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Little HelpLittle Help 

Searching for Picklist items

In my custom object, when I search for items that were selected from a picklist, they do not show up in my search results? Any ideas? Little help? Please?
caroline_sfdccaroline_sfdc
Hi Little Help,

From your message, it sounds like you have a picklist field on a custom object, and that when searching for a particular value for that picklist you do not get any of your custom object records in search results.

That's actually normal behavior -- picklists are never indexed for search, regardless of whether they appear on a custom or standard object.

if you take a look at the "Search Fields" topic in the online help, you'll see which fields are indexed for search. For custom objects, only the following fields are searched in Sidebar Search:
  • Name
  • All custom auto-number fields
  • All custom fields that are set as an external ID
  • All custom fields of type email
  • All custom fields of type phone
If you use Advanced Search, you'll additionally be able to search on:
  • All custom fields of type text
  • All custom fields of type text area
  • All custom fields of type long text area
Hope that helps!

Caroline Roth
Sr. Technical Writer
Little HelpLittle Help

Thanks Caroline.

Do you have a recommendation for me? Basically, I have candidates within my system, and as I interview new candidates, I have their information entered into Salesforce.com. I have certain sections, such as "expertise" set up as picklists so if I have multiple candidates that have expertise in "graphic design", I can pull down from the picklist and select the item "graphic design" for each person. My hope is that I can eventually search for "graphic" or "graphic design" and locate the individuals through the search.

Thoughts?

My guess is that you are going to recommend setting up a report. Either way, please advise.

Thanks a million for your help!

Little Help
caroline_sfdccaroline_sfdc
Little Help,

You've nailed it -- using a report is the easiest and best way to search for records based on the value of a picklist. If you don't have much experience with reports and are looking for a tutorial, check out Chapter 9 of "Creating On-Demand Applications," available to all ADN members at http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Creating_On-Demand_Applications:_An_Introduction_to_the_Force.com_Platform.

If you're dying to use search instead of a report for narrowing down candidates, there are a couple of options, but none are perfect:
  • You could try tracking a candidate's expertise with a text box instead of a picklist, and then use custom field-level help to "suggest" the options that you'd like your users to enter. This leaves the door wide open for typos and other data-entry problems, but text fields are searched in Advanced Search.
  • If you are the only one who is working with Candidate records, you could use the new tagging feature in Winter '08. As you tag a record, auto-completion steers you toward using tags that you've already used in the past, thereby circumventing the data-entry problems. However, no other Salesforce users can see the tags you've entered, so this isn't a good solution if you're working on a team.
  • Finally, if you're using an Unlimited Edition organization, or an Enterprise Edition organization that has Apex enabled, you could write a trigger that copies the value of your picklist selection into a text field and then use Advanced Search to search on that field. That's a really convoluted workaround, however, and probably not worth the implementation effort.
Hope that helps -- good luck!
Caroline
Little HelpLittle Help

Very good. I appreciate the information, Caroline. You have been very helpful. I'm going to try to work on my reports first - to see if I can make it simple to use for my team.

Thanks again.