Using advanced search

Rob Howard Updated by Rob Howard

Use the advanced search method if you want to apply filters to your search and narrow down results. The following advanced search options are available in DailyStory:

To access the Advanced Search page, select the Advanced Search option on the Contacts page.

Wildcard search is an advanced search technique that can be used to maximize your search results in DailyStory’s contact database. To do a wildcard search, apply any of the following methods:

  • Add an asterisk (*) at the end of a partial keyword or a group of characters if you want to pull up results that match the word or characters you entered prior to the asterisk. For example, if you search for Rob*, the search will return a list of contacts that may have Roberts, Robertson, or Robinson as part of their data in DailyStory. The asterisk will allow for an infinite number of characters in the search as long as the first few characters you specified remain the same. 
Note: Make sure that you place the asterisk at the end of your text. Adding the asterisk before your keyword or characters does not qualify as a wildcard search.
  • Add a question mark (?) at any position of your keyword to indicate that you are missing a character and want to pull up results that may match the missing character. Note that a single question mark symbol represents one missing character. For example, if you search for J??n, the search will return a list of contacts that may have John, Joan, or Jann as part of their data in DailyStory.

Search using an exact phrase

To search using a phrase, enclose your keywords with double quotation marks. For example, use “Gold Weekly Members” if you want to search for contacts with the specified membership type.

Add a minus sign (-) before the text or information you don’t want to be used as a search criteria. For example, use John -Smith as your search text if you want to find contacts whose first name is John but don’t have Smith as a last name.

Search using multiple data points

When you’re filtering your search using contact fields that accept text array value, you can use more than one piece of data as the search criteria. For example, if you want to search using multiple postal codes, enter the postal codes and separate each code with a comma.

Using AND and OR commands

DailyStory supports searching using logical operators, such as AND and OR. 

  • Use OR if you want to retrieve results which contain any of your specified search criteria. For example, use Dallas OR Austin to search for contacts that may be located in either one of the specified cities. 
  • Use AND if you want to retrieve results which contain all of your specified search criteria. The AND command ensures a more accurate list of results for your search. For example, use Company A AND Company B AND Company C to search for contacts that are associated with all of the specified organizations.

Search using time period or range

Contact fields that are configured to accept time period or range values enable you to go back or advance by days, months, or years to narrow down your results to a specific time window. You can toggle between range and period input as preferred to specify your search criteria. 

Tip: A period-based search gives you more flexibility as it enables you to search using a specific time window, such as the next 30 days or the past 15 days. 

When a period search is performed instead of passing exact dates in the URL special tokens are set to allow search to calculate the date each time search is run. Valid values include:

  • yesterday
  • today
  • tomorrow
  • next-N-days, next-N-weeks, next-N-months, next-N-years - where N is any number greater than 0
  • past-N-days, past-N-weeks, past-N-month, past-N-years - where N is any number greater than 0

For example, to find contacts with birthdays in the next week using the following search:

$dateBirthFrom=today&dateBirthTo=next-1-week

How did we do?

Using direct free text search

Changing order of custom contact search fields

Contact