Create Search is a powerful tool for segmenting and sorting the data in your OpenField Garden using various data points. Those searches can be saved and turned into specialized Lists for more focused canvassing.
💡For a refresher on how to import a List, click HERE
✏️ Please Note: Searches are dynamic, and Lists are not! Updating a Search to include ages will not add/remove people from any existing Saved Lists created from the Saved Search. However, you can re-run a Saved Search and create a new List with the updated parameters.
✏️ Please Note: OpenField automatically households anyone who shares an address or phone number in the canvassing and phone banking sides of the app. This can be disabled when creating a Conversation Code by enabling Target List Only. Read more HERE.
This means the address and/or phone numbers of anyone who meets your Search criteria will also show any other voters or contacts listed at that address or for that phone number in the canvassing and phone banking apps..
The folks who meet the criteria in your original Search will be known as your Targeted List and will appear with a star by their name for canvassers.
Jump to:
The Create Search Page
Navigating to Create Search
✏️ Please Note: Click on our Burger Bar menu in the top left corner to reveal a sidebar. Click on Create Search.
A Tour of the Create Search Page
This is where you’ll begin building the steps for your Search.
On the left side of the page, you’ll see drop-down menus with all the criteria you need to modify your Search, a space to choose whether the current step adds, removes, or narrows contacts, and a place to save the current step.
On the right side of the page, you’ll see all the steps you’ve added, a button to Run Counts for the current Search, a button to Run Search, and a toggle to turn on Run Counts Automatically, as well as counts from any current steps.
✏️ Please Note: The Run Counts Automatically toggle starts in the Off position, as it takes longer between steps for the counts to update. Clicking the toggle to turn it on will automatically update the counts as you add additional steps.
The icons for counts at the top of the right-hand side indicate the following:
- The person icon represents individual contacts.
- The door icon represents how many doors/homes can be canvassed.
- The phone icon represents how many phone numbers you can call.
- The mail icon represents how many emails there are.
How to Create a New Search
Searches are built from steps that form the criteria for sorting and segmenting your data.
Add, Remove, and Narrow
✅ Essential: Always start with an Add Step. You can Narrow and Remove from there, but an Add Step is your foundation.
For your subsequent steps, decide whether you’ll Add, Remove, or Narrow the search criteria.
- Add: Add all data matching the given criteria to Search counts.
- Remove: Remove all data matching the given criteria from Search counts.
- Narrow: Narrow down the Search counts to only the data that matches the given criteria.
Click the drop-down under Criteria, then select Add People, Remove People, or Narrow People.
Selecting Criteria
When selecting and segmenting your data to create a Search, you have several types of criteria to choose from. Click on any of these criteria drop-downs to see more options related to that category.
✏️ Please Note: You can add multiple criteria to a single step. Just select all the criteria from each field you want to cover in the step before saving.
✏️ Please Note: If a field shows a blue loading wheel, the data for that field is loading.
✏️ Please Note: Any time a field within a category is underlined and turns blue when you hover over it, it is clickable.
Clicking the field will bring up a window where you can make selections for that option. Several of these fields will also allow for multiple selections. Click the checkboxes next to your choices, then click Select.
There is also a search text box where you can begin typing the name of your selections to filter the options quickly.
Your selections will now appear in their respective fields. Both in cases of a single or multiple selection, you can click the x next to the field(s) to clear them and start over.
Addresses
Under Addresses, you’ll see options related to State, City, County, and Zip Code.
Choosing a State will load the entire geography of that State to your counts.
✏️ Please Note: Naming conventions may differ per state. For example, Virginia Beach may also be labeled Virginia Bch, Va Beach, or Va Bch. We recommend attempting all possible combinations for locations to avoid missing any voters.
Attempts
The Attempts category contains fields specific to your OpenField attempt history, such as Canvass Statuses, the canvasser who recorded the attempt, the Conversation Code the attempt was a part of, the contact method, the Script, and an area to select a specific time range for the results.
