How to use the "search" property correctly when embedding forms
Hello just a pretext I spent a few hours trying to get this thing to work properly and officially there still isn't a data entry in the deluge documentation resources on how to use it so I'm making this to supplement that till they fix it. I got an email from zoho customer support which was nice and I got it to work right after. So don't worry I was already helped, but its still is kind of a problem that the deluge documentation isn't being updated in a timely manner.
Onto the main course, if you haven't noticed lately when you embed a report in an HTML page on zoho creator you (the reader) probably saw the search function and couldn't find out what it was because there was no help page for it yet. What it does is allow you to set a search function based on available columns in the report. It is specific in that you can only search in columns that were added to the report, not the base form.
For example the when you embed the report if you want to search the ID column for a specific report you would write the following code:
<div elName='zc-component' viewLinkName='Demo_Selection_Report' params='zc_Header=true&ID=123456789'>Loading View...</div>
If the column ID is not added to your report and visible when you open it, it will not be searchable and you'll get a blank report.
For another example of what I ran into, I have a report that searches records on business information on our partners. It's basically a rolodex. We have some contacts that share the same company. I wanted to search based on the company name, but this report was also available to other employees and for simplicity I have acronyms thats used as a common name across multiple forms so that I have a key value pair. If a company changes it's name I can still have a report using their acronym so that it shows all current contacts. Only issue is I can't embed the report and use the search property unless the acronym column is available for viewing, in which case I don't want that to show, but is unsearchable unless I do. Hopefully that explains the search property well enough. I'll update this post if I can hide columns while making them searchable.
Potential uses are being able to send search data from a stateless form and send it an HTML page in a different app. Then from there the variables you have in the HTML page would collect the sent information and apply it to the embedded search form like so, or however you specify an HTML page variable.
<div elName='zc-component' viewLinkName='Demo_Selection_Report' params='zc_Header=true&ID=<%userName%>'>Loading View...</div>
if your going to put a literal constant value like a number or phrase then you need to enter into the search for ID=123456789 without qoutes or commas. I only mention that because the ghost input before you type your own variables in uses qoutes and those make it not work. Hope this helps.