In addition to searching for contacts by name or phone number in the search bar of the “contacts” tab, you can place queries to search for contacts based on the values in their contact fields. The query you enter will operate on all contact fields present in your account. Note that fields and values are not case-sensitive within a query.

Operators

In the query pictured above, we reference a contact field called 'Age.' We use the operators greater than or equal to '>=' and less than or equal to '<=' to specify the desired characteristics of the contacts we’re searching for. 

When using contact fields containing two or more words, spaces need to be replaced with underscores (e.g. id_number=409328 or date_of_birth=082786).

Statements

You can use 'OR' statements to match two or more contact field values, and 'AND' statements to filter contacts by contact field. For example,

(city="Oakland" or city="Berkeley")

will return only those contacts whose 'City' field contains "Oakland" or "Berkeley", and 

(city="Oakland" and gender="Male")

will return only those contacts whose 'City' field contains "Oakland" and whose ‘Gender’ field contains "Male".

Field Types

Contact fields that use Text, State, Ward, or District values containing multiple words must be enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. city = "san francisco"). Operators like '>=' only work with Numeric and Date & Time values.

Dynamic Groups

Contact groups resulting from queries are called dynamic groups. Dynamic groups are unique in that they will continue to collect contacts who match the query that created them.

Once you enter a query, Community Connect will return the group of contacts who match it:

You can save this new group as a dynamic group by clicking the "Create Smart Group" button near the search bar:

Once a dynamic group is saved, any new contacts that match the query will be automatically placed in it.

Up Next: Anonymize Contact Information