Do you know about the Wildcard search function in SugarCRM? Do you know how to use it? Here’s how to use Wildcard for simpler searching in SugarCRM:

What is Wildcard?

When you enter a search term into SugarCRM it will look for the text at the beginning of the field by default. For example, if you type “Dan” it will bring up “Daniel”, “Daniella”, “Dante”, etc. Wildcard lets you expand that search functionality by adding a percent symbol (%) to search the entire piece of text. So, for example, instead of the search only turning up results for Daniel, Daniella, and Dante, the Wildcard for %dan would also turn up results for AiDAN, BrenDAN, BrayDAN, and so on.

Important things to know about Wildcard:

1. You can use it without having the entire word typed out in the search bar
2. You can use as many Wildcard combinations in a search as you like
3. You need to use it if you’re searching for an account that starts with “A” or “the”
              – Ex: The ABC Company would search as “%abc”
4. Wildcard will match with any number of characters, including zero
5. It can be used in Global Search to search for the string in any of your selected modules
6. Module search automatically appends the Wildcard to the end of the search phrase for each text field

Where can you use Wildcard?

You can use Wildcard for any search, be it Contacts, Accounts, Leads, etc. However, the Wildcard function will behave differently within each of these searches, so it’s important to recognize how each are affected:

Example: Searching for “Max Hold”

In Accounts, the Wildcard is appended at the end of the query, so the results will turn up “Max Holding Company” but not Maximum Holding Company” because Wildcard will read the search as Max Hold%.

In Contacts, the Wildcard is appended at the end of each word, so it would read Max% Hold% as the search and turn up “Max Holder” or “Maximillian Holder”.

In Leads, the Wildcard is appended the same way as in Contacts (at the end of each individual word) so when you’re searching for multiple words or a first and last name at once, keep that in mind.

In Global Search (as mentioned in the above section) the Wildcard can be used to find the string in selected modules.

For more information on Wildcard, visit SugarCRM's support portal. 

Extra Credit

To take your searches a step further, try using the Underscore symbol (_). The underscore allows you to search for a specific character. For instance, if you search “_ _ it” you could turn up results for Anita or for Smith. A search of “R_b” could turn up Rob or Ruby.