The Criteria Screen is used for Report criteria as well as Marketing Funnel criteria. It allows you to list the conditions you want a record to meet before it is included in the report or funnel. An entry in this list of conditions is called a Criteria Row.
The criteria rows are separated into a Before Summary section and an After Summary section. You will almost always be using the Before Summary section and ignoring the After Summary section. The After summary is for conditions on fields that are results of combining multiple records. You will most often be using the Before Summary section because you are typically limiting which records are being summarized by values in the records themselves, not the totals that result from their summations.
You can Add criteria rows, Remove criteria rows, or Edit a criteria row.
The plus button (+) is for adding a new criteria row at that position. You will notice that this allows you to insert rows at any point in the list.
The minus button (-) is for removing the criteria row at that position.
The ellipses (...) button is for editing the row at that position. The editing button toggles the row between full editing mode and value only editing mode, the default state being value only editing mode. Basically, you only need to be in full editing mode when you are adding a new row or when you need to change the field being checked on a row.
A Criteria Row is made up of the following components:
Conjunction - Always the first option on a row, it connects a criteria row to its previous row. You will notice that the first criteria row will never have a conjunction since there are no previous rows for it to connect to. The conjunction for most rows will be AND.
Open Parenthesis - This second option on a row is for an open parenthesis "(" and is usually only used in cases where you need to have an OR between two criteria rows.
Field Name - This will be a drop-down list box where you choose the field being checked in the criteria row. Different types of data will have different choices of fields. For a list of the different data sets and the possible field choices, look up Dataset Definitions in the help file. The rest of the components of a criteria row will be different based on the type of data that is in the field you choose.
Operator - This is how you want to check the field name. For example, on text types of fields, you can see if the field value "starts with" a certain set of letters, or "contains" some text. On date fields, you can see if the date value "is between" two dates that you choose, or "is before" a certain date, or "is after" a certain date. Different types of fields will have different types of options for operators, but they are all worded in plain English, so it should be intuitive to find the one you want. The rest of the options on a criteria row may change depending upon the type of field in the Field Name portion and the Operator that you choose here.
Value Type - This drop-down choice box allows you to choose whether you will be typing in a value to compare with the data in the Field you have chosen ("Value" or "Exact Date"), whether you will be comparing the field to another field ("Field"), or in the case of date fields if the date is relative to the current system date ("Relative Date"). Most often you will choose Value here. The Relative Date option is often used in Marketing Funnels because you are almost always checking dates relative to the current system date (e.g. "6 Months Ago").
Value - the value to which you are comparing the data in the field name you have chosen. For text fields this will be text; for numeric fields this will be a number; for date fields this will either be a date or a number of days, months, or years "ago", "from now", "before" another field value, or "after" another field value. In the case of reminder or follow-up letters, it is usually in terms of "months" "ago".
Close Parenthesis - this will close any open parenthesis you may have entered on a previous row and will be blank if you have never entered an open parentheses in that portion of a previous row.
Sorting
Also on the criteria screen you will see a Sorting tab at the top. This will allow you to sort the resulting data by different fields. On the sorting tab you will see the fields that you are allowed to sort by listed on the left, and you can simply double-click on the field to move it to the list on the right.
A common confusion is whether or not to check the box on the right of the sorting tab's selected fields to sort by. You will only check the box for the field if you want to sort in descending instead of ascending order (e.g. for dates, descending would make the more recent ones listed first, and for numbers descending would make the larger numbers be listed first). The fields to sort by that you choose will be saved along with the other criteria options you choose.
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