My users were asking for a particular custom Opportunity field to be searchable. A quick check of the Salesforce online documentation for Search Fields revealed that:

• The sidebar search looks in the Name field and any External ID fields
• The Advanced Search feature looks in Description and any custom text, email and phone fields

I didn’t want to change the Name field, nor did I want users to have to seek out the Advanced Search field when they wanted to find this particular field.

Fortunately, I found Steve Andersen’s blog that referenced Tanner Shamrock’s explanation of how to add Advanced Search to the sidebar. (Ain’t the Net great!)

This enabled me to change the standard Search dialog into an Advanced Search, so my users don’t even notice the difference. (They can no longer select the Object Type to return, but I doubt they even noticed that option!)

Oh, if you’re implementing Tanner’s code, be sure to visit your User Interface configuration and turn on “Show Custom Sidebar Components on All Pages”, otherwise the change just appears on your Home Page.

The Bottom Line

• Advanced Search is more powerful than normal ‘sidebar’ search
• You can replace your normal search with Advanced Search
• It’s great to be able to use code developed by others — thank you!