Filtering is used in TalkBox to segment or target a specific group within your contacts. It can be used when selecting recipients for a communication and/or searching for contacts on the ‘my contacts page. You can also build and create saved filters that you use frequently.
TalkBox filters have four components which together make up the filter criteria. These are the condition, field, logic and value. Editing each of these will impact which contacts in your TalkBox account meet your filter criteria.
In the image below you can see the four components used to filter a contact by age, and again by gender.
Filter conditions
TalkBox has three types of filter conditions that can be used to filter contacts. These are ‘AND’, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’. Both the ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ conditions are only used when you are using two or more filters, but ‘NOT’ can be applied when using one filter.
If you’re using only one filter the condition is blank by default and doesn’t need to be used.
Using an ‘AND’ condition
An ‘AND’ condition means that your contacts will be selected if they meet both criterias.
For example, the following filter will provide contacts who are female AND older than 21 years old.
Using an ‘OR’ condition
An ‘OR’ condition means that your contacts will be selected if they meet either criteria.
For example, the following filter will provide all contacts who are female as well as all contacts who are older than 21 years old.
Using a ‘NOT’ condition
A ‘NOT’ condition means that your contacts will be selected if they do not meet the criteria. ‘NOT’ can be used if you have a single criteria to exclude or if you want to exclude a subset of contacts who also meet another criteria.
For example, the following filter will provide all contacts who are not male.
Similarly, the following filter will provide all contacts who are over the age of 21 but are not male.
Filter fields
Any field in your TalkBox account can be used to build a filter. Fields can be used multiple times during a filter to set different criteria.
For example, the following filter uses age to find contacts who are between 21 & 30 years of age.
Filter Logic
Different types of fields will have different logic available to help you create your criteria. All field types have the following logic available:
- is
- is not
- is blank
- is not blank
Single & Multiple Choice
Single and multiple-choice fields have the following additional logic:
- is any of
- is not any of
Text
Text fields have the following additional logic:
- contains
- does not contain
Number & decimal
Number and decimal fields have the following additional logic:
- is less than
- is more than
Date
Date fields have the most additional logic. Date field logic allows you to define:
- is before / is after
- year is / year is not
- month is / month is not
- day is / day is not
- weekday is / weekday is not
- day-of-year is between / day-of-year is not between
- is today / is in the past / is in the future
Filter Values
Most TalkBox filters will require you to set a value in order to complete your filter criteria. Exceptions to this are when the field and logic provide sufficient information to complete the filter criteria. Examples of this are:
- Any field using the logic is blank or is not blank
- Date fields using the logic is today, is in the past, or is in the future
Your filter value will be the contents of the field you’re filtering on. For example, in the following filter, the value is set to female for the gender field.
