Profile

Manage Entities

In this chapter you will read:




Adding an entity Managing Categories Editing Existing Entities Deleting Existing Entities Creating Custom Fields for Entities Custom Tabs/Plates for Custom Fields Searching for and Sorting Entities Managing Columns in the Entities List Mass Group Editing




Individuals have individual properties. No human being is the same as the other one. No business is the same as the other. This rule applies to many objects on our planet and also the things that we might not know. Our software, Mekashron Business, is able to give a helpful hand to those managing a business and or a corporation. We have thought about our customers so that they can manage their business with ease. In this section of our software's manual, we will see how we can manage entities but before that, we must understand what "entities" are. An entity is an individual in the company or the corporation. For example, an entity could be your friend or co-worker, your colleague or your manager, your desk or your chair. You name the object and that becomes an entity. To speak more globally, an entity is an object with properties. Our software gives you the ability to create entities and give them and define their properties since, as specified before, objects and entities have differnet properties. Below, we will learn how we can perform various operations on different entities in our business. These operations include deletion, addition and whatnot. You will also learn about unique abilities of our software and get a head-start on expanding your business through using our software.


 





1 - Adding an Entity




The first operation that we are interested in is to add an entity to our collection of entities. After you have set-up Mekashron Business and logged into the database, you will be able to see our product's main screen as depicted below:


Figure 1.1 - Mekashron Business software - Main window after logging on

 

In order to be able to add an entity to the data-base, you can choose whichever of the below ways that you are more comfortable with:

1. Comfortable with Mouse Devices: navigate to the Entities menu on top of the window and then choose the Add Entities sub menu.
2. Comfortable with Keyboard (method 1): simply press the CTRL+A key-combination.
3. Comfortable with keyboard (method 2): press ALT+E and then Enter.
4. Comfortable with keyboard (method 3): press ALT+E and then A.



After having finished one of the above steps, you will be led to the Entity Form window as depicted below:





Figure 1.2 - The Entity Form window is used to add entities to the business

 

At the first glance, this window's number of components could be overwhelming but after reading this manual, you will feel really comfortable with navigating through these components and adding entities to your business, using this window. There are various fields presented to you once you open the window as shown in Figure 1.2. These fields are explained in details below:

• Personal:
  • First Name: this field allows the forename or the firstname of an entity to be entered into the data-base (optional field).
  • Last Name: is the text-box that allows you to enter the surname of an entity (optional field.
  • Company: allows you to enter the company or the corporation name in which the to-be-added entity works. Please note that the Company field is also equipped with an Information button. Clickin on this button will take you to Google's main page for the sake of convenience. You can then search for a company name.
• Address:
  • Address: this field is where you can enter the contact address of the entity, as its name implies (optional field).
  • State: the Mekashron Business software allows you to also specify the state in which the soon-to-be-added entity lives, was born or etc . Please note that a "state" points to the place in the country where the user lives, was born or etc. This could mean a state in the United States such as Iowa or Wisconsin. (optional field).
  • Country: allows you to put in the name of the country where the specific entity is originated from or lives in (depending on your business) (optional field).
  • Zip: the zip or the postal code for the specified entity (optional field).
• Category: (explained in detail below)
  • Main Category: this is a combo-box whichi specifies into which main category the specific entity falls (requried field).
  • Sub Category: specifies the sub-category into which the user falls. This sub category is of course the child of the main category (required field).
• Contact (the check-box near each of the below items, if checked, includes that entity in contacting options but when unchecked, excludes the entity from mailing lists and etc).
  • Phone: this field allows you to enter the phone number of the entity that is going to be added to the database (optional field).
  • Fax: the fax-number of the entity (optional field).
  • Mobile: the mobile number of the entity can be entered in this field (optional field).
  • Email: the email address of the to-be-added-to-database entity. Please note that our software has been designed to help you notify invalid emails. Therefore, upon entering a wrong email address and attempting to save the entity, you will receive the following message:
    
    
    Figure 1.3 - Invalid Email
    
    
• Custom fields: will be explained in detail, below.

