History Menu

This menu contains the same options as the History pop-up menu in the Diary Items list (see the section entitled View Diary for more details of this pop-up menu). However, its function is slightly different because it launches a new process to display the information, rather than changing the current selection.

It is most useful when viewing Diary Items, when, for example, you want to see the History of your contacts with a given Company, but don’t want to lose the list of Diary Items that you have searched for. Simply double-click on a Diary Item in the list and then access the History Menu. Note that the items found will always include the one you chose it from, so a list of just one effectively means that no history has been found. Note also that choosing one of the History options forces the system to save the current Diary Item - so if you were adding one, the [X] button will no longer lose it altogether.

You will be shown the ‘Print Settings’. At this stage you may Cancel the Printing, or continue by pressing [OK].

You will use ‘View Diary’ for a number of reasons: to retrieve a specific Call that you need to update; to quickly assess the number of items of a particular type; to access this history of items for a specific company; to draw up your own report or graph an the Diary information; or, most commonly, to enter a Result for a To Do Diary Item.

On selecting ‘View Diary’ you are presented with a dialogue box asking to find ‘Company, Date or Person to find:’Type in the first four (or more) letters of a Company Name, surname of a person, or a date you want to look up. You can also type in ‘Today’ or ‘Last Wednesday’ or ‘Next Friday’ and Enterprise 6 will work out the correct date.

Alternatively, if you enter a number with a value of less than 32, it is treated as a date in the current month. For example, type “15” and Enterprise 6 will change it to “15/1/95” (assuming the current month to be January 1995) and will search for Dates To Do and Date Done whose ranges (between Date From and Date To inclusive) contain this date. Unfortunately, entries such as “15/1” or “3/10” cannot have the current year appended because they could also represent Contact and other Codes.

In addition, you can enter a Postcode or Telephone Number to find all Diary Items for the appropriate Company, or a Document Code to find all Diary Items featuring the relevant Document. Alternatively, for more complex searches, press [More Choices] and you will be shown a window requesting the criteria by which you wish to find the Diary Item(s) to view or modify. These criteria match the information that was entered to the Diary file: It is best explained by example:

• To select telephone calls between two Done Dates, enter “C@” (or your Action Code signifying Calls) to the Action Code, and type the two Done Dates from and to.
• To select all Done Actions for a specific company, click on Done and enter the first four characters of the Company into the Company Code.
• To select all Letters To Do to Clients in London, select ‘Company’ from the Find Menu, do the Company selection (type “London” in the Town field), then return to the Diary selection window by clicking [Find]. Click on To Do, and type “MLET” in the Action Code.
• To view all Diary Items for all Personnel in a given Personnel Group, enter that Personnel Group in the Group field.

Note that both for the automatic and for the More Choices Group search, the ‘Access to Diary of’ definitions in the Personnel Access Rights apply - so you will only see the Diary Items of those people in your Personnel Group to whom you have been granted access. Simply pressing [Find] (or using the <Enter> key) at the More Choices window without entering any criteria will not select all the Diary Items in the database, but all your Diary Items and those of other Personnel to whose Diary you have access. This clearance is set in the Personnel section of the Data Manager. Clicking [Find] at the Quick Search window without typing anything will also cause this to happen, unless you have Find Data of Current User switched on (either in the Data Manager or on the File Menu of your machine), in which case only your Diary Items will be listed. The More Choices screen does not outwardly show the From and To dates (such as Date Do From and Date Do To), but the search does take them into account. The issue is complicated by the double use of the words ‘From’ and ‘To’ when used with reference to the More Choices window. Froms and Tos here mean ‘search between these dates’ (for example, search Diary records for those with a Date Do From between a search from and a search to date), and do not refer to the From and To fields. Putting a range of dates into these search boxes will find all records whose own date range includes or overlaps those specified as the search criteria. For example, the following are Diary Records:

No	Date Do From	Date Do To
1	30/5/2005	3/6/2005
2	31/5/2005	1/6/2005
3	1/6/2005	1/6/2005
4	1/6/2005	2/6/2005
5	2/6/2005	4/6/2005

