One of Belcoda’s main jobs is to make it easy for you to find people in your contact list.
One of the tools we have for this is our filtering system.
You can see the filtering system at the top of the community page, as well as when you’re selecting the recipients for emails or WhatsApp messages.
The most simple way to search is just by name: type in someone’s name and the list suggest people who match that name.
But there are lots of other ways you can filter, too.
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If you type in numbers, it will try to filter the list by matching people’s phone numbers, rather than name. And if you type in something that contains “@” then it will try to filter by email.
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There are a number of different types of filters you can use. The way you use a filter is by typing in the filter prefix and then the : character. So, for example, if I want to use the country filter, I type country: and the filter box will display lots of country filters.
Here is a list of all the available filter types:
age: |
Returns a list of age groups. You can filter people who are in that age group, based on their date of birth (if we have that information stored in Belcoda) |
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lang: |
Returns a list of languages. You can filter people who have that language listed as their preferred language. |
country: |
Returns a list of countries. You can filter people who are located in that country. This can be useful for organizations and networks with people in many different countries. |
region: |
Returns a list of geographic regions. This can be continents (eg: Asia & Pacific) or political blocs (eg: African Union). This will filter people who are located in one of the countries covered by that region. |
event: |
Returns a number different filters related to events. |
These event filters help you filter people who have a signed up or attended events. For example, the filter “Signed up (past 30 days)” will filter anyone who has signed up to any event in your Belcoda workspace in the past 30 days. Likewise, “Attended (ever)” will filter anyone who has attended (marked as attended after the event in Belcoda) any event in your Belcoda workspace ever.
If you keep typing after event: then the filter box will also return a list of events that match what your typing in. For example, event:tr will return events with titles that start with tr, like “Training Day”. If you select this filter, it will return everyone who has signed up for the event, no matter whether they attended, didn’t show up, or are signups (and the event hasn’t happened yet) |
| signup: | The signup: filter is like the event: filter, and it will return filters related to events.
However, it only returns a list of filters for specific upcoming events, that is, events that haven’t happened yet. You can narrow down the filters by the event name.
If you select one of the event filters, it will filter everyone who has signed up for that event. |
| attended: | The signup: filter is like the event: filter, and it will return filters related to events. However, if only returns filters related to event attendance (people who have been marked as attended for events in Belcoda).
If you narrow it down by event title, it will only search through events that have already happened, because someone can’t have the status of having “attended” an event that hasn’t happened yet! |
| noshow: | The noshow: filter is like the event: filter, and it will return filters related to events. However, if only returns filters related to event “noshow” status (people who have been marked as having not shown up, even though they registered to come).
If you narrow it down by event title, it will only search through events that have already happened, because someone can’t have the status of having been a “noshow” for an event that hasn’t happened yet! |
| pp: | Point person filter. Returns a list of Belcoda users in your workspace, who might be the point person of someone else. If you select a point person filter, it will filter people for whom that person is their point person. |
| tag: | Returns a list of tags. You can filter people who have that tag. |
| group: | Returns a list of groups. You can filter people who belong to that group. |
| gender: | Returns genders. You can filter people by their gender (if we have that information stored in Belcoda) |
| phone: | Returns some phone number options, including options for filtering people who have phone numbers, have verified phone numbers (which means we have successfully contacted by phone before) or people who we have successfully contacted by WhatsApp before. You can also add numbers after phone: to filter people who have a specific phone number.
This doesn’t need to be a complete phone number. For example, phone:444 will return everyone whose phone number contains “444”. |
| email: | Returns some email options, including filtering options for people who have email addresses, and who have verified email addresses (which means we’ve successfully contacted by email before). You can also add text after email: to filter people by email address.
This doesn’t need to be a complete email address. For example, email:@gmail.com will return everyone with a GMail email address. |
| role: | This returns different permissions and roles in Belcoda. For example, you can filter by admins (who can access and modify all information in your workspace), organizers (who can sign in, and access resources they are the point person for) and group admins (who can sign in, and access any information in their group). |
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Don’t see a filter type you need? Let us know, and we’ll see if we can add it.
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Once you apply a filter, if you on the community page, then the list of people should be updated to show people who match the filters you’ve set.
When working with multiple filters, you can switch between “ALL” or “ANY”. If you select “ALL” the system will only return people who match ALL filters. If you select “ANY” the system will return any people who match any of the filters you’ve selected.
For example, if you have a filter for people in your “Volunteers” group, as well as people who are aged 65+, then if you select “ALL” it will only return volunteers aged 65+. Whereas if you select “ANY” it will return all volunteers, as well as all people aged 65+ (regardless of whether they are in the “Volunteers” group or not)
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Are some filters running slowly? If so, please get in touch and we’ll see if we can find ways to speed things up.
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When you use filtering tool to select who you want to send an email or WhatsApp message to, you can do use the filters above to select categories of people, or you can choose individual people.
If you start typing, it will return everyone who matches the name. And of course, if what you’re typing includes @ it will match emails, and if it’s numbers, it will match phone number.
Of course, you can mix and match. So you could send to everyone in a group, or a geographic region, as well as an individual.