Intro to Filters Theory

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00:02 Hi, welcome to admire filters training. Now, as many may have already realized, the admire filters can be complex. So the goal of this curriculum will be not merely to teach the details of how to filter, but also to teach an understanding of the filters.

00:23 It is that understanding that will ultimately ensure a true grasp on how to filter. And once you really master filters, your entire admire experience in all the modules and screens will drastically improve, and you'll have real control of your data.

00:42 This first video will serve as an introduction to filter's theory. Now, I know you likely just want to get to the actual filter screens already, but please hang on until the end of this video.

00:55 After this introduction, you have my word that will get right into building filters. Now, I'm going to assume that if you're watching this filtering series, you've already started to get your feet wet in reporting.

01:07 And therefore, lots of what I'm about to mention, you may already know. I'm building a few points out here, please listen carefully.

01:17 Now, in admire, you store data and pull data, retrieve data. We'll discuss data retrieval in this filtering curriculum. To retrieve data, you use the report wizard, mail merge, and advisor screens, and the various maintenance screens, and admin screens.

01:48 Whenever you retrieve data in admire, you need to tell admire two things. One, which fields to show you must do this first step.

02:02 And two, which criteria to use in order to further whittle down what data in those fields throughout admire is actually pulled.

02:14 You don't absolutely need to do this second step, but you'll almost always wish to in order to facilitate precise organized data or tree-roll.

02:24 To do the first step, telling it admire which fields to show you, you'll select a specific report for PDF reports, export for spreadsheet style reports, merge, or mailings and some emails, or format for maintenance, admin, and browser screens.

02:55 Each of these reports, exports, formats, and merges are programmed to pull a specific set of fields, the name, the address, the email, and so forth.

03:10 Let's true with the reports like is shown here, it's true with exports. I want to show you something I found in lightening about the first step.

03:19 So in the programming in the admire system, there's something called an ID. Everything has an ID in it admire. There are account IDs.

03:35 Each account has its own ID and it's called an account ID. There are student IDs. Each student has their own ID and it's called a student ID.

03:53 There are teacher IDs, each teacher has their own ID and it's called a teacher ID and so forth for everything in admire.

03:59 What I found interesting is that for the report, the export, the mail merge and the format, the ID is always called the same name.

04:10 I'll show you that here. Let's take exports. We drag this out. It's always called report ID, RPT ID. They're all called the same thing.

04:31 Even the format and the mail merge. Let's just focus on that for a moment because I think it helps mentally compartmentalize what's being done in the data retrieval process.

04:42 As you remember that every single time you pull a selection of data and you need to do the a step of data retrieval, you need to tell admire which fields to show you.

04:52 Every time you will use the exact same method, you will choose an RPT ID, a report ID, a report, which is either what we always call a report.

05:07 Like in the report wizard, what we actually call a report, which is really a PDF report. Or an export or mail merge or a format.

05:21 Every time the report will literally be labeled with the same identical programming ID classification report ID each time. In reality, your first step is identical every time.

05:33 Now, after telling admire which fields to pull by choosing the correct report ID, you may move on to the second step of data retrieval, telling admire which criteria to use for further whittling down of the data.

05:50 After this second step, you will of course use a filter. The point being stressed here though is that it's always the same process.

06:01 First, we say which fields. And then we say how to limit those fields, but the filter. Here's the next point.

06:14 So our next point is really what what derives from everything we just said. And it's super super super important and clears up so much confusion and saves so much waste time.

06:24 A filter can never add information to the data you are pulling. The filter is the great limiter. Its purpose is always to make less and more precise information show up.

06:43 If you don't filter, you will pull every single piece of data in admire that the particular report export merge format would pull.

06:52 So if you're ever wondering why certain pieces of data did not show up in a report, don't try adding a filtering criterion.

07:01 Don't go there. Let's don't example of a filter. So the first step we have to do of course, because we're going to retrieve data, the first step we have to do is tell admire which fields to show me.

