Why am I seeing the error "Please provide complete search terms" or "Please provide valid filter terms" Why is my filter criteria blank when it previously had a value?

If you are receiving an error like "Please provide complete search terms" or "Please provide valid filter terms" it indicates that one of the filter criteria in your report, merge action or list view is not complete. Take steps to look through any filters in the item and fill in missing information. For example, you may have a filter applied to a Record Group (Sublist) in a merge action that is missing a value.

There is a related but separate issue that may show up after you export and then import Apsona items between environments which could lead to the same error message:

If a filter referencing a lookup field (for example a filter on "Contact" that is based on the parent "Account") is deployed between environments, that filter criteria will be blank in the new environment. This is due to the fact that, on the back end, these lookup fields are housing a record ID which is unique across Salesforce orgs. Since the ID won't be found in the new environment, the filter criteria will be blank. This will also be true with filters that reference Record Types. Record Types are Salesforce records unto themselves and have IDs. Apsona references the ID rather than the name in the code because Names are not a reliable unique identifier for Record Types. See this video for a walk through of this issue, or see the steps below:

The fix is simple: just choose the right record (or record type) in the new environment. The only thing you'll see that might be confusing is that the result will look as if there are two record types chosen because the old ID is left in backend code of that filter.

You don't have to do anything beyond this update. The filters should work, even though Apsona sees two selections.

But if you prefer to go the extra step and clean up the backend code to ensure that the UI doesn't show "2 selections" you can do so by following these steps:

- go to Apsona->Settings->Apsona Items

- Find the item with the incorrect filter and click the "Edit JSON" button

- Remove the old ID from the original environment

- Return to the item in the new environment and the "2 selections" value will be gone