Searching on a range of 1/6/2005 to 2/6/2005 would find all of them. Searching on 31/5/2005 to 31/5/2005 would find just 1 and 2. Searching on 00/00/00 to 1/6/2005 would find all but 5. Searching on 2/6/2005 to 00/00/00 would find 1, 4 and 5. If you wish to search for a specific value in a specific one of the eight date or time fields, you’ll need to use the User Search option. Once the selection has been made, one of two things will happen:

• If a single Diary Item was found, and the View Always shows Lists check box in Preferences is switched off, that Diary Item’s details will be displayed in full. See ‘Enter to Diary’ above for details of this screen. Pressing [√] will confirm any modifications you make.
• If more than one Diary Item was found by the Criteria entered, or a single Diary Item was found and the View Always shows Lists check box in Preferences is switched on, those found will be displayed as a list. You may scroll forwards or backwards through this list using the vertical scroll bar, and to the left and right using the horizontal scroll bar. Double-click on a line to see further details or to modify that record. In addition to the Buttons Palette, this screen has a palette of its own, shown below:

Moving from left to right, these buttons are as follows:

• [Appointments] button brings up a new screen displaying today’s appointments in a diary format with details of time, Company, Contact and Action. Buttons on this screen can be used to change the day or person. Changing the person can be done by initials, surname or first name. Double-clicking on any line will bring up the appropriate Diary Item in full. See below under ‘Check Diary - Appts’ for more details.
• [Calendar] button brings up a new screen displaying the current month in a calendar format. Clicking on one of the days will bring up a diary page for that day. Buttons on this screen can be used to change the month or person. Changing the person can be done by initials, surname or first name. The Action button, if highlighted, will cause those days with Action Codes To Do to appear highlighted or in a different colour (depending on the monitor used). See below under ‘Check Diary - Calendar’ for more details.
• [To Do] button alters the selection in the list to those Items To Do on a certain date. Any Items which should have been completed before the selected date will also appear.
• [Person] button alters the selection in the list to those Items To Do belonging to another member of staff. Note that in your Personnel record in the Data Manager you must have authority to view the other person’s Diary Items before they can be displayed.
• [Previous Day] button alters the selection in the list to those Items To Do on the previous day to those currently listed. Any Items which should have been completed before the selected date will also appear.
• [Next Day] button alters the selection in the list to those Items To Do on the next day to those currently listed. Any Items which should have been completed before the selected date will also appear.
• [Delegate] button forwards the Item(s) highlighted to another person. Your initials will remain in the Item(s) as Originator. You can delegate to someone even if you cannot view their Diary Items (this clearance is set up in your Personnel record).
• [F’wd] button alters the Date To Do of the Item(s) highlighted. If you enter a number with a value of less than 32 to the subsequent dialogue box, it will be treated as a date in the current month. For example the entry “15” will be treated, during January 1995, as ‘15/1/95’ and the Date to Do of the Item(s) highlighted will be amended accordingly.
• [Result] button, if no items are highlighted, alters the selection in the list to those Items Done with a specified Result Code. If items are highlighted, a Result Code and Description can be applied to those items (separate the Code from the Description with a stroke in the dialogue box). Highlighted records already possessing a Result will have the old Result overwritten.
• [Print] will print a summary of the Items in the list, with a new page for each Person. Note that if any Items are highlighted, only these Items will be printed.
• Priority… pop-up menu controls which Items are displayed in the list. There is a choice of Priorities 1, 2 or 3, Items To Do or Done and All Priorities. The final option, Set Priority, will alter the Priority of any highlighted Items. Note that this pop-up menu operates on the initial selection (ie those Diary Items originally listed). You can arrive at the screen using one of the Check Diary functions described below. For example, if you select Check Diary To Do to bring up an initial list, subsequently selecting Priority Done will find no Items and Priority All will duplicate Priority To Do (ie will bring back the initial list).
• History… pop-up menu is essentially a repeat of the View menu on the Diary entry screen in that it provides the opportunity to view other data (such as Company data, Order data, or Service Date) related to the Item(s) highlighted in the list.

