Idea Summary
Interactive Report/Interactive Grid: Ability to select the default search operator at the Search Bar or Column menu level.

Use Case
By default in APEX, whenever a user enters a search phrase into the Search Bar or Column dropdown menu, the logical operator defaults to "contains". While this is convenient for finding partial phrases or similar records, users working with large datasets often require more precision.

Because our users understand their domain data well, they frequently need to search for exact matches (=) rather than broad matches (contains).

While AI assistance may eventually address natural-language searching, many environments will not adopt AI capabilities in the near future. Additionally, non-technical users are already accustomed to a specific APEX nature and simply need the search to keep their current working style.

Preferred Solution (Optional)
Introduce a configuration option similar to Saved Reports, such as a "Search Operator" setting. This would provide default filtering behavior across both the global Search Bar and the column-header dropdowns. Ideally, this preference could be persisted per user or defined by the developer at the component level.