Search Builder Overhaul

Discussion on Mattermost in dev channel: https://chat.civicrm.org/civicrm/channels/dev

Project led by: @colemanw @totten @eileen

The following represents the results of a discovery project whose central objective is to improve the search and reporting capabilities of CiviCRM. The original issue is tracked here.

This page presents “Search Builder” as a recommended approach to unifying developments that are underway (APIv4 and Form Builder) as a foundation for a consolidated search and reporting utility. Furthermore, the lays out project roadmap of key blocks of work necessary to complete Search Builder via issues associated with the following milestons:

Phase 1 - %Search Builder Overhaul - Phase 1 (target completion June 30, 2020)
Future Phases - %Search Builder Overhaul - Phase 2

Proposed Technology Stack

Based on the research and discussions, the following solution was proposed:

APIv4 will serve as the query builder for all future search/export/reports.
Additional functionality will need to be added.
A new Search Builder UI will be created.
The Form Builder project can be used to configure search builder queries into reports and custom searches.
The new Export UI built for WMF can be incorporated into this workflow (and is now merged into core to facilitate this development).

This is a mockup of the re-imagined search builder screen. It is intended to replace the current Advanced Search and Search Builder UIs. It will be a full-featured UI aimed at advanced users, with the ability to save configurations into simpler forms like Custom Searches and Reports.

Allows choosing any base table + joins
Nested and/or where clause, supports all fields and operators
Control over grouping and sorting
Searches can be run immediately, or scheduled to run in the background
Output columns can be configured by dragging & dropping table headers
Output rows can be selected and acted upon (e.g. “Add Tags”)
The query can be saved as the basis for a Custom Search, Report, or Smart Group.