Search Filters – Part 2 – Custom Search Filters

This series will help you understand the Search Filters in Salesforce CPQ, different use cases around Search Filters and how we can set them up.

Salesforce CPQ Search Filters enable sales reps to filter the products available for selection based on certain attributes. For instance, you could search for all the Products where Product Name contains “Laptop” keyword. Essentially, your product catalog becomes RESPONSIVE driving more sales.

By default, CPQ allows you to search for a product based on below product fields.

• Product Code
• Product Name
• Product Family
• Product Description

In case of standard search filters, which are available through the Search Filters field set on the product object, all the products available in a Price Book are loaded initially. To get the products of a specific type, Reps have to apply a filter using the Product Filter Box.

Custom Search Filter, a pre-defined product filter, allows CPQ Admins to apply specific filters at the time of initial product load. For instance, Search Filter can be set-up to show all the products having Product Family = Software (a specific value). Also, it enables the Sales Reps to change the pre-loaded filter and apply a different filter or remove all the filters altogether.

If your organization sells different types of products and out of those, if your customers are generally interested in a specific type, you would want to display those “most-wanted” products to your sales reps initially. So, Reps do not have to apply any filter to get to the high-in-demand products. If necessary, they can navigate to the Product Filter Box and filter for any other type of products based on the Customer’s demand.

Use Case

Jack Martin works as a CPQ Administrator at Universal Containers (UC). UC sells different types of products including – Hardware, Software, Services, Accessories etc.

As UC Customers are usually interested in Software type of products, Sales Reps at UC wants that the Product Catalog should be filtered on the initial load itself to display ONLY the products having Software as the product family. So, when Product Catalog loads it should display ONLY the products with Software product family. They also need the ability to change the initial filter and add the other types of products if necessary.

How to Setup Custom Search Filters?

1. Navigate to the Search Filters Tab and click New button.

   

2. Enter all the necessary information as mentioned below and click Save.
   • Filter Name: Enter a meaningful name.
   • Target Object: Product (Object containing the field you want to search.)
   • Target Field: Product Family (Select the field of Target Object you want to search.) If you want to search based on “MyCustomField__c” custom field, you need to add its API Name as a value in Target Field picklist.
   • Operator: equals (Logical operator that you want to check against your filter input. In this case, we want to see whether the Product Family field equals Software, so the field value should be Equals.
   • Display Order: 10 (Number that determines the display order of this filter relative to other Search Filters on the Quote Line Editor’s Search Filter box.)
   • Filter Value: Software (If desired, add a text value that will be automatically searched before the user inputs any text. For example, your search filter could target the Monitor Display Type field on Products – if you only want your sales reps to search for certain monitors within all IPS monitors, you could enter “IPS” in this field.

     

Let’s check it out

1. Create a new Quote/ navigate to an existing quote and click Edit Lines button.

   

2. Click Add Products button. You will be redirected to the Product Selection Page.

   

3. You can see that the pre-defined filter got applied and ONLY the products with Software Product Family are displayed on the Product Selection Page.

   

4. Select the filter icon as shown in the above image, you will be displayed with the Product Filter Box. If you observe closely, the Filter Name that we entered while creating a Search Filter i.e. “Filter by Product Family” appears as the Filter Heading here.

   

5. You can search for the products of other Product Families by selecting a different Product Family i.e. Accessories. Click Apply.

   

6. There is only 1 product with Accessories product family and the same gets displayed here.

   

7. If you want to clear all the filters and see all the products available for selection, select the Filter icon again and click Clear Fields.

   

8. Once you click Clear Fields, CPQ removes the values selected for all the Filters.

   

9. Now, click Apply button. You can see all the products with different Product Families.

   

Open Product Filter Box By Default

If your sales reps frequently search your product catalog, you can display the Product Filter Box as soon as sales reps open the product selection page.

• Navigate to Setup | Build | Installed Packages | Salesforce CPQ | Configure | Additional Settings and set Open Search Filter By Default to TRUE.

  

• As soon as you click Add Products button on the configurator, you are displayed with the available products and the Product Filter Box.