Criteria templates offer you a way to save frequently used search criteria - essentially, acting as a saved list of specific attributes and attribute values. Criteria templates that an administrator creates are available to all users and serve to expedite searches for issues, ideas, change requests and change orders, thereby saving users the time it would take to specify search criteria and execute frequent change management searches.

Users also have the option of creating criteria templates for their own private use. When both a user and administrator define a default criteria template for a particular change category, the user-defined criteria template takes precedence. Because criteria templates contain user-defined attributes, you must always define them in the context of a change category. You can define as many criteria templates as you wish, and you can also denote the most commonly used as the default criteria template. For example, you may define criteria templates to quickly find Open Change Requests, My Issues, or Scheduled Change Orders.

Display formats enable you to predefine search results views for each change category. You can use these views to look at different sets of attributes of the change objects (for example, issues, change requests, change orders) that are returned by a search. Both administrators and users can create display formats. Administrator-created display formats are available to all users. User-created display formats are available only to the users who created them. You can define as many display formats as you wish, and you can also denote the most commonly used as the default display format. You can include any primary, operational, or user-defined attributes in your display format definitions. You can include display sections in your display formats that provide links directly to the section from your search results. This enables you to display links in your search results to any user-defined change type page (such as Cost Information) or any of the standard display sections: Lines, Attachments, Action Log, Approval, Approval History, Dependencies, Revisions, and People.

Change category search criteria templates and display formats are set up and function similarly to item catalog category search criteria templates and display formats. The topics Managing Search Criteria and Managing Display Formats in the Setting Up the Item Catalog chapter describe in detail how to set up and use search criteria templates and display formats (for change objects as well as items).