07:17 So if I let's I want to pull a list of pledges. I want to count information. I want to know what pledges accounts gave.

07:28 So I really want to see a count info with pledge info. I could see a sample of how it looks, which could be very helpful.

07:37 I could see an overview. They are available on some. And it's definitely worthwhile if you need some help trying to figure out which one you need.

07:44 I could type over here and search for it. I could use the dropdown. So let's say I would use the smart search and I would do pledges.

07:56 I would try to find one that fits. So let's say I want to do the account list with pledges. And I know the account list with pledges is a good one for me.

08:03 It's a good pick. So I want to use the account list with pledges to tell admire what fields to pull what it's going to show is account information, account ID, name.

08:21 These are the fields it's going to show, address, field, phone number, pledge information. And then of course I have to do the real purpose of this curriculum, which is I have to tell admire the in the second step.

08:39 I have to tell admire how to limit these fields that are being shown. I have to tell admire that I don't necessarily want to see this information for every single account and for every single pledge in admire.

08:55 I have to tell admire which criteria to use before pulling these data fields into my report or export or whatever exactly I'm using at the moment.

09:08 So we told admire to use the account list with pledges to know which fields the poll and we're going to create a filter.

09:16 You again you could search for it over here. You could browse actually in a more organized way for people who like that.

09:23 You can use smart search and you could create a new filter. Create a new filter and that's what we're going to do over here.

09:36 So the first step when you create a new filter is you enter the name and then just to give a basic overview of what's going on over here we have the filter sections.

09:46 So the filter sections are really a place where you can choose what part of the report you're going to be filtering.

09:54 So are you going to be filtering which accounts should show up? Which would mean that they would show with all their information, the account information, the ID, the account, the phone number and you have to tell it or are you filtering for what pledge information should show up.

10:16 You could filter for what accounts should show and then of course show all their pledges or you could say no even if an account is coming even if an account is showing up.

10:27 I don't want to see all pledges. I only want to see certain pledges so you could filter which pledge fields should be pulled.

10:38 So let's say we pick that we're going to filter on the account section. We want all pledges to show up let's say but we don't want all accounts to on this report.

10:49 We want specific accounts to be shown. Now what accounts do we want to be shown? So let's just see quickly we click on basic the advance we're going to deal with later that's a more advanced filtering.

11:06 The tech SQL editor that's very programming you know that's to use which actually is not too basic. I shouldn't say basic basic it's actually not too basic it's it's quite powerful.

11:26 So let's say we're editing the account section we want to say which accounts should show up. So what do we want to use to filter?

11:40 So let's say we only want to see accounts on this account list of pledges. We only want to see accounts that live in Lakewood.

11:52 So we're going to do a few things we clicked on the account section and now we're going to find the address and we're going to make it the default address so it's called it's called addresses default only.

12:10 So we're going to say let's read the sentence of the filter. Very important when you're understanding the filter to actually read the sentence to understand what the filter is actually telling the system to do.

12:24 This criteria set will query for any records which means what we're about to put in the criteria we're about to enter is going to pull any records which means any account records that's what we're talking about.

12:44 The criteria set the we're about to create is going to pull the accounts specifically the accounts on our account list of pledges specifically the accounts that have we could do have or do not have.

12:57 We did have that have a single address and we're talking about default addresses that have a single address which meets the criteria.

13:10 So the address is the entity that we're dealing with now there's many parts of the address there's this the city country the day and time it was entered into the area there's various parts of the address.

13:24 So let's say we wanted to just do a filter on the city being liquid so we want only families that live in Lakewood let's find city we could also type it city equals now you could type in Lakewood equals Lakewood we also could find it on drop down but we'll deal with that in a different video.

13:53 So what we did here is we said we're editing the accounts we're saying which accounts should be pulled this filter should pull all accounts that have a default address with the city field equaling liquid this filter should pull all accounts that have the default address in Lakewood