Pik-a-Search – Finding Records in Your CRM

The BNTouch CRM helps you manage mortgage information vital to your business, from borrower contact information to loan progress data, from communication with your partners to their co-branding for marketing emails. To make sure you can always find exactly what you are looking for, our robust Pik-a-Search tool is available in each of your record databases. With this feature, you can perform detailed searches, find records based on almost any criteria, and take actions upon several records at once.

Information for borrowers, partners, and recruits in your CRM is stored in records. Think of a record as a file folder containing everything that pertains to that person in your system. Every piece of data, from a phone number to a preferred language, is connected to a record. These records are then organized into databases, including Mortgages for borrowers and clients, Partnerships for people you interact with in the mortgage process, and, optionally, Recruiting for your staff. These databases can be easily opened using the tabs at the top of the page.

If you click on the title of one of these tabs, you’ll be taken to an organized list of the records inside it. This list can be sorted and navigated, but sometimes you need to find a specific record without browsing through a list of names. In this case, click the magnifying glass icon to the right of the Mortgages tab. This will open the Pik-a-Search tool for that tab.

At the center of the page, you will see one or more search criteria consisting of a field name, a drop-down menu of qualifiers, and a text box. Each of these lines is a filter that you can use to search for records in the selected database.

For example, the “Borrower First Name” filter allows you to search records by the name of the client. Whatever you enter in the text box will be looked for in the corresponding field of your records. Following the previous example, you may search the “Borrower First Name” field of your records for “Christine” to find her record.

The qualifier menu determines how that field is searched. In this case, if you were searching the “Property Street 1” field of your records for “Broadway”, you could use the qualifier to either find records with an address that “Contains” “Broadway” or that “Does not contain” it. For some fields, you may see other qualifier types, like “Equals” or “Does not equal”. In each case, this option lets you choose how the Pik-a-Search tool narrows your search results.

As long as you have at least one filter with text to look for in the text box, you can click the “Search Records” button above or below to start the search.

You don’t have to limit your searches to a single criterion. To the left of the search filters, you will see a series of options with checkboxes. Each of these represents a category of filters available for searching your databases. Some are very specific; if you click on the “Basic Name Search” category, you’ll see simply “Borrower First Name” and “Borrower Last Name”. Others, however, contain many data fields; clicking “Mortgage” will show many of the mortgage detail options from a client’s record, like “Loan Purpose”, “Rate”, and “Estimated Closing Date”.

You can enter information for several different filters at a time, and all filters that have text in the text field will be simultaneously used when you click the “Search Records” button--even if they aren’t on the screen anymore. For example, if you use the “Property State” field to look for properties in “Texas”, then use the “Loan Purpose” “equals” “Purchase” filter, you can click “Search Records” to look for records that match both criteria--any that have properties in Texas and are Purchase loans.

Many categories are listed to the left of the Pik-a-Search. Some may be hidden; you can show them by clicking “More” below the list. If you use some categories more than others, check the box to the left of the category name. Then, you can click “Less” to hide all non-checked categories. Don’t worry, they aren’t gone; you can still access and search criteria in these categories at any time by clicking “More”, and the search functions will work whether or not the category box is checked.

Before we explore the results, there is another other important feature to use when searching frequently. Whenever you open the Pik-a-Search tool, you will see the same criteria and results from the last search you made. This way, you can look for similar records or results without having to continuously enter the search settings every time. If you ever want to start a search from scratch, just click the “Clear Search” button to start over and wipe all search terms and criteria.

If you find yourself looking for records using the same criteria over and over again, you can also save specific search criteria sets to use later. After performing any search with any filters, you can enter a name (for your own organizational use) in the box below the filters. Then, you can click “Save As…” to save it as a Report. Once saved, you can quickly bring up the same search filters by finding it in the “...select saved report” menu and clicking “Load Report.”

Alternatively, if you want the results of a search to be sent to you regularly, you can click the “Save as…” menu and choose “Create Scheduled Email Report”. You’ll need to enter some details, like a record name, a date and time it should be sent, and the users it should be sent to. Once you click “Save”, the selected users will be sent regular search reports using the criteria you used. If you would like to learn more about this feature, please watch our “Scheduled Email Reports” training video.

When you use Pik-a-Search to look for any information in your databases, the results will be displayed below your search filters. This list will show records as rows with basic details listed for each. Clicking on the blue name link for a record will open it. You can also take actions on several of the resulting records at once by checking the boxes to the left and using the options above and below the list.

“Tracker Report” will let you see all tracker events that have been created for the selected records. The drop-down menu to the right of this button can be used to include events from multiple mortgage loans per client or only a single loan each.

“Send Emails” will open an email editor and add the selected records automatically listed as recipients. “Print Labels” and “Print Letters” will do the same for physical mail communication instead of email, as long as you have enabled the BNTouch Mail module for your account.

When you click “Start/Stop Campaign”, you’ll see a listing of your marketing campaigns, which you can then either start or stop for all checked records. You can set a date and time for the campaigns to start, and you can even re-start campaigns for records that already have the campaign started.

The “Assign Records” button will show a list of your CRM users, who you can then assign the selected records to.

“Move Records” can be used to change the “Marketing Sequence” stage for the selected records or to change the “Groups” assigned to the records. You can select multiple groups for each record using the checkboxes in the list, or you can remove the records from all groups using the box below the menu.

If you have selected only two records that are assigned to the same user, you can use the “Merge” button to sync the information in both records into a single one. You will be shown a list of the information for both records, and you can choose which record’s information will be kept in the new file using the radio buttons. You can use the “Select All” buttons at the top of the list to mark all subsequent fields for that record. Then, you can select to combine them into a single record, copy the information to both records, or simply import the selected information into either of the records and leave the other untouched.

“Delete” can be used to remove multiple checked records at once.

Lastly, the “Send SMS” button allows you to compose an SMS Text Message and send it to each of the selected records. This feature is only available to accounts with the “BNTouch Voice” module active. Similarly, the “PB Dialer” button is used to make Phoneburner calls to the selected records if that module is enabled.

By default, Pik-a-Search will show results in sets of twenty records. You can navigate multiple pages of results using the arrows and numbers below the list. If you want to view more records at once, using the drop-down menu to the upper-right of the list. Note that showing more records per page may take longer for your browser to load the Pik-a-Search results.

If you want to save a list of the results of any search for your own backup purposes, you can use the “Download Page in CSV” to save the current page or “Download Full Search in CSV” buttons to save them in a spreadsheet file. “.CSV” files, short for “Comma Separated Values”, can be opened using Excel, Google Sheets, or other spreadsheet programs.