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Searching for items - what do you do?

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Posted on by tristancliffe

We are evaluating Business Central for our little business, to replace Access Dimensions, and I've set up a trial and imported quite a lot of my own data... Not quite painless, but I got there in the end.

Searching for items - it's not very user friendly is it! We have about 10,000 items listed.

The F3 search will happily work case insensitively over any visible field, even if the word is in the middle, so long as you only use want word. To use multiple words, if you're not sure of the exact order, you have to start using @*blah*&@*huh* which isn't nice to type many times per day.

Filters seem like they'd sort that, except that they only look at one specific field from the beginning and are case sensitive, so you're very quickly just as stuck or resorting to @*&| etc.

I can't believe that many companies using BC have so few items with really REALLY organised part numbers, descriptions and so on such that the search or filter methods save time without complexity or mistakes.

So what do people use? Akabion Search Items app is good, but only works on Sales Orders (not item list, quotes, invoices etc). Clever Global Search looks great if you want to find the various places that an account is used. 360 Smart Search looks like it could work and I'll try their trial today.

Any hints and tips or suggestions welcome.

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Guy McKenzie 1,330 on at

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RE: Searching for items - what do you do?

As mentioned already, there are lots of good tools.

Attributes really are the elite tool.

With default attributes attached to a hierarchical category structure you really can have an incredibly in depth searching and filtering experience.
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Inge M. Bruvik 1,021 Moderator on at

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RE: Searching for items - what do you do?

You should also know that on the item table there is a search description field where you can put in a refined search text that can be different from the regular description just to make it easier for the users to find that specific item.
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YUN ZHU 81,885 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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RE: Searching for items - what do you do?

Hi, just adding to others' replies.

I think if users use Windows or other Microsoft products for a long time, they should be used to this search method.

This is not only used in BC, for example:

Also, for tips on searching, I hope the files below can help you.

More details: https://yzhums.com/27548/

Hope this helps as well.

Thanks.

ZHU
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Dallefeld 175 User Group Leader on at

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RE: Searching for items - what do you do?

Ben and Alfredo gave good comments and assistance.

I find it interesting that you feel the search doesn't work well. I have implemented BC many times and never do I hear 'searching for items is unfriendly.' If you know even two letters of the description, as Ben showed, you can find items. I believe you can find a way to structure your item numbers and description to take advantage of search capabilities.
Alfredo_Iorio 1,260 on at

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RE: Searching for items - what do you do?

I agree with Ben.

Searching for items in BC is simple and intuitive. You can search for item numbers and use two descriptions if you want.

You can also save list views as bookmarks and recall the bookmark later.

One point about our post: Companies implementing BC with the support of a MS partner often go through a detailed review of their SKUs naming convention.

Oddly enough, I am currently working on a migration from Acces Dimension to BC for a UK packaging manufacturer. We are changing all the codes of their 3K items.

With 10K items, your items code must be well structured or your users will find it hard to find what they need, regardless of the search capabilities of your system.
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Ben Baxter 5,653 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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RE: Searching for items - what do you do?

Sounds like you're making this harder than it needs to be. While standardizing your data structure is always a good goal, there are many capabilities to help you cut through the data quickly.

The search field does not need wild cards. It will search through all non-flow fields on the page looking for any variation of what you typed. The more you type the more specific the results will be. In the example below the system finds "la" anywhere in any field regardless of case.

If you are trying to find specific characteristics of an Item, that were probably kept in your Description, you should look into using Item Attributes. Then you can filter by multiple attributes to find what you're looking for.

I would strongly recommend you use the Microsoft Learn portal to get up to speed on the basics. If that style learning doesn't suit you, a partner should be able to give you some basic guidance to make your experience a whole lot easier.

Microsoft Learn (BC): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/dynamics365/business-central

P.S. When you open the filter pane, those fields do require wildcards. If you need to limit your results based on multiple criteria the filters are the way to go. Don't forget you can save your filtered list if it is a search that you do multiple times a day/week.