It can also be narrowed down by door or phone attempts. Click the icon that looks like a person to reveal a door and phone icon. Select the door to see only knock code information, the phone for call codes, and the person icon to see all codes.
Conversations
The Conversations tab contains categories related to completed conversations where an organizer made contact and recorded responses in OpenField. It includes fields for Question, Conversation Code, contact method, Script, and an area to select a specific time range for the results.
✏️ Please Note: When adding multiple Questions to a single step in your Search, only folks who have both Questions and/or responses will be pulled in. To target people who have answered one out of several Questions, put each Question and/or response in a separate step.
Districts + Geographies
Districts + Geographies contains political districts and common geographies used to segment people into contact lists for outreach efforts by geography. It includes selections for Congressional Districts, Media Markets, Counties, City Councils, County Commissions, County Legislatures, Precincts, School Boards, Municipal Districts, Ward, State House, and State Senate.
✏️ Please Note: Depending on the data initially loaded into your Garden, some of these fields might not be available.
Lists
The Lists category allows you to add other existing Lists in your Garden to your Search. This includes Lists created from Saved Searches and any Lists/Labels created using our Importer.
People
The People section contains information about the contacts and voters in your Garden. It includes a filter for the type of address (Contacted, Provided, Mailing, Registered) on their record, a Created Date range, and a section on the types of Unique IDs a contact may have, such as Action Network ID, VAN ID, DWID, etc.
You can also search to see if the voter has been marked as incarcerated, specify an age start and end range, a date of birth start and end range, Political Party, Pronouns, Sex, Languages, and Race for the people in your Search.
✏️ Please Note: Data about whether or not a contact is incarcerated is user-added, meaning that canvassers and phone bankers can mark that a contact is incarcerated while in the app. It can then be searched for in Create a Search.
✏️ Please Note: If your organization is a 501(c)(3), political party data will be turned off in your Garden. If you are a c3 organization that can see party data and would like that information removed, please email OpenField support.
✏️ Please Note: Pronouns are a user-provided field in OpenField. That means that this field is populated by what your canvassers record about contacts in the field; this data is not loaded into your Garden from a voter file.
✏️ Please Note: Sex data is provided via the voter file. Some states (like Washington) accept more than the gender binary (male/female), but many states only recognize the binary in the voter rolls.
✏️ Please Note: Languages are a user-provided field in OpenField. That means that this field is populated by what your canvassers record about contacts in the field; this data is not loaded into your Garden from a voter file.
✏️ Please Note: Race data is sometimes based on voter file data, sometimes from modeled scores. As with all scores, modeled race data will contain some margin of error.
Phones
The Phones tab can help create better phone banks, as it has a status category. This will allow you to create Searches that only pull in Active phone numbers or remove numbers with statuses such as Disconnected or Do Not Call.
Vote History
Under Vote History, you can specify previous voting records for the folks in your Search. Click the checkboxes next to the election(s) you want to include, then select Voted or Did Not Vote.
If you select Voted, you will then need to choose which Vote Method(s) for each election you want to include in your Search criteria. The default is all Vote Methods.
There is also a dropdown to choose to include All, Any, At Least, Exactly, or No More Than out of the selected elections.
- All will return voters who voted in all of the elections you selected.
- Any will return voters who voted in any ONE of the selected elections.
- At Least will return voters who voted in at least the number of elections you specify out of all the selected elections.
- Exactly will return voters who voted in exactly the number of elections you specify out of all the selected elections.
- No More Than will return voters who voted in no more than the number of elections you specify out of all the selected elections.
Voter Status
Voter Status includes fields for Registration Start and End Date, Status (Active or Inactive), and whether or not the voter is Deceased, Restricted, or a Permanent Absentee Voter. It will also include Absentee and Early Voting information for the 2025 elections. Read more about AV/EV data here.
✏️Please note: When targeting only active voters for a canvass or phone bank, set the Voter Status to Active in your search parameters.
