Distribution Software Documentation - The Application Desktop

After The Application has been installed, you should be able to access it in one of at least two ways: Either by selecting it on the START PROGRAMS menu, or by clicking on a “shortcut” inserted on your desktop or taskbar.

When The Application loads, the first thing you will see is the System Login form (Figure 11). Before you can begin working with The Application you must have a User Name and a Password to enter into the appropriate fields on this form. Type your user ID in the top field, then hit the Tab key to move to the second field, where you will enter your password (the Password field is case sensitive). The SQL Server and Database fields should already have values entered and you should never have to change these values. Click the Login button with your mouse and, assuming the user ID and password you entered are valid, the System Login form will disappear and you will have successfully logged on to The Application.

Figure 11: The System Login Form

Once you have logged on, a window will open which should fill your entire screen (Figure 12). At the very top of this window you should see the name of your company. Below that is a menu bar with the following options: File, File Maintenance, Purchasing, Sales, Accounting, Reports, Inquiries, and Help. Below the menu bar is a toolbar with seven buttons. Below the toolbar is a large gray area which will serve as your “desktop” while you are working in The Application. When you select options from the menu bar or click a button on the toolbar, forms will pop up in the gray area.

Figure 12: The Application Desktop

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Let’s take a moment to go over some of the basics of interacting with The Application. Take a look at the seven buttons on the toolbar. The button furthest to the right has a picture (an “icon”) representing a pair of binoculars. Move your mouse pointer over this button and hold it there for a moment without clicking on the button. You will see a little yellow box appear under your mouse pointer with the words “Inventory Availability”. Now click once on the button. When you do, a form appears in the gray area below the toolbar. The title of the form is Inventory Availability (Figure 13). You can see the form has several data entry fields (“textboxes”) along the top, two larger boxes (which will display grids when the form is populated) titled Pending Purchase Orders and Open Orders, and a button at the bottom right with the caption Exit. The specific functionality of this form will be discussed later, but let’s look at some aspects of the form which are common to all of the forms you will use in The Application.

Figure 13: The Inventory Availability Form on The Application Desktop

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The first thing you may want to take note of is that you can move this and any other form around on the screen using your mouse. Click on the blue title bar at the top of the Inventory Availability form and hold the mouse button down. When you move your mouse while holding the mouse button down, you move the form around on the screen. Also note that you can open more than one form on the desktop and display and change information in several forms at once.

By moving your mouse button above any of the textboxes and clicking, you can select that textbox. You can also move from one place to another on the form using the Tab key on the keyboard. Pressing the Tab key moves you through the form in a systematic way preset by the form designer. Pressing the Tab key and Shift key simultaneously moves you backward through the form. Note that pressing the Enter key does nothing but generate a “ding.” The Enter key is not used for moving through a form (with the exception of one form, the Enter Physical Counts form, which will be discussed later).

There are three ways to close a form:

You can click on the Exit button at the bottom right.
You can click on the Close button at the top right (the small square button with an “X” on it).
Or you can close the form by pressing the Alt key and the X key on your keyboard at the same time. This is called a “hotkey” combination. You probably noticed that the “x” is underlined in the caption on the Exit button. This tells you that, by pressing the Alt key and the X key simultaneously, you can achieve the same effect you would by clicking on the button with your mouse. Hotkey combinations allow you to move through The Application without shifting from the keyboard to the mouse. Whenever you see a button caption with a letter underlined, you know you can “push” that button from your keyboard by simultaneously pressing the Alt key and the key for the underlined letter.

Using any one of the above three methods, close the Inventory Availability form.

Using your mouse, select the following menu options from the menu bar at the top of the Application desktop:

Inquiries Sales Inquiries Inventory Availability

Once again, the Inventory Availability form appears on the desktop. As you can see, there are two ways to access this inquiry. One way is through the menu bar, the other is the way we accessed it originally – through the “binocular” button on the toolbar. The buttons on the toolbar are shortcuts for menu options you will find on the menu bar above. From left to right, the seven buttons on the toolbar fire the following events:

Closes The Application

Opens the Purchase Order Detail form

Opens the Order Entry form

Opens the Route Management form

Opens the Open Bank Deposits form

Opens the Inventory Price Search form

Opens the Inventory Availability form

You now know the basics of how the desktop functions and how to move around in The Application. We are now ready to begin setting up the master files. Most of the system setup is done using forms found under the File Maintenance menu.

Setting Everything Up

TOC

Setting Up the Configuration File