 

Note: by right clicking on the empty area of each of the Phone, Fax, Mobile and the Email fields, our software will show you a pop-up menu which says "Check duplicated values". By clicking on this menu item, Mekashron Business will look into the database for similar matches of the value that you have current entered. After this menu item is clicked on, its state will become "active". When this menu is active, our software will detect these duplicated values and warn you when you are trying to save your changes. This is depicted below, for a duplicated Fax Number:





Figure 1.3.1 - Duplicated Fax

By now, you must have understood the basic meanings of all the fields in the Entity Form window (Figure 1.2). However, there are some parts of this window that might appear to be confusing at first. We will do our best in further introducing you to these options. Below we will discuss what Categories are and how you can manipulate them in order to assing more details to your entities.




 





2 - Managing Categories




Before we start this section, it is beneficial to define what categories are all about. In an enterprised business environment where there are various roles and entities, categorizing entities, people, employees, employers and etc could be a daunting task. We have thought about this in advance and come up with a good solution that could save you and your business administration some precious time. You can now, using our software, keep track of categories into which your entities fall. For example, in a University, a student is of course a student but that person could also be a faculty. A PhD student could be a student and also a manager of a section. However, these categories are limited. For instance, in a University, we could have categories such as "Students", "Managers" and "Others". The "Students" category could be divided into "Bachelors", "Masters" and "PhD". The "Managers" could be sub-divided into "Security", "Buildings" and "Head". The first three are Main Categories while the others are sub-categories. Mekashron Business allows you to demonstrate this categorized business model using Categories and Sub-Categories. Here we will see how we can get a grip of creating these important business models.




When you open the Entity Form window, if you look to the rightside, you will see the Category group-box. This is depicted below:





Figure 1.4 - Categories group-box

 

These buttons are:

• Add a new category or sub-category.
• Delete an existing category or sub-category.
• Edit an existing category or sub-category.

As you can see, we have main and sub categories. Each of these combo-boxes are equipped with three buttons namely "Add", "Remove" and "Edit" where the first one is given the + sign, the second one has the - sign and the last one has the tools icon. All these buttons are represented with the color red as you can see in Figure 1.4. Please note the difference between a Combo-box and an edit box. The visual difference between these two components is of course the little down-arrow to the rightmost side of the component. If you see this arrow pointing down, then you must understand that it is a combo-box you are working with. The actual difference between a combo-box and an edit-bix is given below:

• A combo-box allows a certail list of items to be displayed and only one of them be selected from the list. Imagine when you go to a restaurant. You have a predefined set of meals you can order from. The menu you are given is the combo-box.
  
• An edit-box is where you specify what you want even if the thing you want does not already exist. For example, you go to a restaurant and you are handed a menu. You want a simple burger but the restaurant doesn't give its customers an option for a burger in its list. You will then ask them to bring you a burger even though a burger is not one of their main meals in their menu.

Now we will see how we can create a category and then sub-categories for any one of the categories. First, let us click on the Add button denoted by the + sign. After this event, the below window will pop-up:





Figure 1.5 - Add a new Category

 

The Category Name edit box will let you specify the name of the group that you want. This field is of course mandatory. The Users List group box will allow you to specify what users in the system have access to this category. By default, none of the users are selected. This means that every user in the database has access to this caetgory. However, once you select a user or a group of users, you are limiting the number of users that have access to this category. To summarize this:

• Category Name: is where you enter the name of the main category that you want to create.
• Users List: is where you will specify what users in the system have access to this category.
• The users list doesn't have any of the users selected by default. This means that all users have access to this category.
• If a user or a series of users are selected in the Users List, those users are the ones that have access to that category.

After having chosen your Category Name and the users who have to be granted access to that category, you can press the OK button at the bottom of the screen at which time you will be redirected to the Entity Form window. Now that you are back in the Entity Form window, you can click on the button for the Sub Categories and start creating your sub-categories. In the below figure, you can see that a main category called "Students" is created along with three sub-categories called "Bachelors", "Masters" and "PhDs".





Figure 1.6 - A Main Category and three Sub Categories that are created using the + sign

 

After having created a category or a sub-category or even categories and sub-categories, you can of course attempt do delete them. This can be done using the button close to the Category and the Sub-Category group-boxes in the Entity Form form. Please note that:

1. If a category is deleted: all of its sub-categories will also be deleted.
2. If a sub-category (or sub-categories) is/are deleted: all of their related entities will also be deleted.

