Column Selections & Filters

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A number of PensionPro's features can perform one action across many different records. However, this requires having full control over which records will be affected by that action. In these cases, PensionPro provides the means to return customized data sets: by using Column Selections to pull in the data that is relevant, and Filters to exclude the records that are not.

 

This filtering process can be found in the following areas:

 

  • Blast Email
  • Power Tools

 

Tier Availability: Track, Team, Business

 

Article Contents

 

 

 

Understanding How to Use Columns & Filters in Blast Email and Power Tools

 

When using a feature or tool that is meant to perform an action on multiple records, PensionPro breaks down the process of choosing the relevant records into two basic steps:

 

  1. Determine what data should be displayed.
  2. Review the data to select the desired records.

 

To illustrate this in practice, imagine a scenario where the Administrator role needs to be updated to a different Employee for a number of Plans. Updating each Plan individually would be time-consuming, so the Employee Role Power Tool is used instead.

 

The first step of this Power Tool is used to set its options; in other words, what the Power Tool will ultimately accomplish. For this example, the desired outcome would be reassigning Employee Roles to another individual; suppose these Roles should be assigned to an Employee named Jane Smith.

 

The difficulty is that PensionPro doesn't know which Employee Roles need reassigned to Jane Smith; these need to be chosen by the user. To accommodate this, PensionPro could simply list out every single Employee Role for every Plan; but selecting the Roles that actually need updated could involve a lot of scrolling and sifting through records to find the right ones. Each Plan may have a handful of Employee Roles assigned, and if there are hundreds of Plans to review... this task becomes very intimidating very quickly.

 

To solve this dilemma, PensionPro introduces an intermediary step, which is used to preemptively refine the dataset. This step consists of two parts: determining what data is important to see, and applying filters so that there's less to review.

 

First, Column Selections are used to decide which data will be most helpful to reference when choosing records. In our example, PensionPro will select a few by default: the Plan Name, Employee Plan Role, and First & Last Name fields. These have to be included, because it will be necessary to review each Plan, the Roles for each Plan, and who is currently assigned to each of those Roles to determine which ones need to be reassigned to Jane. At this point, there may be no need to select any additional columns; however, other fields—perhaps Plan Status or Admin Type—may be helpful references depending on the situation.

 

Then, Filters are applied to limit the number of records that will have to be considered. When used correctly, Filters can drastically reduce the results that will be returned. Some filters that could be relevant to this example scenario might be:

 

  • Employee Plan Role | is equal to | Administrator – To filter out all other Employee Roles, which are not being reassigned
  • Plan Status | is not equal to | Terminated – To focus only on active Plans
  • Plan Type | is equal to | 401(k) – In the event that Jane Smith will only be administering a certain Plan type
  • Employee Last Name | is equal to | Jones – In the event that Jane Smith is replacing another Employee named Michael Jones.

 

When multiple Filters are used in tandem, it's not difficult to imagine how the potentially thousands of records can be reduced to a much more manageable number!

 

Now when the user has to choose which Roles to reassign, the task is far simpler. Creating Filters results in far fewer records to review manually, and adding Column Selections ensures the user has all the information they need to make the correct selections.

 

 

Applying Columns & Filters

 

This section provides detailed instructions for applying Column Selections and Filters to the relevant areas of PensionPro's guided tools, such as within the Filters step of Blast Email.

 

 

Columns

 

The Column Selections pane is used to determine what fields will be shown in the subsequent step of the tool, "building" the grid of results. The records to be returned will have columns corresponding to the items chosen here.

 

Selecting the checkbox next to a column adds it to the Columns pane, which provides a quick overview of the fields that will be displayed in the grid. Some useful columns may be present by default, based on the tool in use. If unsure which columns should be selected, it is OK to use these defaults.

 

Many of the fields used throughout PensionPro can be found nested within the various categories, although whether or not a specific field is available depends on the situation.

 

 

Filters

 

The Filtering pane is used to narrow down the total number of records that will be returned. Each potential record must meet all criteria established in this pane to be eligible for selection. To prevent large data requests, at least one filter should be applied.

 

Filters are made up of three parts:

 

  • Column is the specific column (i.e., field) that is being evaluated by the filter.
    • The formatting for items in this dropdown is CATEGORY - COLUMN NAME (or CATEGORY - SUBCATEGORY - COLUMN NAME). This formatting generally matches the hierarchy of the Column Selections pane.
    • When using Power Tools, a column needs to be selected in the Column Selections pane to be used as a filter.
  • Operator is the evaluation logic used by the filter (such as is equal to or is less than).
  • Value is what the Column should (or should not) match based on the Operator.

 

A sample filter may say Plans - Plan Type | is equal to | 401(k). In this case, to be returned in the grid of results, the Plan associated with the record must have its Plan Type field set to 401(k).

 

PensionPro supports the following Operators for filtering:

 

  • Is equal to: Returns records that exactly match the filter value.
  • Is not equal to: Returns records that do not exactly match the filter value.
  • Is less than / Is greater than / Is less than or equal to / Is greater than or equal to: Returns records based on value comparisons. Intended for use with numerical values.
  • Starts with / Ends with: Returns records that begin or end with the filter value text.
  • Contains: Returns records that contain the filter value text anywhere within them.
  • Does not contain: Returns records that do not contain the filter value text anywhere within them.
  • Contained in: Returns records that exactly match one of the filter values. Each value must be separated by a comma.
  • Not contained in: Returns records that do not exactly match one of the filter values. Each value must be separated by a comma.

 

Additional filters may be added by selecting Add new ruleadd_2.png below the currently-applied filters. Conversely, a filter may be deleted by selecting Remove filtersubtract_2.png to its left.

 

 

Selecting Records

 

This section provides detailed instructions for selecting the records generated based on the Column Selections and Filters during the operation of PensionPro's guided tools, such as within the Recipients step of Blast Email.

 

The grid shown in this portion of the process will contain all of the Column Selections chosen during the previous step. Each row in this grid represents a single record, comprised of data from each of these Column Selections.

 

To choose a record, select its checkbox on the left side. Multiple records can be selected in this manner. To choose all returned records, select the checkbox in the header at the top-left of the grid. Any selected record will be affected upon execution of the tool that is in use.

 

The columns of the grid can be sorted in ascending or descending order by selecting the column header. Columns can be rearranged by clicking a column header and dragging it to a new position. The contents of a column can be further limited by selecting Filterfilter.png in the column header.

 

The list of returned records can be refreshed at any time by selecting Refreshrefresh.png at the top-right of the grid.

 

If a specific record is missing from the grid: This is likely the result of one of the following issues:

 

  • The Filter criteria is too strict and filtered out the record.
  • A Column Selection references data that does not apply to the record.
    • For example, if Plan Name and Project Name are Column Selections, a Plan will not be returned if no Projects have been launched under it.
  • One of the other criteria for the tool in use is not being met.
    • For example, the Plan Contacts Mailing Type for Blast Email will not return a Contact who hasn't been assigned as a Plan Contact Role.

 

If records appear to be duplicated: Review the Column Selections in use. This occurs most often when Column Selections are inadvertently referencing multiples of the same record type. This can be resolved by removing Column Selections or applying additional Filters.

 

  • For example, assume Plan Name and Project Name are Column Selections. The XYZ Company Plan has three Projects titled 401(k) Annual Administration, representing the past three Plan years. The grid will return "XYZ Company" and "401(k) Annual Administration" on three lines, appearing to be duplicates.

    To resolve, a filter could be applied to Project Period End for the desired year-end date, limiting to a single result. Alternately, removing the Project Name column will only return Plan Name once, because Project data is no longer being referenced.