Excel, but the principles would be the same in any similar product.

First, you will need to export the data from the report to a CSV file stored on your computer or network drive.  Click the blue Export to CSV button in the upper-right corner of the report. Export either only the columns showing on your page now (Export CSV) or include all of the columns available on the report (Export CSV with all columns).

Your data will be saved to your computer (typically in a Downloads folder).  Open the CSV file in Excel.

To Add Filters to Data in Excel

•  Highlight the entire area which contains the data, including the header row.  EX:  if your data extends to L100, you will want to highlight A1:L100.

•  Switch to the Data tab in the toolbar and click on Filter (looks like a funnel).

•  You will now notice a small funnel symbol appear in each column header within your report.  

•  You can now click on the funnel symbol to allow you to do both sorting and filtering.  In the small menu that appears when you click on the funnel, you can see the first two options allow you to sort either by 'smallest to largest' (ascending) or 'largest to smallest' (descending).  As it relates to dates and time, the earlier event is the 'smaller', the most recent event is the 'larger'.  Excel will also allow you to do what SingleOps could not:  you can apply primary and secondary sorts.  If you click on client name and sort A -> Z, and then click on city and sort A -> Z, you'll notice that the city names do sort alphabetically...  but that the client names are then also sorted alphabetically within the city name.  This means you'll need to do the secondary sort first, and then the primary - but it does allow you to sort within a sort.

•  Filtering is also accomplished by clicking on the funnel symbol within the column header, and can be done in a couple of different ways:

     +   the easiest way to filter is to check or uncheck boxes for each of the distinct values found in that particular column.  A Select All check box is provided to enable toggling all the check boxes on/off.  Checking more than one box in the same column increases your results, acting as a Boolean OR, e.g., checking Monday AND Tuesday in a column for days of the week would return any/all results having either day as the value.

     +   you can also create filters based on conditional phrases, e.g., 'equal to', 'not equal to', 'greater than', 'less than', 'between', 'contains', 'begins with', or 'ends with'.

     +   filters can be 'stacked' across multiple columns which serve to reduce the number of returns by acting as a Boolean AND, e.g., you can check the Monday and Tuesday boxes in the weekday column, and then specify to only see sales greater than $100.00 in the total column which would then only return those rows where both conditions were satisfied.

     +   to clear a filter, click on the funnel and check the Select All box (if using check boxes as your filter) - OR - click on the option to clear the conditional phrase filter.

     +   BONUS TIP:   to make it easier to see the column header with the filter symbols at all times, place your cursor at A2 and click on View  >>  Split, then click View  >>  Freeze Panes  >>  Freeze Panes.  This will split the screen and freeze it at this location so that you can scroll down the page to see all your rows while leaving the header row locked at the top of the page.

     +   if you wish to save your results, be sure and change the file type to .xlsx rather than leaving it as a .csv    If you leave the file extension as a .csv, you will not have the filters enabled when you save, close, and re-open the file (something Excel will advise you to that effect when saving the file as CSV).

     +   after applying a filter, you may be able to see the number of rows/records returned in your result set if you have the Status Bar feature enabled in your browser.  If so, you'll see something to the effect of '1131  of  21416 records found' at the bottom of the browser window.