This is important to understand because deleting a category or a sub-category without having enough knowledge about its consequences could result in disasterous cases. For example, records related to thousands of Masters students could be deleted in a second if the Masters sub-category is deleted. Therefore, it is very important and essential that you assign correct access rights to these categories in order to enforce security and stability in the enterprise. After having learnt how to create categories, sub-categories and Entities, we will now move on to learn how we can edit existing Entities.




 





3 - Editing Existing Entities




In a business environment and corporation, it is inevitable that users and entities might change from time to time. In most cases, they do change very frequently. For example, an entity's phone number could very often or they mobile phone number. We have already understood this need in an enterprise and we have provided you with a convenient way of keeping track of and managing these changes.

One you have created an entity, that entity will appear in our software's main screen. This is depicted below:





Figure 1.7 - An added Entity - appeared in the main window

 

Now suppose you would like to change "Vandad's" phone number. This Entity did not specify a phone number when he joined the enterprise but now he is willing to have his phone number in the database. Therefore now you can choose amongs one of the below ways in order to fully-view or edit this entity's information:

• If you are comfortable with the Mouse Device (Method 1): Double click on the entity in the Entities List.
• If you are comfortable with the Mouse Device (Method 2): right click on the Entity in the Entities List at which time you will be presented with the below pop-up menu:
  
  
  Figure 1.8
  
  From the above menu, select the View/Edit Entities menu-item.
  
  
• If you are comfortable with your Keyboard (Method 1): choose the required entity and then press the Enter key.
• If you are comfortable with your Keyboard (Method 2): choose the Entity and then press CTRL+E simultaneously.
• If you are comfortable with your Keyboard (Method 3): choose the Entity, press ALT+E and then choose the View/Edit Entity menu-item.

At this time, you will, again, be presented with the Entity Form window. This form of course give you the chance to edit your existing entities or change their properties/attributes.






4 - Deleting Existing Entities




Once an entity is created, there might be a need for that entity to be erased from the database. Think of an employee that has left the enterprise! In this case, the manager or the operator who is in charge of entities might, due to that company's rules, feel the need of deleting that entity's information from the database. This can be done using one of the below methods:

• If you are comfortable with the Mouse Device (Method 1): right click on the entity in the Entities List. At this time you will be presented with the pop-up menu as shown in Figure 1.8. At this time, you can select the Delete Entities menu-item. You will then be presented with the below Message Box:
  
  
  Figure 1.9 - Deleting an Entity
  
  Select Yes in the above message box if you are sure you would like the entity to be deleted.
  
  
• If you are comfortable with the Mouse Device (Method 2): choose your entity in the Entities List and then go to the Entities main menu then choose Delete Entities. You will be presented with the same message box as depicted in Figure 1.9.
  
  
• If you are comfortable with your Keyboard (Method 1): choose the requested entity and press CTRL+D simultaneously.
• If you are comfortable with your Keyboard (Method 2): choose the requested entity again and then press ALT+E followed by D.

Please note that once an entity is deleted from the database, recovering it is not possible. Please also note that if you want to delete multiple entities, you can simply mark the check-box near their name in the Entities List and then carry on with one of the above methods. The below picture depicts the selection of more than one entity:





Figure 1.10 - Selecting multiple Entities in the Entities List group box






5 - Creating Custom Fields for Entities




In our software, we have already thought of primary needs of assistants and managers when entering entities in their database. As you could see in Figure 1.6 for example, you can add the entity's forename, surname and many other types of information. However, as a glance to the future, we have also, for your convenience, thought of a way to allow you to create your own customized fields. For example, depending on your business (assuming a University), you might need to have students' age information. There is nothing that can stop you from entering this information considering that our software does not (by default) require entities' age to be entered.

In order to create a custom field, please follow the below steps:

1. Click on the Entities main menu on top of the window of the main screen.
2. Click on or select the Custom Fields menu item.
3. Click on the Entities Fields menu-item.

The above steps are shown, visually and graphically, below:





Figure 1.11 - Entities Fields and creating Custom Fields

 

At this time, you will be presented with one of our product's tools called Field Designer, as depicted below:





Figure 1.12 - Field Designer for creating Custom Fields

 

At the top of the Field Designer window you can see a range of controls. These could also be called components. These components facilitate the ability for somebody like the manager of the company or somebody in charge of entities in the company to create custom fields that will appear in the Entity Form window. By default, the Custom Fields group box in the Entity Form window is empty. The Field Designer allows you to create fields based on your requirements. Now let us go through the various components that are available to you in the Field Designer window:

• Using this button you will be able to create a text box. Text box is an alias for Edit-box which we learnt about earlier. Please note that a text-box or edit-box could take alphanumerical values (numerical + text). Please note that a text-box can only contain a single line of text.
  
  
• Numeric field is the same as a text-box which is explained above. The only difference is that a numeric-field, as its name implies, only allows numerical values to be entered. Please bear in mind that there are more differences between a numeric field and a Text field than it appears to be. For example, once a Numeric field is selected, while searching for entities, you can specify ranges. For instance the range of 1 to 10 can be expressed as 1-10 or a range of 20 to 30 could be expressed as 20-30.
  
  
• A date-field allows you to, using a calendar, select a specific date on which an event perhaps has occurred. The calendar is fully functional and supports leap years by default. Note: A Date, Time and a Date Time field all have a really important invisible property! This property could be used for your advantage while searching for entities. For example, if you are looking for a person who has been working in your company from a certain date to another date, you could specify this range using a hyphen (-) between the ranges. For example, the range of 1st of January 2008 to 19th of January 2008 could be expressed as 1/1/2008-19/1/2008.
  
  
• A time-field is similar to the Date field. The difference is self explanatory! With the time-field you can only enter time-formats. However, for your convenience, we have equipped this component with a roller that allows you to increase or decrease a specific field in the time (for example the hour field). Please also read the Note section fo the Date field above.
  
  
• Having the ability to specify time and date separately is of course great. However, on extreme cases, you might feel the need to specify both a time and a date. Please also read the Note section fo the Date field above.
  
  
• A memo is similar to a text-box or the alternative text-field. However, the difference is that a memo can store more than one line of text while an edit box can only contain a single line of text.
  
  
• A check-box, as its name and shape implies, is a rectangular shape that has two states: checked or unchecked. This could mean yes or no. It could also mean true or false. Basically from a set of two distinct and oppopsite things, it could mean one of them.
  
  
• The picture control allows you to have a picture in your custom fields. For example, if you believe you would like a contact picture from entities in your database.
  
  
• The file-field, again giving away its nature by its name, allows you to upload a file to the data-base using the custom fields. For example, every entity could have their Resumes attached to their profiles. Resumes could be stored in files. Here you will get a chance to upload the file into the database. Our program takes care of the rest of the processing for you.
  
  
• A combo-box is where you can allow a value to be selected from a list of predefined values. We have already defined combo-boxes' responsibility before.
  
  
• A check-list is similar to a list-box. A list-box is of course a component that displays a list of values. A check-list is a comb-box that also allows you to have a check-box near each of the list items. This is similar to the control that we have equipped our software's main page with. Such field could be used in a situation similar to allowing University courses to be picked by students. You could have various courses available but certain students from certain fields could only pick a limited number of courses for their current semester.

Once you have spotted your required controls and components, you can simply click on them at the top of the window and let our software take care of the rest of the process for you. As an example, let us consider a situation where we want our business product to be able to accept:

1. Entities' resumes (CV).
2. Entities' contact pictures.
3. Their marital status (married/single).
4. Their date of birth.
5. Their current salary.

This can be done using the below controls respectively:

1. File field for the CV.
2. Picture field for the contact picture.
3. Check-box field to state whether they are married or not.
4. Date field for their date of birth.
5. Numeric field for their current salary.