Model Scores
Model Scores will include options such as candidate support scores, ideology scores, pro-choice Scores, etc.
✏️ Please Note: Depending on the data loaded into your garden, this field and/or some of the Scores within it might not be available.
Saving Steps
To save your criteria, click the Save Step button.
The Step will be added to your Search Preview, and if you click Run Counts or if Run Counts Automatically is turned on, you'll see the counts update for people, doors, phones, and addresses.
✏️Please note: Bigger Searches will take longer to load.
Removing Steps
If you need to remove steps from your Search, click the trash can icon to the right of the step. Any steps after the deleted step will move up in number.
Clearing Steps
To clear all steps and restart the Search process, click Clear under the Search Preview.
You’ll see a confirmation asking if you’re sure you want to proceed. Click Yes, I’m Sure to clear your steps and start over.
Running a Search
Once all your steps are created, it's time to run your Search.
Click Run Search at the bottom of the Search Preview area to create your Search!
The Saved Search Screen
This screen contains information that lets you view demographic and geographic data about your Search parameters, edit the Search criteria, create a List from your Search, and give your Saved Search a name.
Edit Search Name
You can name your Searches to help keep track of what was searched, making it easier to find the right Saved Search later. To change the name of your Saved Search, click the pencil icon.
In the pop-up that appears, enter the name you’d like to use, then tap Save Name.
Overview
The Overview tab contains demographic and geographic information about your Search. Under Demographics, you'll see some charts on Age Distribution, Race Distribution, and Gender Distribution. Under Geography, you can see a geo-clustered map of your data.
✏️Please note: Very large Searches over a few thousand will not load in the geo-clustered map.
Edit Criteria
Clicking the Edit Criteria tab will show all the steps used to build the Search.
You can also edit the Search Criteria by clicking Edit Search Criteria at the bottom of the screen. This will take you back to the Create Search screen with the Search steps already populated. You can make any necessary edits, then click Run Search again to update the Saved Search.
Launch/Create List From Search
After a Search is saved, it can be turned into a List and used in a Conversation Code. Click Create List From Search in the top right corner to do this. You can also click the Launch tab to find the same button.
If any Lists have already been created using this Saved Search, they will also appear here.
Enter a List Name and Description, then click Save List.
You can now launch a new Canvass or Phone Bank using your saved List. Click Launch to create a new Conversation Code with the new List already attached.
Export
To export a CSV of all the people included in your custom Search, click the Export tab, then click Export People.
From the next screen, click Save to begin your Export.
You’ll be taken to a list of all your Saved Search Exports with links to download them. Tap the link under the Upload column to download your export CSV.
✏️ Please Note: If your Export Status shows as PENDING, you may need to refresh the page after a few minutes for your Export to finish processing.
✏️ Please Note: You can return to your Saved Search Exports from the Burger Bar menu.
Saved Searches
Once you’ve run a Search, it will be added to the list of Saved Searches.
Navigating to Saved Searches
From the Burger Bar menu, select Saved Searches.
You’ll be taken to a list of every Search you have ever created in your Garden.
Viewing a Saved Search
To view an existing Saved Search, click the name of the Search under the Name column.
This screen will show you the name of the Saved Search, the date and time it was created, a description of the Search parameters, and, under Landing Page, a link to return to the Saved Search Screen. A History tab also details any changes made to the Search.
Editing a Saved Search
To edit an existing Saved Search, click Go to Search either from the Saved Searches homepage or next to Landing Page within a Saved Search.
You’ll be taken back to the Saved Search Screen. From there, you can rename your Search or edit the existing parameters, adding, removing, or narrowing as necessary.
✏️ Please Note: Changing an existing Saved Search, such as renaming it or adding or removing steps, will not create a new Saved Search; it will update the existing Saved Search. Return to Create Search to make a brand new Search if necessary.
Have more questions? Email us at support@openfield.ai.
If you have feature requests or suggestions for how to improve OpenField, stop by our Product Suggestion & Feature Request page!
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