Searching for people in rezStream Cloud
We offer a basic search function to quickly find a person. However, we also offer a more sophisticated search interface that empowers you to filter on multiple criteria and then, optionally, export your results.
This capability is useful if you need to quickly find a guest who is arriving on the first of the month and had a special request for a limo pickup. And, it's equally useful if you would like to export all of your contacts in Colorado so that you can bring them into your marketing platform for a promotional offer.
Using the Advanced People Search
Navigate to People and then click on the Advanced Search link
While the UI may look intimidating at the start, you will feel comfortable using it in no time.
Your first choice is determining if you would like to search by person or reservation data. Note, we will only show and export people. This means that, if you search by reservation data and your search criteria match two of Jeff Hebrink's stays, then he will appear in your search results twice.
Searching based on specific fields
When you first come to the Advanced People Search, the screen will look pretty sparse.
We'll start by searching Person data. This will let us choose person-specific fields such as name and address and even the values in custom dates and fields. If we had selected Reservation data then we would be able to search based on reservation-specific data such as arrival date, special requests, units on the reservation, and more.
The search criteria are designed to help you quickly narrow down your search results.
For example, suppose that we want to find everyone in our database with the last name of 'Hebrink'. We can set the search criteria to return results where the Last Name Is Hebrink.
We've highlighted here the different options that are available for matching most fields. We also support wildcards. So, if you're not quite sure how to spell a guest's name but you know that it started with 'Heb', then you could search for the last name of Heb*. The asterisk is important and, in this case, tells the system to match anything that starts with Heb and we don't care what it ends with.
Some search fields have special behavior and we encourage you to play around with all of them!
For example, you might want to find all People with an address in California so that you can export the results from rezStream Cloud and import them into your marketing platform to mass mail a special marketing offer.
You can select the state, or states, that you would like to target.
Searching on multiple fields
When you click the link to add another Search Criteria, you can refine your results by filtering on more than one field. You will also specify if you want a wider, larger result by allowing results to Match Any of the following search criteria or a more narrow, focused result by requiring results to Match All of the following search criteria.
For example, if you wanted to find everyone that lived in either Minnesota or Wisconsin and that were tagged with both the VIP and Direct Bill tags, then you would want two search criteria, one for the State and another for the Tags. In this case, we would want to Match All of the following search criteria.
NOTE: Take care to review your results. If you don't see what you expect, especially if you have no results at all, then be sure to review your search criteria. For example, we are matching on All of our search criteria, but each criteria has it's own rules! So, if our search for states was set to match All rather than Any then it would look for people with an address in both Minnesota AND Wisconsin and, sadly, it wouldn't have found any (unless by chance you have a person with 2 addresses, one in each state).
Searching on multiple groups of fields
In out last example, those two search criteria are grouped together. Just as you can search across multiple fields in a single group, you can also add more groups with their own search criteria. The result is a powerful system that allows you to filter your data in multiple ways in rezStream Cloud to either find a guest or to create a finely tailored export for your marketing efforts.
If we want to find all of our guests with the last name of 'Hebrink' whose first name is either 'Jeff' or 'Joe' then we can do that with criteria groups.
So, let's click the link to add a Criteria Group and set up our search.
Here we've set up a top-level search for everyone with the last name of Hebrink and then added a nested Criteria Group to find the two people we wanted.
Where do I go from here?
The best way to learn more about the advanced people search is to dive in and start trying out different searches. Experiment with different ways to explore your data. You won't screw anything up and you might discover some new insights.
Here's a video offering a walk-through: