How to support a user who opens multiple tabs.

[pureist]

No images are visible in your last post. Please edit and correct error.

I always thought, when a customer places an order it is called a "Sales Order"?
And when you place an order with a supplier it is called a "Purchase Order"?
This is how it is all accounting systems.
Just like "AR" (Accounts Receivable) refers to money your customers owe you, and "AP" (Accounts Payable) refers to money you owe your suppliers.

"Notice near the top right, there are 3 buttons, one says "Enter PO". If this is selected, I have to do "stuff" with the customer."

I don't understand why you need to do 'stuff' with a customer in order for you to enter a "PO" (Purchase Order) for one of your suppliers?

Do you want to add the items the customer is ordering directly onto a PO you will enter and send to your supplier?

[BLOMASKY]

I start with a customer query. Once selected I save that customer into LIRU and then display a quote query. I have a customer form with "buttons" for the user to select an action, but while a query can have operations with records, a form does not have that. So, except for the data in LIRU, if the user has multiple browsers open, I have no way to know which customer they are working with.

Bruce

[tford]

Here are Bruces'' screen shots. For some reason I could see them on my phone, but not on laptop:

Customer screen.jpg (64.99 KiB) Viewed 26618 times

Quote screen.jpg (85.83 KiB) Viewed 26618 times

[tford]

I agree with purist about the confusing PO terminology related to a Customer. Ignoring that for now.

have a customer form with "buttons" for the user to select an action, but while a query can have operations with records, a form does not have that

A form can definitely have operations where context of the BO instance shown on the form is passed to the operation.

Also Appendix D has examples of other was to pass context in a more customized scenario.

[BLOMASKY]

sorry about confusing terminology. We are our customer's supplier, so it is a business requirement, that they give us THEIR PO number before we enter a sales order. But, pretend the button said "Create Sales Order".

However, Tom said:
"A form can definitely have operations where context of the BO instance shown on the form is passed to the operation."

I can not make that work. I created a small process with the Customer BO as input.
I Entered both a Panel Operation for the form, then went to the main section, added a HTML cell, clicked the Add Button, and tried the same thing. In both cases the "value" column was empty which makes me assume that it does NOT pass the BO instance.

I did look at Appendex D and perhaps that might give me more options, however, I don't see POPUP as one of the output options, which is what I require when placing an order.

I do appreciate all of the feedback on this. I feel like I am not presenting my problem as well as I could.

Bruce

[tford]

Attached is very rough BSV that show how this can work.

Customers.zip

(37.11 KiB) Downloaded 573 times

1- Add a few customers via menu option.
2- You can edit any Customer by clicking on the customer. On the customer form, there is an option to Add Order which will associate the order with the customer, then view it

[aware_support]

As you know, when you specify "output" of an operation as "new tab" you can set properties of the tab you open. One of the properties is "process name", where you can specify the process that will automatically run when the user selects a tab. Moreover, the context of the process will be automatically set to match the context that existed when the tab was initially opened.

So if the user initially clicked on a "customer", which resulted in a new tab running the DISPLAY LAYOUT operation, that customer will be remembered as context of the tab. So all you have to do is create a process that takes customer as input and sets this customer into LIRU:

LoggedInRegularUser.SelectedCustomer = Customer

Then you specify this process into the settings of the new tab. When the user switches between tabs this process will run and your existing LIRU-based solution should work

(this process is a replacement to the "script" John was talking about)

[BLOMASKY]

I learned something new today.

1st, thanks to Tom, I learned that I can enter the VALUE when I have a panel operation. I didn't know that. I saw that the field was blank and didn't know I could override it. So I can pass the BO from a form to a process.

2nd, Vlad's post let me know that using a process on a tab will allow me to have multiple tabs with the ability to set the desired BO into the LIRU when the user selects the tab.

Wow, 2 new things! My brain might explode!

Thanks for the help guys!
Bruce

[tford]

I learned something new today too, Bruce! I had never really fully explored the newer functionality that allows you have have a process that fires each and every time you click on a tab.

[rocketman]

Not sure why you need to store the customer in LIRU? If you are processing one order and somebody phones. just select your "Order Entry" process and have it open in a new (closable) tab. They'll both be there and the salesperson can easily switch between the two. I do it all the time with no issues. As long as the open form in each tab says - something like "processing order for Customer ZXY" there shouldn't be any way to confuse the two (or three or four or whatever).

Unless I'm missing something .....

[BLOMASKY]

Not sure why you need to store the customer in LIRU?

Well, let me explain what I am doing and you can tell me.
1) On the quoting page, I have a query of open quotes, and the query is: "FIND Quotes WHERE Quotes.ob_Customers=LoggedInRegularUser.selectedCustomer". I need to have this query refresh as the user is editing / modifying quote records. If I have 2 or more tabs, how can I have it refresh?

2). I also have some totals (# of open quotes, total $ of them, etc. ) that are in a related table to the customers. That again, has to be refreshed as data is changed. So I feel like I need the current customer saved in some variable and LIRU seems to work well.

Do you have a better idea?

Bruce

[johntalbott]

To confirm ... does it work like this?

1. A user selects a customer in the grid on the Customers tab
2. The user goes to the Quotes tab and the queries displayed are based on the Customer selected in step 1

If so, it seems the tricky part is that a single Quote tab is shared across customers. Meaning the need to save the customer in LIRU is driven be the need to reload the Quote tab every time a customer is selected on the Customer tab. If this is the case, I don't see a way around using something to track the currently selected customer.

My suggestion would be to open a new customer tab for each selected customer. Each customer tab could display quote info specific to that customer. This eliminates the need for LIRU and imo is a better UX.

[BLOMASKY]

To confirm ... does it work like this?

My suggestion would be to open a new customer tab for each selected customer. Each customer tab could display quote info specific to that customer. This eliminates the need for LIRU and imo is a better UX.

but.. but.. but.. John... questions:

1). Assuming I do open multiple customer tabs, as the user goes between the open customer tabs, how do I know which one is the current selected one (without having a process run when the tab gets focus.) and if I am doing that, I can shove the current customer into LIRU.

2). Assuming the customer tab also has a Quote query, how do I filter the quote query between the multiple tabs. Right now I have "Quote.ob_Customers = LoggedInRegularUser.selectedCustomer". How would you handle this?

Bruce

[tford]

1). Assuming I do open multiple customer tabs, as the user goes between the open customer tabs, how do I know which one is the current selected one (without having a process run when the tab gets focus.) and if I am doing that, I can shove the current customer into LIRU.

Is there a reason why you don't just run with the bold underlined approach you mentioned above?

Assuming the customer tab also has a Quote query, how do I filter the quote query between the multiple tabs. Right now I have "Quote.ob_Customers = LoggedInRegularUser.selectedCustomer". How would you handle this?

Again, as the user would change focus from one Customer tab to the next, it sounds like your query above would work assuming it auto refreshes on the process that is run when the tab receives focus.

[BLOMASKY]

Tom, that is just what I am doing now. I was questions John's suggestion that I do not use LIRU for this, but with the following:

1). Having a process that sets LIRU to the customer that was in context when the tab is opened
2). With your help, realizing that I can have a Panel operation on a form pass the record that is being displayed

Then, it seems easy peasy to have the user open multiple quoting tabs. I still have the 1 customer query that will trigger a process to open a quoting tab, so in the end, I will have a single customer query tab and 1 to N quote tabs open.

Now, what I don't have a clue how to do, is to conditionally rename the quote tab so they don't all say "quote". It would be nice to say "Quote for: XXX".

Bruce