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It’s Your Preference – 3 of 3 – PO Report

February 1, 2012 by Arlene 0 Comments

As with the Work Order Report covered in last week’s blog, the Purchase Order Report can be tailored to meet the needs of your organization using available Preferences. To modify the Purchase Order Report, select Tools->Preferences from the Menu Bar, ensure the Purchase Order Folder is selected, and then scroll down to the section on the Purchase Order Report.

The “Show” preferences highlighted above control the content that will be displayed in the top section of the report. These preferences often vary dependent on your organization’s use of the Purchase Order Report. If the report is intended for a vendor, contact information and shipping/receiving information are likely to be desired, as shown below.

In contrast, if the report is to be sent to staff members, you might desire more information about internal processing and departments. As shown below, the “Show Enhanced Status” preference was turned “on” to show additional information about the individuals requesting, issuing and approving the purchase order. The “Show Additional Detail” preference was also enabled to display organizational information such as repair center, department and account:

The section of preferences for “Line Items”, allows you to control the columns that will be displayed. In the first example, the display is more vendor oriented, showing “conversion to issue units” in the “Order Qty” column, as well as displaying any applied discounts:

In contrast, preferences can be set to provide more information for internal staff, such as “location” (stock room and bin), and account:

The additional settings allow you to replace the Purchase Order ID with a UDF that stores an internal ID, and determine the type of approval information that should be displayed at the bottom of the report. To clarify the options for the Approval Section, “default” lists approvals that been made, “static” provides blank lines to allow for approval, and “enhanced” shows approvals if they exist, providing a blank line if none exist. The “line height” preference determines the amount of space provided when approval lines are displayed.

It should also be noted that the Purchase Order Barcoding Preferences, found directly below the Purchase Order Report Preferences, allow you to determine whether or not barcodes should display on the report:

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Work Order Report

It’s Your Preference – 2 of 3 – WO Report

January 27, 2012 by Arlene 1 Comment

In this second post in the “It’s Your Preference” series, we will explore the extensive preferences available to customize the appearance of the Work Order Report that is often printed or emailed to technicians. To modify this report, select Tools->Preferences from the Menu Bar, ensure the Work Order Folder is selected, and then scroll down to the section on the Work Order Report.

The configuration options available are especially helpful for formatting the presentation for online/email display, versus a printout on which information might be written down. As an example, the first preference listed allows you to specify “line height” so that you can extend the space between lines in the “fill in the blank” sections when technicians will be writing information on the form. Additional settings indicate the number of blank “fill in” lines that should be displayed, such as lines for technicians to “list” parts that were used. If technicians in your organization update information directly into the system, the Work Order Report can be configured to minimize or hide these “fill in” sections.

 

As the above image indicates, there are a set of preferences that allow you to configure the “Maintenance Details” area displayed at the top of the report, as well as specify the level of detail that should be included (e.g., asset address, asset details such as model and serial number). A number of these settings were added in Version 5.0 of Maintenance Connection.

Additional preferences are available for each section of the report, allowing you to specify whether the section should display (always, only when there are records), and indicate whether or not particular columns should display:

 

Lastly, you can determine whether approval information and the Labor Report should display, as well as indicate whether or not a signature block should be included:

 

Stay tuned for next week’s post in the series, in which the options to configure the Purchase Order Report will be highlighted.

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Report Preferences

It’s Your Preference – 1 of 3 – Reports

January 18, 2012 by Arlene 0 Comments

Maintenance Connection’s System Preferences are a great way to tailor the system to meet the unique needs of your organization. Once the focus on system set up has passed, these valuable preferences can be overlooked. To refocus attention on this feature, we are publishing an “It’s Your Preference” Blog Series to highlight popular settings in three areas. In this first post we will cover several helpful Report Preferences. In the next two posts in the series, we will review the preferences available to tailor the appearance of the printed work order and purchase order.

