Using the Set... Search Criteria window

When you first start up a Synergetic program, you are usually presented with a Set Search Criteria window that allows you to search for the particular record in the database that you want to work on.
For example, if you start Student Maintenance the Set Current Student Search Criteria window is displayed.


Note: Some search fields are set to default values. For example, File Type defaults to Academic, Year defaults to the current year and Term defaults to the current semester. These default settings are maintained in the Preferences window. See Setting up Synergetic the way you want in the Introduction manual.

Note: The labels for Semester can be Term, Report No or Half-Term based on your setup. See Student File Semester Maintenance - File Semester tab in the Curriculum manual.

On the Search Criteria window you can:

• Click OK, leaving all fields blank. This finds all records of a certain type and presents them in a search grid window. In the Set Current Student Search Criteria example, if you click OK without entering anything, Synergetic finds all current students on the system.
• Restrict the search by typing information in one or more fields. You can type all or part of a name in a field and use wildcard characters to further narrow the search. The more fields that you use to search on, the more filters you apply and the less data is returned. Less data for the system to process means less time taken to retrieve the data that you need.
• Restrict the search with a custom search form by clicking and typing information in one or more fields. only appears if a custom search form has been created for this maintenance window. See Designing user search forms in the System maintenance manual. When you are finished, click to return to the Set Search Criteria window. You can now either:
• restrict the search further by typing information in one or more fields
• click , leaving the remaining fields blank to search only on the custom search fields.

Note: Make sure that you enter required data into corresponding fields in the correct format. For example, you must enter the ID as a number and not a letter or alphabetic character.

At any stage you can change your selections. To do this, click and then make your new selections.

Search fields that you type in are not case sensitive and can be either upper or lower case or a mix of upper and lower case. For example, name fields are not case sensitive.

Search fields that have a drop-down list to choose from are case sensitive and depend on how they have been set up in the database lookup tables. See Maintaining lookup tables in the System maintenance manual. We recommend that you always select these fields from the drop-down list rather than typing them in to avoid issues of case sensitivity.

Note: Special characters, such as and , are not recognised as English letters. For example, is sorted after z not after a. That is, the sort order is a, b, c, ...z, , .