Build queries with Advanced Find - Dynamics Tutorial

- [Narrator] It's time to discuss Advanced Find, which allows us to take searching for data to the next level. Besides filtering data, Advanced Find allows us to add columns. It allows us to query for negatives. So think about querying for accounts that have no contacts, and we can even save the query as a personal view. Saving personal views allows users to return to their query at any time. These views can also be used as a base for personal charts which in turn can be used in personal dashboards. Advanced Find can be accessed by clicking on this little icon over here on the top bar. So as soon as I click that, you see this new window popping over, and I'm going to make this a little bit larger here. And you can see that it's asking me what is the data that I am looking for? So first you will have to select the table or entity that you're looking for. So let's say that we are indeed looking for contacts. And what I can do here is I can actually use an existing view as a template. So you can see here there's a whole bunch of views in there. This is my active contacts. I have active contacts, all contacts, et cetera. But when you select any of those saved views, you can see the query here in the middle of the screen. I can click on details, and that will allow me to edit that query. Again, we are not editing this saved system view. This is just editing our query that we're putting together. So let's say I don't want to do my active contact, I just want to do all active contact in the system. And then what we can do is we can actually use the data that's on the form or in the database to create a query. Usually what I do when I do in Advanced Find is I go back and forth between the actual form so I can decide what I want to filter on. So let's minimize this and then open a contact record. So we can see here I have first name, last name, I have mobile phone, fax. I can click here on details. This has given me some gender information, marital status, et cetera. So those are, again, some of the fields that I can use. You can also see some of those fields here on the view as well. So let's say that we want to filter on contacts that are active, obviously that do have an email address. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to go back to my query and I'm going to say the email, I can just start typing in the field that I'm looking for, and that actually has data, contains data. Now, maybe I also just want to get contacts that are in a particular state or in a particular city. Let's see here, again, if we can get some of that information. I have here the state selected. So let's just say that I just want contacts with an email address in the state of Washington. So again, I'm going to hop back into my Advanced Find, and I'm going to say address one state equals Washington. Now at any point in time, I can query and see what my results are. So when I click on this, this is now going to give me a list of records that meet that criteria that I just entered in my Advanced Find. Now let's talk a little bit about being able to add some of those columns, right? We can do that by clicking on edit columns, and I'm going to give it a second to load. And here we are. So what you see currently up top are the columns that are already included for this view. So let's add a couple. What we can do is we can actually click on any of those columns and that will put the columns that we're adding on the right side of that selected column. I'm going to say add columns, and let's just say we want the city, we want the phone number, and we want that state and province. And as you can see, those are now entered on the right side of that full name that I had selected. If you want to move any of those columns around, you can do that by just using these little arrows, right? So let's say we want address, city, and we want the phone all the way here to the right. But we can also change some of that, the properties, right? If I click here on change properties, that's going to allow me to select a different width for this column. So let's say I want this to be a little bit wider. I'm going to select 150 pixels. I'm going to click okay, and you can see now it's a little bit wider. From here I can also configure sorting. Let's say, I want this sorted by the state. So I can say, okay, I want to sort it by the state. And maybe then after that, I want to sort it by city, and I can choose an ascending or descending order for that. That's how we can do that. Now we can also add data from the related account record that this contact is linked to. So let's do that as well. I'm going to add columns from that account record. So I'm going to change the record type, and I'm actually going to say this is going to be from the related account that is in that company name field. And now I get fields from that account record. So I want the account number, the account rating. Let's just leave it at that. I'm going to say okay. And again, I can change my properties, change the width, and I can move those fields around. I'm going to say okay. And again, I'm going to take a look at those results to see if I'm happy with that. And look at that, here's the full name of the contacts, the two fields that we added to this view, and the company, as you can see here, if I make this a little bit larger, the company information that we added like the account rating and the account number. So this looks pretty good to me. So what I can do from here is I'm going to go back to Advanced Find, just click on Advanced Find that you see here up top, and I'm going to save my query. So you can click here on save as, and you can call this whatever you want. So I'm going to say these are contacts query by Dion. I'm going to save that. And now when I minimize this, and I'm going to go back here to contacts, and here is that query that I just created. So now I have access to that query directly from within Dynamics 365. Being able to find data in a system is very important. And with Advanced Find, we can create and save advanced queries as personal views. Have you tried it yet?