Report Preferences

To access Report Preferences, select Tools->Preferences from the Menu Bar, and then select the Report Folder. Since several preferences are repair center based (the ones that do not display a globe), these settings can be unique for each repair center as needed. In the following example, the XYZ University has defined their report preferences, some of which are unique for their “Athletics” Repair Center.

Return Path for Bounced Email: This preference allows you to list a specific individual to receive messages from bounced emails. Listing “SENDER” will result in the individual sending the report receiving the “bounce” notification.

BCC/CC Email List for All Outgoing Emails: These preferences define the email address of any individual who should be copied (or blind copied) on reports sent via email. Listing “SENDER” will result in the individual sending the report receiving a copy (or blind copy).

Email Address FROM/FROM NAME: These preferences determine the Email from Name (and Address) that is used when a report is manually emailed (using the Email Button on the Report Preview Window). If a value is not set, the email address of the logged in user will be used.

Number of Lines Per Report Section: This preference determines the default number of rows (records) that will be displayed before another “report section” is generated. Records included in the same section are displayed on a single HTML Page, allowing you to scroll down to view other records without moving to another section using the control available on the Report Preview Toolbar. This preference is set to 1000 records by default. If you would like to have more records displayed on a single “HTML Page” to avoid navigating to different sections, you may wish to increase this value (e.g. to 2000). It should be noted, however, that there are performance implications to increasing this value, as the system must retrieve and present more data at once.

Replacement/Additional Logo for Reports: The logo preferences allow you to have a logo displayed on reports that is different from the one displayed on your MC Home Page (or in addition to). This setting is often used when a different logo is desired for a particular repair center’s reports. In the following example, XYZ University uses a different logo to display on reports generated by the “Athletics” Repair Center:

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Lightly Used Features – 3 of 3 – Quick Add Comments

November 15, 2011 by Arlene 0 Comments

In this last post in the series on Lightly Used Features, we will show how predefined “comments” can be used in the Labor Report and Task Completion Comments to support more rapid and consistent data entry. Customers often look for ways to ensure that data entered in the system is consistent for reporting, and this can be a challenge in free form entry fields such as the Labor Report. Taking advantage of the “Quick Add Comments” feature is a great method to increase standardization.

From the Work Order Complete/Close Dialog, users can click on the Add Button in the upper right hand corner of the Labor Report to retrieve a lookup table of acceptable values:

Selecting a value, places the selected “comment” into the Labor Report, where additional details can be added as needed.

As with all MC Lookup Tables, the values in the table can be edited by individuals who are members of an access group with permission to do so. For example, by clicking the Edit Button and selecting “New Code/Description” at the bottom of the list, a new comment can be defined:

The same lookup is available when the user clicks the button on a Task Record to access the Task Comment Dialog.

Users can even add multiple comments. As shown below, the user has returned to the lookup to select a second comment to add to the Labor Report:

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Lightly Used Features – 2 of 3 – Connect UDF to Lookup

November 8, 2011 by Arlene 0 Comments

In this second topic in the series on Lightly Used Features, we will show how a custom field (UDF) can be renamed and connected to a table of acceptable values (lookup). Let’s take the example of an organization that needs to keep track of the type of security access that is associated with their locations and equipment.

In this example, we would most likely want to use an available UDF displayed on the Asset Details->User Defined Sub-Tab. To rename (label) the field and designate the appropriate lookup:

  • Click the field label for the field to be modified and the Popup Help Window for that field will display:

  • Click the Edit Button at the bottom of the dialog.

  • The page will refresh with the Field Label, Lookup Indicator and Help Text editable.
    • Specify a desired value for the field name/label and enter help text as appropriate.
    • To tie the field to a lookup table, ensure the “Lookup Table” indicator is checked:

  • Click the Apply Button to save your changes. The dialog will refresh with your changes showing.

  • Click the Close Button and the Help Popup will close, showing the new field label, along with a “lookup” control to the right of the field.

  • Click on the lookup control to bring forward the newly created lookup table. Use standard features to add values to the lookup as desired (click on NEW).

Connecting a UDF to a lookup table ensures that only valid entries can be made to the field, ensuring data integrity for reporting and other uses.

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