Regular Expressions (RegEx) are a very flexible and powerful set of search parameters that allow you to search for partial strings, missing digits, and comparisons. In the 16.2 release, we have implemented Regular Expressions into all of our numeric search fields, so you can perform very detailed searches in all your numeric fields!
To activate a RegEx search in Maxx, type two asterisks (**) immediately followed by your search terms.
Here are a few examples of Regular Expressions in action:
Contains:
Search for: “**17” (two asterisks immediately followed by your search numbers, without a space)
This will return ALL products with the adjacent digits “17” in their product ID.
Search results: “17”, “176”, “0179”, “254178”, etc.
Starts-With:
Search for: “**12*” (your search numbers immediately followed by one asterisk, without a space)
This search matches a string (“12”) that is followed by zero or more numbers.
Search Results: “12”, “123”, “1246”, etc.
More Complex Regular Expressions:
Exact Match:
Search For: “**[[:<:]]CIO[[:>:]]” (two asterisks, then [[:<:]] followed by your search term, followed by [[:>:]])
This will return only CIO, and nothing else. For example, “Accio” will NOT be returned.
Search results: “CIO”
Match Any of the Following:
Search For: “**(food safety|loss prevention|human resources|quality assurance|consumer affairs)” (Two asterisks followed by parentheses containing search terms, each separated by a pipe | character)
This will return results containing soft matches of any of the specified search terms.
Exact Match Any of the Following:
Search For: “**^(coo|ceo|president)$” (two asterisks followed by a carat ^ character, then parentheses containing each search term, separated by a pipe | character, followed by a dollar sign $ character)
This will return only results containing EXACTLY “coo”, “ceo”, or “president”, and nothing else. For example, results containing “coop”, “crustaceous”, and “presidents” will NOT be returned.
Search for Any of the Following, But One Must Be An Exact Match:
Search For: “**(benefit|[[:<:]]HR[[:>:]]|human resource|compensation|labor|recruit|personnel|payroll)“
This will return results containing soft matches of any of the search terms, but exact matches of whichever terms are surrounded by “[[:<:]]” and “[[:>:]]”.
Partial Individual Name Exports:
This can be used when you are running a very, very large export of individuals from Maxx. It’s safer to split the export into 2 – 4 mini exports, with the break between each export based on the individual’s last name. The export will correspond to last names A-E, F-K, L-R, S-Z and are specified by entering **^[A-E], **^[F-K], **^[L-R], **^[S-Z] respectively. The first regular expression, for example, returns lasts names that start with the letters a through e.
These situations are the most common uses for RegEx in Maxx. However, Regular Expressions are much more powerful than these few simple commands!