Combining Free-Form Search with Drilldown Search 

You can always combine free-form search criteria with drilldown search selections. When the two are combined, the selections in each drilldown search tab are limited by the results of the free-form search.

With a lookup field, you can perform either a free-form search in the Free-Form Search tab or a drilldown search in the corresponding search tab. Setting one clears the other, meaning you cannot use both types of searches for the same field at the same time.

When you make selections in the drilldown search tab, MDM automatically clears any previous search criteria in the Free-Form Search tab for the same field. Similarly, when you enter a free-form search criterion for a lookup field, MDM automatically clears any previous selections in the drilldown search tab for the same field.

This either/or behavior on lookup fields provides a useful mechanism for “pre-limiting” the selections in a drilldown search tab. For example, to find all the “brush” categories, you could first perform a free-form “contains” search for "brush" for the Category field. This would limit the selections in the Category search tab to just those categories containing the word "brush" (for example End Brushes, Cap Brushes, and so on). Then, you could go into Category search tab and select the category you want from the limited hierarchy of categories.

Unless you knew the first word in each category, you could not have used typeahead seek to locate the categories.

To avoid dead-end searches, free-form search on a lookup field clears any pick list selections for the same lookup field.

Combining free-form search with drilldown search therefore enhances the use of the drilldown search tabs, in effect, providing a "search-within-a-search" even without nested lookup fields.