The six options under the CHECK DIARY heading are all ways of accessing the details in your Diary, each with a slightly different emphasis.

If the ‘Diary Searches use whole Group’ check box is switched on in the Diary Access of your Personnel record, the ‘Priority 1’, ‘To Do’, ‘Appointments’, ‘Done’ and ‘Calendar’ Check Diary functions will find Diary Items relevant to all the Personnel in your Personnel Group. This check box is subject to the ‘Access to Diary of’ included list on the same screen. Therefore, if this check box is on, Diary searches will find Diary Items of this person’s Group to whom you have access.

If you are using the Diary to the full, this option will probably be one of the most commonly used functions in the whole database - it reminds you what you should be doing today.

It searches the Diary for all items in your Diary (ie with your initials) that are Priority 1 Items To Do. Items not done from previous days are included alongside those allocated to today. The Items found are displayed in a list with Company and Contact Names, Dates, Action, and (currently blank) Results.

Double-click on an item to see it in more detail. If it is a call, the telephone number should be displayed for you - dial it and feed in the result; if it is a letter, you can go directly to enter letter text and print it; and when you have completed the action, consider carefully whether you want to enter a ‘Next Action’ to continue the sequence of events.

All these functions and more are described in ‘Enter to Diary’. You may also add Diary Items while looking at the list with the [+] button on the Buttons Palette. There are additional buttons at the bottom of this list - please refer to the section above entitled ‘View Diary’ for more details.

This option acts exactly as ‘Priority 1’ above, except that the Diary Items listed are all items for you To Do today or before today, irrespective of their Priority.

This option selects all Diary Items for you To Do today, and which have been allocated a specific Time - in other words, it finds Appointments. These are then presented in a different format to above, since a list of half-hour intervals from morning to evening is displayed, with any Appointments visible at the relevant times. You may click on an appointment already made to be brought to the full entry screen for the Diary Item (as for ‘Enter to Diary’), perhaps in order to confirm the result of the appointment. Equally, in order to add a new Item at a specific time, simply click in the line somewhere to the right of a time line that has not yet been filled. The default is to display today’s appointments. However, the buttons to the bottom left of the screen can be used to alter the day shown and all five buttons operate as described under ‘View Diary’ above.

This option acts exactly as ‘Priority 1’ described in the previous chapter, except that the Diary Items listed are all items that have been Done today. Use this option therefore to go back to an Item previously typed in today, or use the Date button or Left Arrow button to page backwards through the days.

This option acts exactly as ‘Priority 1’ described in the previous chapter, except that the Diary Items listed are simply all items that are either To Do or have been Done today.

This option brings up a normal-looking calendar (optionally with pictures for each month, too, depending on the setting on the Preferences screen in the Data Manager). You can scroll between months using the right and left buttons, and click on a particular date to see the listed items for that date, in the same format as for ‘Priority 1’ above. width="367" height="175" border="0">Switching the Actions check box on forces those days with appointments to appear underlined and in a different colour (as in the illustration). Note that this option (and the option to display a calendar picture) are both detrimental to the speed of this function.

This report lists selected Diary Items with Company, Action and Result Details sorted in your chosen order.

You can use it to get a list of any kind of Diary Item by using the Selection Criteria that appear (See ‘View Diary’ above). When Diary Items have been selected, they are listed to screen. If you highlight Items with the mouse then click the [Select] button (on the Buttons Palette), only these will be printed - otherwise all will be. You may sort the list before printing, or search again using the [Search] button.

Press [√] to accept the list and progress to the printing stage. You will be shown the ‘Print Settings’. At this stage you may Cancel the Printing, or continue by clicking [OK].

This report lists all the Diary Items for specified or all Personnel in a Call Sheet format for entering the Results and Next Actions. The selection process works as for View Diary above. This report is always sorted into Person then Date order - other sorts will have no effect. Accept the selection by clicking [√] to move on to the printing stage.