The Advanced Project Search feature in farmerswife allows generating detailed searches of Project data, along with Booking, Work Order and Media Order data.
The searchable values can be cross-referenced, allowing you to easily mine data that can also be used to extract financial reports or utilisation reports with the Financial Reports Designer. And finally export the search results easily to a spreadsheet application using the Open As Spreadsheet feature.
Generate searches based on the specific information associated to Projects, Bookings, Work Orders or Media Orders. Search by the standard fields of information such as Company name, Project name and Status, or by any Custom Field values or date ranges.
When determining how to configure the Custom Fields for Projects, Bookings, Work Orders and Media Orders, take into consideration that any Custom Fields created will appear as searchable parameters in the Advanced Project Search.
Here are a few suggestions of what the Advanced Project Search can be used for. Note that certain uses may depend on how your Farmers WIFE database has been configured.
Tracking:
- Tracking current active Project for specific clients
- Tracking the invoice status of a Project
- Exporting a list of a certain producers Projects
- Tracking shoots from a specific location for a given time
Used together with the Financial Reports, the Advanced Search can return information such as:
- What was the revenue of a given quarter?
- How much was spent by a specific client in a given month?
- What is the value of the booked hours next month?
- How many hours of a certain Service were done during a given period?
To generate Financial Reports of the returned results, mark the Project or Projects / Bookings etc. and right click (ctrl-click on Mac) and select "Financial Reports On…".
Access Advanced Project Search (Projects)
Enable User Permission
To grant access to the Advanced Project Search, the Permission Profile of the Users must have the Access to Advanced Project Search option enabled. The system administrator can access the User Permission Profile through the Server Setup > Users tab or through the Object Manager. The User must log out for the changes to take effect, if done via the Object Manager.
Access the Advanced Project Search
To access the Advanced Project Search go to the Navigation Bar at the top of the application and click on Projects. If you don't see it, then please check your Toolbox > Settings > Display > Module Bar option.
Interface
The Advanced Project Search window is split into two sections: the Search pane at the top, and the Results pane at the bottom.
The Search Pane
The Search pane displays standard fields and custom fields as searchable parameters.
Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the pane, to move to the right and see all related search fields.
The search fields can be customized through the menu > Project Search Fields and Booking Search Fields options:
The Results Pane
The search result will only show data matching the chosen search parameters.
The view of the columns can be modified in the Edit View window opened from the drop down menu in the upper left.
The amount of returned searches can be affected by the setting Maximum Hits When Searching, found in the drop down menu in the upper left.
