Creativyst™ Job Track
Documentation & Help Pages



  Contents


Overview

Creativyst(tm) Job Track software tracks completion of customer orders. You enter customer orders along with the components that must be obtained to fulfill them.

Creativyst(tm) Job Track is divided into two areas. A top area lists all current jobs along with an overview of what components are required to fulfill each job. Each job listing clearly displays what components have been ordered, what components still need to be ordered, and the date they are expected to be ordered or received by. It is also easy to see when any of these steps is overdue because the buttons change from black to red.

"Action Buttons" embedded directly into the job listing facilitate easy update of job status, such as marking components of the job "Ordered", or "Received".

The bottom portion of the Job Track window is where new jobs are first entered and where more comprehensive changes may be made to each job.

The center divider in the Creativyst(tm) Job Track window can be dragged up and down. This allows you to provide more viewing space to the list on top or the form on the bottom depending on your needs.

Once you've properly set up JobTrack with supplier lead-times for each component, it will automatically fill most job and component dates for you. For example, JobTrack will fill in the order-by dates for each included component, and fill in the expected reception date for those components when you order them; JobTrack will even provide a best-estimate promise date for you to give your customer based on lead times.




The Job List

The Job List allows you to see a "birds eye view" of all pending jobs. Using the list you can quickly see the status of an entire job, as well as the status of included components that are (or must be) ordered for each job.

Each job listing takes up two lines in the above half of the display. Each two-line job listing is displayed in light gray on a white background for viewing comfort. The list is normally sorted by delivery date (the date you've promised delivery of the job to your customer).

The top of the Job Track screen contains table headers and controls that allow you to determine how jobs will be displayed in the list. To view a current list of active jobs, simply click on the "List" button there (to the right of the Creativyst company name).

The top line of each job listing contains the dates that various actions are due to be completed by in order for the job to be delivered on time. The bottom line of a job listing contains status buttons which indicate which action needs to be done. If these actions are past due, the button will be displayed in red.

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Selecting What Types Of Jobs to View
Normally, you will want to view a list of all "Pending" orders. That is, jobs that you have not fully delivered to your customers. Radio buttons are provided that allow you to view other types of jobs on the rare occasions that you might need to. The job types you can view in the list include:

  • Pending: This is the normal type of job you will be viewing. Pending jobs are jobs that are not complete. They are jobs which you have not delivered or have only partially delivered to your customer
  • Red Only: These are jobs that are overdue in some way. Either the entire job has gone passed its delivery date, or one of the components has not been received or ordered on time. These are called "Red" orders because their buttons on the listing are red in color to denote this. Any PENDING order with a red button is included in this listing. Orders that have no red buttons or are not Pending are not included.
  • All: This list will include Pending orders and Completed orders.
  • Complete: This list is everything BUT the Pending orders. It shows all the completed orders currently stored in the system.
Once You've selected the type of orders you want to view, you must hit the "List" button to refresh the list. You may hit this button at any time in order to be sure you're list reflects the most recent changes made to the database by other users. Actions performed by action buttons will not be visible in the list until you refresh it with the "List" button.

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Filtering Listed Jobs by Customer or Description
You may also filter the list. To do this, enter some text in the filter field and hit the "List" button. The list produced will consist of only jobs of the specified type who's "Customer Name" or "Job Description" field contain text that matches the text you've entered. One important thing to note about this field is that letter-case does not matter. For example, if you enter "ocean city" in the filter field, it will list job records that contain "Ocean City", "OCEAN CITY", or any other case combination in their "Customer Name" or "Job Description" fields.

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Changing the Sort Order
You can sort the list by invoice number instead of delivery date if you'd like. Click on the first column header ("Job/Inv #") to sort by Invoice Number. You can tell what column the list is sorted by because that column header will be gray. When the list is sorted by Invoice numbers, you can click on the "Dlvr" (Delivery) column header to revert back to sorting by delivery date.

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Using the Jobs In the Listing
One of the most important uses of the list is as a visualization tool. The list allows you to see "at a glance" what jobs are overdue, and what jobs have components that need action or are late arriving from their suppliers.

