Using the Search Features

Many Time & Attendance module pages display a large amount of data or a large number of records. To help you narrow the amount of data displayed so that you can find what you need more quickly, many of these pages include searching and filtering tools. Although the specific behavior of these tools may vary slightly from page to page, many of them share the same basic characteristics. The search and filtering tools are usually located in a shaded Search Options box that appears near the top of pages that display large amounts of data.

The subtopics below explain how to perform a basic search and how to narrow your search results by applying filters, if they are available. Filters are sets of one or more conditions imposed on your search to limit the number of results of the search.

The top-level searches in the Time & Attendance module are often based on the "query by example" method, which searches for a pattern that matches the characters you enter in the search field. For example, suppose you are searching in the Department column for "Sales." If you type "s" in the search field and click the button or Find, the search results list will display all of the departments starting with "s." If you type " sa" and click the button or Find, the results list displays only those departments starting with the letters " sa." The more characters you enter, the more specific the search.

In general, searches are not case-sensitive, so the Time & Attendance module finds terms that match your search item regardless of their capitalization.

Note: This pattern-matching approach only searches form the beginning of the terms being searched. For instance, in the example above, the results list would only show departments whose names begin with " sa," not a list of all the departments that contain the letter combination " sa."

If you perform a search on a multiple-page set of data, all of the pages of data are searched.

Example

Although searching by example can be very powerful, if you have a large amount of data, it is helpful to further narrow your search by using filters. A filter causes the search to run on only a subset of the data that is searched by default. Filters are commonly applied by making a selection from a drop-down menu or by selecting check boxes that indicate certain conditions the data must meet.

Notes:
In most cases, you must click the button or Find after you have entered your search term and selected any filtering criteria.

In addition to being used to narrow the scope of a search, some pages contain simple filters that limit the scope of the data being viewed, even if a search was not performed. For an example of this kind of filtering, see Limiting Data to a Particular Time or Pay Period.

Example

Tip: You can re-sort the contents of most search result tables by clicking the column heading for the category by which you want to sort the results.

If you are a Practitioner or Manager, you can create and save Employee Filters to help you quickly view specific sets of employees. See Finding Employee Records for instructions.