These components can then be arranged as shown below:





Figure 1.13 - Field Designer with custom fields arranged on the screen

 

Please note that in the Field Designer window, to the leftmost part of the window, you can see our property inspector. This inspector allows you to change the default settings of a control/component. For example, when you put a Text-field in the window, you can change its "Caption" using the "Caption" field to the left hand side of the screen. Once you have created all your required fields, you can close the Field Designer window and then move on to the Add Entities window in order to create new entities but this time, with new custom fields. Before we do that, we need to go through some detailed explanations for the object/property inspector in the leftmos position of the Field Designer window. For example, create a Date-field and then click on the "&Properties" item in the object-inspector. At this time, you will be presented with a window such as that shown below:





Figure 1.14 - Field Properties window - from the Object Inspector

 

As you can see above, the Field Properties window will give you extra options to tamper with while creating custom fields. For example, you can use the Date-field to tell our software to dial a phone number at a specific date. For example, the company could call a person on that person's birthday to wish them happiness for their new living year. Please note that the action tab is not available for all custom controls. You can go ahead and see what options are available for each control. Once you have created and manually changed all the required options for your custom fields, you can close the Field Designer at which time Mekashron Business will save your settings in the database. After having added all the above fields, we will go to create a new entity as explained before. This is what we will get this time:





Figure 1.15 - Custom Fields in the Entity Form window

 

By now, you must have a sound understanding of how you can create custom fields and also entities. In the next section of the text, we will explain to you how you can sort your entities and also search in the database for a particular entity. Before moving on to the next section of this document, let us go through some other examples that demonstrate the working flow of custom fields. In this example we will use these fields:

1. Picture: for contact pictures.
2. File: for contact's resume (CV).
3. Combobox: for contact's marital status (Married/Single/Divorced).
4. Date: for the date of birth (DOB).
5. Numeric: for contact's current salary.
6. Text: for contact's other forename and surname (if any).
7. Memo: for additional notes about the contact.
8. Checkbox: to state whether the contact is currently enrolled in any courses in this University (imaginary University).
9. Checklist: name of the courses that the contact has taken in his/her current semester.

For this purpose, we will follow the below steps:

1. Open the Field Designer.
2. Place the components listed above, as shown below:
   
   
   Figure 1.15.1 - Field Designer with custom fields of different types
   
   
3. After having aligned all the fields as shown in Figure 1.15.1, you can now close the Field Designer at which time our software will automatically save the changes to the custom fields.
4. Now you edit or add an entity as you were shown before.
5. At this time, you must be able to see the Custom Fields as shown below:
   
   
   Figure 1.15.2 - Custom Fields that are given values using the Entity Form
   
   
6. Please note that the + and the - signs work as expected in each of the fields. You can read about these buttons' functionalities here. Also note that the values that appear in each of the above custom fields were not there by default. We have used the + and - buttons to add them to our Checklist and Comboboxes and etc.
7. After you are done editing your entities, you can close the Entity Form and Mekashron Business will take care of saving your changes.
   





6 - Custom Tabs/Plates for Custom Fields




In the Windows operating system and many other desktop operating systems such as Linux, a window could have various tabs in order to allow ease of navigation between components. For exmaple, if you look at Figure 1.22, you will find three tabs at the top of the screen called "User Information", "Employee Information" and "Fields". While adding custom fields using the Field Designer, you can also create tabs (or what we call Plates in Mekashron Business) for your entities' information. A Plate (or a tab) is useful when categorizing information. For example, let us assume that you have to use more than 20 to 30 (or even more) custom controls and fields foe each entity. In this case, the Custom Fields window could get really complicated to understand and very difficult to navigate. For this reason, we have presented the use of Plates in our program. Plates will be created in the Field Designer and will be viewed and used in the Entity Form.

Please follow the below steps in order to create a custom Tab or Plate:

1. Click on the Entities main menu on top of the window of the main screen.
2. Click on or select the Custom Fields menu item.
3. Click on the Entities Fields menu-item.
4. On top of the Field Designer, click on the Plate main menu.
5. Click on the Add Plate menu item. If you are comfortable with the keyboard, instead of step 4 and 5, press CTRL+A simultaneously in the Field Designer window.
6. The Fields Plate window will now pop-up as shown below:
   
   
   Figure 1.27 - The Fields Plate window for adding custom Plates
   
   
7. The Plate Caption check-box will determine the name of the caption that will appear on top of the window where the plate should be shown.
8. The Categories list will specify the name of the categories under which this plate will appear. Removing all or any of the categories shown in that list will disable the soon-to-be-created plate for that category or categories.
9. The Users list includes all the users in the system who have access to this plate. If you wish to restrict any of the users, simply uncheck their check-box in the Users list as shown below. The user "Vandad" now doesn't have access to this plate:
   
