What is SearchKit?

About

SearchKit is a powerful search query builder with extensive options for displaying results. It is appropriate for site builders, power users and developers but non-technical staff are likely to need training or to spend some time learning the interface. Alternatively a more experienced user or developer may create SearchKit searches and make them available to other users via the menu system or as a dashlet on the main CiviCRM screen.

Searches built and saved in SearchKit can be targeted for use by different roles of staff users as well as unauthenticated end users.

Getting started

You can access SearchKit under the menu Search > SearchKit.

Concepts and terminology

Getting familiar with SearchKit requires some understanding of it's components and concepts. There are a number of recipes in this documentation for you to work through to get a better feel for these but some introduction is needed.

You find 'Entities'

An entity is a developer word for a 'thing'. In most cases the 'thing' (Entity) you want to search for will be something like a Contact, a Contribution etc. You start your search by ensuring it is set to the entity you want to search for. You will see us use Entity in the UI in places - for example you can filter by the 'entity' your search is looking for on the main page.

Within your search you will be able to select fields to display that reflect your selected entity

Filters / Criteria / Where

The Where section is where you define the criteria that relate to your entity.

The Having section is where you define any criteria to be applied after a 'Group By' (see further down).

With/Without (Joins)

A join is the technical term for including more than one entity. In the UI you will see it referred to as with/ without. Once you joinm in another entity you may have more rows - for example in this case the search includes 'Contacts with (optional) Addresses'. The results will have one or more rows for each contact. If they have zero or one address they will have one row. But if they have more than 1 then they will have one row per address -e.g here are the results for Timmy & his parents where Timmy has one known address, Mum has 2 and Dad has none.

Display Name	Location Type	Street Address	Is Primary
Timmy	Home	Sesame Street	Yes
Timmy's Mum	Home	Sesame Street	Yes
Timmy's Mum	Work	Downing Street	No
Timmy's Dad

There are 3 options for how to join

By changing between with (required), with (optional) and without we change the search results completely. Look at the image.

As selected it join will - find contacts WITH more than one non-primary address. How is it finding only contacts with more than one address? The contact is required to be with and address that is not their primary address. Our result will look like

Display Name	Location Type	Street Address	Is Primary
Timmy's Mum	Work	Downing Street	No

• If without had been selected then it would only include contacts without any non-primary street addresses. This might mean they have only primary addresses, or that they have no addresses - it would find

Display Name	Location Type	Street Address	Is Primary
Timmy
Timmy's Dad

Note that although Timmy has an address it does not show up here because we have not included it (used with), rather we used without a non primary address

Group By

If, as in the above join example, you have one row per address but you just want one per contact you can use Group By to group the rows, such that you only have one per contact.

Addresses, emails & phones are a bit magic - that's mostly good

Normally a contact has a primary address, a primary email and a primary phone. We know there is only one of each of these and they are really useful so you can include them without having to join in an address table. However, if you DO include an address join you will see both fields from the 'Contact Entity' (primary country) and the joined address and you need to match the field you pick up with the 'Entity name' (ie what is in the box next to Required). Here 'Contact Addresses' are the non-primary ones joined in and 'Address (primary) Country' is the primary address

SearchDisplays

One search can have many Search Displays - although most often you will have zero or one. Search Displays are where you configure things like links, specify fields to be editable or change the title of fields. Your Search must have a search display if you want to add a Form.

Forms

Forms are where you can configure for SearchKits to be shown as dashlets or in the menu. This is also where you configure filters.

SearchKit and other CiviCRM search functionality

SearchKit fully replaces the old, more limited, Search Builder.

It is more powerful than Advanced Search, and covers some extra parts of CiviCRM. However, many users may continue to prefer to use Advanced Search and searches like Search > Find Contacts and Events > Find Participants. We are no longer adding new features to these but they will be part of CiviCRM for the forseeable future.

The upper left Quick Search continues to be more convenient for quickly retrieving records based on part of an email or name or other single term.

Site Admin notes

If SearchKit is missing.

On recent versions of CiviCRM SearchKit cannot be disabled. However, in the past SearchKit was not turned on when CiviCRM is installed. If it is not enabled on your site you can enable it on the Extensions screen. Navigate to Administer > System Settings > Extensions. Beside SearchKit, select the Install link then select the Install button.

Developer notes

Features

SearchKit meets a number of developer needs as SearchKit searches can:

• be saved and exported,
• have any number of unique displays on their own,
• be connected to the dashboard, contact screen or individual URLs,
• have exposed filters for easy filtering,
• be connected to a Smart Group,
• be used for your own entities custom created for your website,
• be shipped with an additional extension.

SearchKit and FormBuilder

SearchKit and FormBuilder work together to let users search for CiviCRM data and create new user interfaces without writing code.

SearchKit’s Graphical User Interface lets you click, drag, drop and write. SearchKit builds and defines the underlying search and provides many ways to display it. FormBuilder shows filters and database actions, and provides more options for layout.

For developers, it is useful to know that they expose all the functionalities that are given by APIv4. They can be used in many ways, including adding new pages to CiviCRM, tabs to the Contact Summary page, or searchlets to the CiviCRM Dashboard.