Creating a Custom User Search List for Multiple Searches

How to add a custom user search list for multiple searches without having to scroll and individually clicking on users for every search.

Having to scroll through thousands of users to find the select individuals for a Reveal search can be tedious.  You can instead create a custom list of users with a textpad and apply the same list to different searches.

a) Create your search like normal.  Leave users checked on "All users".  After you've configured your search with the desired criteria, save it.  If prompted to "save user-selection which belongs to the search criteria?", click no.

b) Browse to the location that the search is located to (by default C:\Program Files\BeginFinite\GWAVA Reveal\Searches).  You should see a file named .search.  Open it up with a text editor.  Change Selected subjects=0 to Selected subjects=1.  Save and close.

c) Create a new text document.  Name it .users.  Make sure that "Hide extensions for known filetypes" is disabled in your Windows explorer view, otherwise Windows will automatically add .txt to the end of the file. 

d) Open up the new file you just created with a text editor.  Here you'll create the custom list of users by typing them in a list with this format:

Object ID (GivenName LastName)

For example:
user1 (Billie Jean)
user2 (Tom Hanks)
user3 (Adam Sandler)

Once you've completed the list, save and close.

e) Go back into Reveal, and open the search you created.  You'll receive a prompt "Do you also want to load the user-selection that belongs to this search criteria?".  Click yes.  The search will now be performed on the custom list of users you've created.

You can also apply this same list to other searches.  Create a separate search with different criteria's.  Once you save the search, just follow the above steps.  However, instead of creating a new list, you can simply copy and paste your previous .users file, and rename it so that it matches the name of your new search. 

Hopefully this should save a great deal of headache should you need to run different searches on the same list of users without having to scroll through the long list and check mark them all. 

This article was originally published in the GWAVA knowledgebase as article ID 1133.