#75 Advanced Query
Did you know that Advisors Assistant now has an Advanced Query that allows users to retrieve virtually any data they would like within Advisors Assistant? The Advanced Query provides you with more power and flexibility than the Selection Reports search criteria. Yet, it is very easy to use. And like Selection Reports, you can query Contacts, Investments, and Insurance all at the same time, combining queries from each of the major areas together.
To get to the Advanced Query, click on the Down Arrow next to Selection Reports on the main section of the Sidebar Menu and choose “Advanced Query.”
To start a search on a specific field, choose “Select Matching Contacts” and specify what type of information you want to gather together using the Field, Operator and Value menus.
The Field Menu is the type of information you would like to search. For example, if you are trying to find all Prospects within the database, you would pick “Name Type – Primary” as the field you are searching for since Prospect is a Name Type. The Operator is how you want to compare what is in the field (Primary Name Type) and the Value you are searching for.
To search for prospects you would choose “Is Equal To” from the list of Operators. Since we are looking for all Prospects, we would choose “Prospect” from the Value drop-down menu. You can select more than one Value from your list, which in effect is an “or” search. If you wanted a list of “Prospects” or “Clients” you would check off both abbreviations.
From here, you can stop and click Search if you are just looking for all Prospects within the database. If you also want to find all Prospects within a certain area of the country, you could click the Add Button and that will add another search line for you to include additional criteria. You can add as many criteria as you need for your search by adding new lines.
Once your criteria is all filled in, you can click the Save Button to keep that criteria for future searches. If you need to run the same search again, just click the Load Button and all of the fields would fill in for you automatically. You can also Copy the search criteria to another Advisors Assistant user or department if they will need to run that same search.
Once the search is complete, you would get the same Reports Selection Menu that you get with the Selection Report Criteria.
With the Advanced Query, you can also search among Investment and Insurance data all on one screen, if you have access to those modules. There are many Operators to choose from, for example you can do Exclusion searches if you need to find data NOT EQUAL TO a specific value or empty email or birthdate fields.
As you can see, Advisors Assistant’s Advanced Query does most of the work for you by showing you lists instead of having you type in the values yourself. It’s designed to provide you with lots of power along with ease-of-use.