There are two ways to use student search: basic and advanced. Let's go over the differences, and the best ways to use each.
Basic search: Search for students by first and/or last name, phone number, email, or birthdate.
Advanced search: Search for students by address, city, and/or zip code.
Searching by name is the fastest way to search for students, and it is our most well-supported way to search.
But how does it work? ASAP takes your search term, and the first thing it does is break it up into smaller parts. For example, if you searched for "John Smith" ASAP would break it down into "John" and "Smith". Then ASAP will check to see if any students in your org have a first name "John" and a last name "Smith", and it will return those students at the top of the list.
After returning those matches, ASAP will check the reverse and return students whose first names are "Smith" and whose last names are "John". This is to support users who enter search terms like "Smith, John" (we strip commas from search terms).
Once it's done with what we call "exact matches", ASAP will return partial matches in search term order. In our example, this means ASAP will return students whose first name is "John" and whose last name starts with "Smith": "John Smithy", "John Smithers", "John Smithsonian", and so on. Then it will reverse it and return students whose last name is "Smith" but whose first name starts with "John": "Johnny Smith", "Johnson Smith", and so on.
After these partial matches, ASAP will return students whose first name starts with "John" and whose last name starts with "Smith", such as "Johnson Smithensen".
ASAP will return a maximum of 200 students (to keep things fast), so if you cannot find the student you're looking for, try refining your search terms or searching on phone number or email.
Note: Our student search is constantly being improved, so keep your eyes on this article to stay up-to-date on how to best search for students.