You may also select any of the jobs in the list for editing simply by clicking on its "Invoice Number" or "Job description" at the far left side of the list. When you do this, the details of the job are displayed in the Entry Form at the bottom. When a job is displayed in the entry form you may make any detailed changes to it you wish. Be sure and hit the "Save" button once you've completed your editing so that your changes will be made permanent.

As mentioned though, the list of jobs displayed in the top half of your window is more than just a static listing with status indicators showing what needs to be done, The status indicators are also buttons that permit you to quickly and easily perform certain routine tasks on each job with a single button-push.

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Using Action Buttons
When you push an action button, the record is automatically updated to reflect the new status of the order (or component within the order), and the newly updted record is displayed on the form at the bottom. This form already shows the changes made as a result of pushing the action button and these changes have already been saved. Unless you make further changes to the job record (like add notes for example), there is no need to save it again.

The job listing in the top half of the screen will not reflect these changes until you hit the "List" button again. This allows you to perform multiple tasks without having to wait for the list to re-write itself between each task.

Here is a list of the action buttons you might see on the job listing. The "Done" button performs no action and is used to indicate status only.



  Ord  
/
  Ord  
Order(component only): Seen only in component columns, this button indicates that the component has not yet been ordered. The date above is the date which it must be ordered by to insure it arrives on time to fill the customer's order. This button displays in RED when today's date is later than the order date.

  Rcv  
/
  Rcv  
Receive(component only): Seen only in component columns, this button indicates that the component has been ordered from the supplier and the job is now waiting for it to be received. The date displayed above this button is the date the component is expected to come in. If this date is past due, the button will display in RED. Click on this button to automatically mark the component as "RECEIVED" in the job record (with today's date as the date received).

  Part  
/
  Part  
Partially Delivered or Received: This button indicates that a component or the entire job has been partially delivered. Just like the Rcv button, the date displayed above this button continues to be the date the order is expected to be delivered. This status can be displayed in component columns as well as in the Delivery column for the entire order when you deliver the customer's order in part. In either case, the button turns red when the delivery date is exceeded. Clicking on this button will to automatically mark the component as "RECEIVED" in the job record (with today's date as the date received). If you click on this button in the "Delivery" column, the entire job will be automatically marked as delivered (by you) on today's date.

  Dlvr  
/
  Dlvr  
Customer Order (Job) Has NOT Been Delivered (Delv column only): This button indicates that your customer has ordered from you and their job is scheduled to be delivered by you on the date specified (shown above this button). This indicator is only displayed in the Delivery column (meaning it indicates the status of the entire order). When you click on this button you automatically change the status of the order to "Delivered" as of today's date. If the delivery date is over-due, this button is displayed in Red.

  Done  
   
The Component Has Been Received or You've Delivered the Job: This is not a button. It indicates that a component has been completely received from your supplier (when it is under a component column), or that you've completely delivered the job to your customer (when in the "Deliv" column). In the case of the "Deliv": column, you will normally not see this button because normally only pending jobs are listed. However, if you've selected "All" or "Complete" job types to list at the top of the window, you will then see this indicator in the "Deliv" column. You will see these in the component columns for every component that has been received in (or is already in stock).

  M  
/
  M  
Indicates that there are More components included on the order that are not part of the columns of the job listing. While this is a button, the only action it takes is to display the order in the detail form. Whether this button is black or red does not change its action. It works identically to clicking on the Job Description or Job Number field on the far left of the listing.

The purpose of this button is to indicate when there are extra components included in the job that do not fit in the list's columns. The date above the button is the latest date of all the extra actions required. If this date is earlier than today, the button is displayed in RED.

Each job in the list gets two lines. The top line of each job listing displays the relevant dates for each element of the job, while the bottom line contains the action buttons which indicate what tasks of the job need to be done next. The date above each button is the date that task must be performed by. If the date is overdue, the button will be displayed in red. As stated pushing the button automatically updates the record to reflect that the task has been completed and displays the newly updated record in the entry form (the form at the bottom).




The Entry Form

Action buttons are very helpful for doing routine edits. Some changes however, such as adding new jobs or making detailed changes to an existing job are not covered by the action buttons on the job list. For these you should edit the job directly using a form in the lower window.

