Entering to the Diary

The Diary is available to anyone with the Diary Manager volume installed.

Almost every Enterprise 6 user will find the system’s Diary invaluable. It keeps track of any correspondence with Companies and Contacts, and can remind you to send a letter, or to call someone on a particular day. You can allot tasks a priority, and request a list of only the highest priority tasks, to make sure things get done.

All the Diary functions are grouped on to the Diary menu, though you can access the Diary from many other screens as well (like when you are entering Companies and set a Callback). The Diary menu, like the Companies menu, is available in nearly all volumes.

You have just phoned Mrs Claire Green at Pink Snack Bar (a contact in your database) to ask her if she wishes to place an order. You find out that she is away on holiday, but will be back on Friday. Let’s place an item in your Enterprise 6 Diary to remind you to give her a call. Choose ‘Enter to Diary’ from the Diary menu. The diary screen (which you saw briefly earlier) will appear.

First, identify the company code for Pink Snack Bar. Enterprise 6 Company Codes are automatically created from the first four letters of the company name plus a unique number. Don’t worry if you can’t remember the code - just type the first few letters (up to a maximum of four) to see a list of options. For example, type “pink” in the Company Code field. When you have selected the correct company code, the contact box will be filled in automatically, as you only have one contact at The Snack Bar. If there were several contacts, Enterprise 6 will automatically choose the default contact you have specified, and if no default exists, the system will choose the first contact in the list. You can select an alternative contact by typing an @ sign.

Now, you need to enter the date and time on which the Call should be made. We are going to cover these functions in more detail than in our earlier example. There are two dates and times on this screen - the one on the left is the Do Date (the date on which the call should be made), the other is the Done Date (the date on which it was actually made). There are three ways to enter the Do Date - by typing the date in the box (use full-stops or obliques between the digits), or by using the small arrows next to the date to move it up or down a day. 4th Dimension requires a date with delimiters - in the format 1.1.11 or 1/1/11 - you can’t for example just enter 010111. You can also click in the title box at the top of the screen, then select the word Today by double-clicking, and overtyping the correct day. There are numerous ways of telling Enterprise 6 the correct day. You can enter Friday, or Fri for short - and Enterprise 6 will return with Friday of the current week. You can specify Next or Last Friday in much the same way. Press <Tab> or <Return> when you’ve finished. The system sets the date automatically for you. It is of course important that the clock on your is set correctly - see your Administrator or System Software manual if you are not sure how to do this. Note that the time is shown using the 24-hour clock. Once you have completed a diary item, you should go back to it and enter a result. We shall look at this later. Next to the dates there is a large number (normally 1). This is the Priority, with 1 as Top Priority, running down through 2,3,4 and so on to 9. This sales call is quite important, so leave it set as Priority 1. If you wanted to change it, you would simply double-click on it with the mouse, and overtype the correct priority. The Person box will normally show your name, but you can change them to someone else’s initials (use @ look-up if you can’t remember them) if you are delegating a task. Action is a code describing what has to be done. Use @ Option List to display the codes (Apple Pie have already set up their codes - your Administrator might want to set up different codes for you when you start work on your own Enterprise 6 system). Select CS - Sales Call, and type in a description of what you have to do (such as “Call to see if they would like to order”). If you wish to remind yourself to contact this company at another date in the future, you can select ‘Next Action’ from the Functions menu to set up a new Diary Item, but let’s leave it at one call for now. You’ve now put in all the information you need. Press the [Accept] Tick symbol to finish. You will now return to the main screen. Let’s just take a quick look at another way of entering a new item. Use ‘View Companies’ to find Pink Snack Bar (as you have done before), and bring up the full details screen. You could either select the Callback or Document check boxes on this screen (as you did earlier), or, on the View menu there is a ‘Diary Items’ function. Select this now. Again, the View menu represents one of the ways in which information is linked in Enterprise 6. By simply selecting a menu item, you have gone from viewing a Company to viewing all Diary Items relating to that Company. It will take you to a new screen showing a useful history of Diary Items (your contact history with this company). If you want to take a closer look at an existing Diary item, double-click on it. You can add new Diary items to the table by clicking the [+] button. Click [Accept] to return to the Company screen and [Accept] again to return to the main Diary splash screen.

The Diary can be used to log items that you have done or to set reminders for the future There are several ways to enter new items to the diary The Companies screen contains a View menu, which enables the viewing of related data   such as Diary Items or Orders.