How to search active relationships (e.g) during past year?

Question

We record volunteer relationships for our Volunteer contacts.

A contact is an active Volunteer of our organization if exists a relationship "volunteer for" and this relationship has no an "end date".

In the same way, a contact is an inactive Volunteer of our organization if exists a relationship "volunteer for" and this relationship has a past "start date" and a past "end date".

The difficulty is when you want to get a list of all the volunteers that were active during for example the past year.

How can I obtain a list of these contacts? There is no current built in search to achieve it? We must develop a customized search?

Answer 1

I would do the following, although it's a bit complicated so maybe you will want to develop a custom search after reading :).

Create a smart group to keep track of your active volunteers by searching for relationship type 'volunteer for' and status = active only (no start or end dates so you grab those empty end date people).

When you have your date criteria, for example the past year, create a group of folks who stopped volunteering in the past year by searching relationship type 'volunteer for', status = inactive only, and end date choose range choose your range, such as Jan 1, 2014 - Current date.

Now to get folks who are still active, or ended in the past year, do an OR search (checkbox in advanced search) using your 'active' smart group and your 'inactive in the past year' group.

Answer 2

Just stumbled across this old question, but Search Kit is now another option: see here

Answer 3

Do you have info about Memberships, Event participants and Activities completed by Contacts? All of those can be searched by date and Groups/Smart Groups created based on the action taken and the date completed. If a contact was a contributing Member, or made a Contribution otherwise, and/or attended an Event, and/or completed an Activity, like making phone calls or signing up other Members, that to me is an indication that someone is active, whether or not the person has a Relationship of type Volunteer or not.

Answer 4

It seems there is no an easy way to get this information.

Given a date range in which you want to find out the relationships that were active, the search should take into account up to four circumstances. Match all relationships where:

---

(A) Relationships with defined start and end dates

Relationship start date is before date range end date

AND

Relationship end date is after date range start date

(B) Relationships with undefined end date

Relationship start date is before date range end date

AND

Relationship end date is empty

(C) Relationships with undefined start date

Relationship start date is empty

AND

Relationship end date is after date range end date

(D) Relationships with undefined start and end dates

Relationship start date is empty

AND

Relationship end date is empty

---

Unfortunately, there is no "is empty" date range operator in the Advanced Search relationship form to cover this solution. If any, would create four smart groups nested to another group to satisfy the search in question.

Instead, Relationship Contact Report does incorporate the empty operator in the filter report for start and end dates.

Answer 5

It will be possible from version 4.7.21 through the following improvements CRM-18081 - Allow search of active relationships during a custom range of dates