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Getting An Existing Job for View or Edit
To display the details of an existing job for view or edit simply click on the description or job number to select it from the list. You may also select a job from the list by clicking on its "M" button if it has one.

If you know the invoice number, you can type it into the text box provided underneath the "Get" button and then click he "Get" button.

In either case, the job record you selected will appear in the window in the lower half of the screen, You may increase the size of this area by clicking on the center divider and dragging it upward.

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Editing Jobs
Once a job is displayed in the bottom form you are free to edit the fields in that job. The first invoice number, which is also the job number, may not be changed. All other dates, checkboxes, notes, and invoice numbers may be changed or blanked. Once you've made your modifications to the record, push the "Save" button to save them.

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Entering a New Job
To enter a new job, hit the "New" button. A blank entry form (with job number "New") will be displayed in the lower window.

  1. Fill in a short job description and the customer name in the fields provided.
  2. Fill in at least one Invoice Number in the invoice list. The first number on this list will become the job number and cannot change. You may add other numbers (which can change later) by putting one number on each line of this list.
  3. Select which components are required and select which suppliers will be supplying those components, If you leave the Order Date for each component blank, it will be calculated for you based on the supplier's lead time for this component and the date you've promised to deliver the order to your customer.
  4. Hit the "Save" Button. This will save your new record and return it to the form. Watch the status field for any messages. It will indicate if the record was saved or if some error was encountered during the save.
** Leave the Promise Date blank (recommended) and the promise date field will be automatically filled with the best delivery date (based on the longest component lead time).
** Leave the Order Date blank for today's date. Otherwise fill it in with the date you want.

You may also add notes to the order. On the top right side of the form, just under the status bar, is a link that will jump you down to the bottom of the form where the note entry field is. Just under the note entry field, on the right side, you will find a jump link to take you back to the top of the form.

When you hit the "Save" button, the record will be displayed in the form and the status bar will indicate that it was successfully saved. You may continue to edit the job record and hit Save again as often as you'd like.

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Using an Existing Job to Make a New Job
You may also copy information from the existing job that is currently displayed in the entry form into a blank (new) form by clicking the button labeled "C" (for "Copy") just to the right of the "New" button.


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More About Extra Lines
On rare occasions a job will require components of a single type from more than one supplier. For example, a house may include kitchen cabinets from a custom maker in the kitchen and cabinets of a different style in the laundry room from a supplier of stock cabinets. When this happens, a single job can be split over Extra Lines to accommodate the extra suppliers for those components that need them.

To specify a job record as an "Extra Line" for another job use the same invoice number as the other job with an "x#" appended to the end (where '#' is a number between '1' and '9'). For example, if the original job is invoice number '10103', make the invoice number for the first extra line '10103x1'. When you do this, the "Extra" invoice number will be displayed slightly indented on the job list.

If you push the "C" button (instead of "New") while the original job is displayed in the form, the original job will be copied into the new record. An 'x#' will be appended to the job number. The customer name and description field will be identical. The promise date will also be identical but all the other dates will be blanked. You will need to change the components and suppliers. You may also want to add a code to the description to help you easily recognize it when it is displayed in the list.

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Deleting a Job
To delete the job that is displayed in the entry form, check the "Confirm Delete" checkbox and then push the "Delete" button. The extra step of checking the "Confirm" checkbox helps reduce accidental deletions.




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Other Ways to Get Help

Besides these help pages that you are currently reading, a considerable amount of help is available to you while using the program.

Hold your mouse pointer still while hovering over a button or link and a small pop-up description of the link will appear at the mouse pointer. This is called a "fly-over tip".

The field labels in the form (bottom) will also produce fly-over help balloons for each field. In addition, you may click on these labels to display slightly more detailed help for each field in a pop-up window.




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About Creativyst

Creativyst (pronounced: "kree-ATE-tiv-vist") was established in 2001 to provide powerful custom and off-the-shelf software solutions to businesses and individuals. Our goal is to make buying, designing, and using software easy and convenient for our customers and clients.











  Creativyst™ Job Track     Help Pages                 © Copyright 2001, Creativyst, Inc. JobTrack/Vxxx/www/Help/JTHlp02.htm