# Trying to figure out views, traits, and parameters

**URL:** <https://discuss.epiforge.com/t/trying-to-figure-out-views-traits-and-parameters/192>\
**Category:** Grindstone Next\
**Created:** [November 18, 2021, 1:42am UTC](https://discuss.epiforge.com/t/trying-to-figure-out-views-traits-and-parameters/192 "2021-11-18T01:42:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![donvnielsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@donvnielsen](https://discuss.epiforge.com/u/donvnielsen)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2021, 1:42am UTC](https://discuss.epiforge.com/t/trying-to-figure-out-views-traits-and-parameters/192/1 "2021-11-18T01:42:00Z")

</div>

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/epiforge/original/1X/7af3b7941c7382f8077473151669bb47b69e3aaf.png)  
I’m not really getting it, how to put things together. It appears everything centers around traits, but it’s not intuitive to me how it all integrates.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![daniel.henry](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discuss.epiforge.com/daniel.henry/32/28_2.png) [@daniel.henry](https://discuss.epiforge.com/u/daniel.henry)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2021, 3:27am UTC](https://discuss.epiforge.com/t/trying-to-figure-out-views-traits-and-parameters/192/2 "2021-11-18T03:27:56Z")

</div>

A person view shows a list of people in the database. You must have created two more other than yourself if they’re being listed.

* * *

Parameters are used to give views on the fly configuration since changing their formulas just to refine their results is unwieldy. I’m going to demonstrate this by creating a person view and adding you to my database. Looks like this:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/epiforge/original/1X/05a33fbb40b31074c009cd509647eb4b697ae9d7.png)

Now, I’m going to add a parameter to use for searching the view.

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/epiforge/original/1X/a2dd4c3234b8b64d3fdbc0deaa7e2ff4a15040b8.png)

Now I’m going to implement the search by referencing the parameter in the filtering formula.

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/epiforge/original/1X/bfbf5072e47014e3ccccd7ce9380022ed783f0c1.png)

At first, things seem the same.

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/epiforge/original/1X/86d8e66c9b2f9486a9b6b3a018a39634276b702e.png)

But, if I enter a string of characters that only appear in your name, poof, I disappear.

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/epiforge/original/1X/57a2d5a660a01a00c65b6aa09f3b492471ec4ad7.png)

* * *

We thought it was best to prepopulate there, I guess, but we could be talked into rolling back on that.