Skip to main content
Search vs. report

Learn the difference between searches and reports and when to use which.

Ben Dharmanandan avatar
Written by Ben Dharmanandan
Updated over 3 years ago

There are two main ways to extract data out of Eventsforce; searches and reports. Each has it's advantages and should be selected based on your situation. 

Search: Best used when you need to quickly extract person data (attendee, submitter, invitee) from Eventsforce

Report: Best used when you want to extract data that has more complex filtering/sorting requirements or you want to schedule a report to be sent automatically

Search vs. report

Both searches and reports can return data from one or multiple events in your account and can be exported to Excel. In a search, each line always relates to a person. In reports, a line can be anything in the system (example: award, abstract, event). Searches can be saved and used when sending emails, as well as show attendance recording data quickly.  Reports can be given restricted access plus have options to show event data and audit information.

Below are some common requirements that can help determine which method to select:

  • Want to schedule your report to send automatically? Report

  • Want a specific order for your data columns? Report

  • Want to group your data or generate totals only? Report

  • Want to report on "attendance" (from 'Attendance Recording')? Search

  • Want to show all days booked or attended? Search

  • Want to show all sessions booked or attended? Search

  • Need a one-off list of all or specific attendees? Search

  • Need to send an email to a select group of attendees? Search

Did this answer your question?