*********NOTE* - Due to changes in terminology, all references to Bills have been changed to Invoices, all references to Billings have been changed to Time Entries, and all references to Costs have been changed to Expenses in the Guide below. At some point, the Video above may also be updated. *************

The Advanced Find tool, in essence, allows you to curate a list of exactly what you want to see, updated at the moment that you want to see it. You may also think of this tool in the Legal Software space as a Report Builder. These Searches can range from something extremely simple (like a Search that brings in every Expense greater than $100) to something far more complex (see the example in the next section).

After building the View (the set parameters of what you want to see), you can then Save and Share these Views with other members of your team and use these Views to track specific information that is important to you and your firm.

The difficulty in using the Advanced Find tool comes more from your own imagination and execution of what you want than any limitations the tool might actually place on you – it’s that robust. Below, we’ll go through an example of how to first conceptualize what you want and then how to actually execute on what you want.

However, due to the nature of this tool, this guide cannot show you every possibility – it would require something the length of a textbook – rather, this guide will give you examples of the kinds of things that are possible with the Advanced Find tool and point you in the right direction for your own experimentation and use-cases.

Let’s begin!

Quite possibly the best practice that you can employ in building a Search/Find/Report/View (we’ll use Search, going forward) is being able to put what you want into a complete sentence. I’ll give you an example below and then we’ll build it during this example. Remember, this is simply an overview of the tool and in no way reflects the full breadth of possibilities when building a Search.

First, decide on what you want to see, ie, Matters, Expenses, Tasks, Notes, etc.

“I would like to see a list of all Matters.”

And then begin making your clarifications/specifications.

“I would like to see a list of all Matters on which Roger Chown is the Responsible Attorney.”

Then, continue to clarify your request.

“I would like to see a list of all Matters on which Roger Chown is the Responsible Attorney and where the Total Time Entries *OR* the Total Expenses are greater than $0.”

Once you’re able to articulate what you actually want to see in your Search, you’ll have a much better time finding the parameters in the system. Let’s build this now.

To begin, click the small Pin or Wine Glass icon on the top right on the screen.

Start by specifying your Base Data – that which you first need to Search. In our example, we’re looking for Matters, so I’ve chosen Matters in the Look For field.

Next, we’ll need to start filling in some Parameters. Choose the Dropdown and you’ll see a long list of all data types. In this case, we want to see all Matters on which Roger Chown is the Responsible Attorney, so we’ve chosen Responsible here.

*NOTE* - As we go through these Dropdowns, look at all of the other options that come up and simply take note of all of the other ways that you can read, compare and pull data on a given Matter. We won’t go through most of these during this example, but more than possibly any other tool in Curo365, experimentation will lead to understanding. You can’t break anything, so feel free to play!

And now we need to use the Options in this field to specify Roger Chown.

So we’ve said that we want a Responsible Attorney who is a specific person, but now we need to specify that specific person. In the adjacent Field, where it currently says Current User, we can do just that.

So our first set of Limiters now looks like the pic below, and we want to see all Matters where the Responsible Attorney Equals (is) Roger Chown.

Now let’s add our second Limiters (also known as Arguments in some software). We want to see the Total Time Entries and the Total Expenses that are greater than 0. When finished, it looks like this.

Now time for something very fancy. The words And and Or are powerful words when gathering data for a Search. Do we want to see all Matters where Expenses *AND* Time Entries are greater than 0 or where Expenses *OR* Time Entries are greater than 0? Take a moment to mull over the difference between those two parameters and realize how that might yield very different results.

Now, let’s make it happen! Decide which Search elements (two or more) you’d like to include in your And or Or and select them like this.

Once all of the elements that you’d like compared are selected (you see in our example how the lines are highlighted), choose your limiter at the top (And or Or).

Now that we have all of our Parameters set – all Matters where Roger Chown is the Responsible Attorney and the Total Time Entries *OR* Total Expenses are greater than 0 – we’re ready to see our results. Hit that big, red Exclamation Mark to make it happen.

Here, we bring up three results, and they’re exactly what we wanted. All Responsible Attorney fields show Roger Chown, and there is a value of greater-than-0 in at least one of the two fields, Total Time Entries or Total Expenses!

Now what are we going to do with it?

If you simply wanted to see the results, then there you have them. You now know that there are three Matters that meet your Search criteria, but if we save this Search as a unique View, then we can see it again later without having to rebuild it. Let’s do that now.

We’re now looking at the results of our Search, but we can go back to our parameters that we set by clicking the Advanced Find tab on the top left.

And choose Save As

Here, put in the name that you’d like your new Search/View to be called and a Description if you’d prefer.

Before we leave this Advanced Find screen and show our shiny new View in the Matters Entity, we can Share this with some other people so that they can also see what we’ve done.

Click the Saved Views button.

Select the one you want to share and click Share.

Click Add User/Team

Choose the Users or Team with whom you’d like to share the Search, press Select to move them to the list and then click Add.

To see the new View in Curo365, you’ll have to go where that View ‘lives’. In this case, since we created a View for Matters, this View lives in the Matters Entity. First, close the popout window for the Advanced Find tool in which we’ve been working, and then choose the Matters Entity on the left side of the screen under the Matters Subheading.

First, REFRESH YOUR PAGE, just in case it hasn’t loaded yet. Click the Dropdown at the top to change your View, and find the Custom View that we just created. Custom Views will always be at the top under My Views.

And voila! The View that we just created and shared with a few people is now accessible, in an instant, from within your Curo365 Environment! Anytime you click this View, it will produce current, accurate info, but if, for example, based on the criteria that was set for this, if one of these Matters dropped the Total Time Entries and the Total Expenses to 0, they would no longer appear on the View.

There are countless adventures that await you in the Advanced Find tool, but you’ll need to explore many of them on your own, as only your firm fully understands its needs and how to best utilize this function.