   
   Figure 1.28 - Fields Plate users
   
   
10. The Position combo-box specifies the index of the plate that you are creating. If you remember in the Custom Fields window shown at the bottom of the Entity Form, the Custom Fields plate/tab was the first and the only plate whose position is therefore 1. Now if you create another plate/tab, its position is determined by default to be 2 which will come after the Custom Fields plate. Now you can change this index/position to your required index. Remember that the Position of 1 always points to the first tab/plate.
    
    
11. After you are done creating your Plate, you can click on the OK button at the bottom of the Fields Plate window.
12. At this time, you will see another plate which is added and shown in the Field Designer window as shown below:
    
    
    Figure 1.29 - Custom Plate added to the Field Designer
    
    
13. Now if you open the Entity Form (as you have been instructed before), you will be able to see the new plate/tab which however, is empty for now:
    
    
    Figure 1.30 - A new plate added to the Entity Form
    
    
14. In case you need to delete a plate, you can go back to the Fields Plate window as you were instructed above, and select the plate you wish to delete and follow the below steps:
    1. On top of the Field Designer, click on the Plate main menu.
    2. Click on the Delete menu item.
       
       
15. If you want to edit a plate you have created before, go to the Fields Plate window and follow the below steps:
    1. On top of the Field Designer, click on the Plate main menu.
    2. Click on the Edit Plate menu item. If you are more comfortable with the keyboard, you can simply choose your plate to be edited and press CTRL+E simultaneously

 





7 - Searching for and sorting entities




Usually, in a large business body, the number of entities could reach up to a million or even more! Our software facilitates various ways for your convenience to keep track of changes that occur in the data-base. One of these facilities is our quick-search functionality. The quick-search engine is located at the bottom of the main window of our software as marked in a red-rectangle below:





Figure 1.16 - Custom Search (marked with a red rectangle) at the bottom of the main window of Mekashron Business

 

The edit-box, in the red marked rectangular region, that is filled with the string "Vandad" is your search criteria and the combo-box that is currently holding the value of "First Name" is your search domain. Please note that the margin marked with the blue rectangle is your search category. You can limit your search domain also with this region's selection. It is also worth noting that the Quick Search engine does not allow the user to search in Custom Fields. After putting your search criteria, you can either press the Enter key or simply click on the Search button to the rightmost bottom side of the window and you will get your search result based on your:

1. Search category (in the blue marker).
2. Search criteria (in the red marker).
3. Search domain (in the red marker also).

This is depicted below:





Figure 1.17 - Quick search for a person called "Vandad" using all possible categories and sub-categories

 

There are a couple of things to note about the quick search engine:

1. The criteria does not necessarily have to contain the complete text of the to-be-found entity or entities. It can be a part of that entity's property.
2. After you hit the Enter key, our software will navigate to the Entities List window on the center of the screen which will allow you to simply navigate through your search results.
3. You can not search in custom fields using the Quick Search.
4. If you are looking for a more advanced search engine, please use the CTRL+F shortcut which is our software's main and advanced search engine. You can also reach this search engine using the Entities menu and then Search Entities. For more information about the custom search, please click on this link.
5. By default, our quick search engine allows searching in the fields and columns that are visible in the Entities List. In order to search in columns that are not visible in this list, please follow the below steps:
   1. Go to the Main menu on top left corner of the screen.
   2. Select the Users menu item at which time you will be presented with the Users Management window.
   3. In the Users Management window, select the current user from the left side of the screen and then move to the Fields tab.
   4. In this tab, select what fields you would like to appear in the Entities List. After selecting your required fields, click the Save button on top left side of the screen as shown here.

After you have gotten a grip on how you can search for entities, it is not time to move on to learn how you can sort your entities or your search results. The Entities List is where this action can be performed. You can see the First Name, the Last Name and other fields in this list. By default, entities are sorted using their First Name. This is denoted by the bold font that our software gives to the First Name column. If you prefer to sort your entities using other columns, simply click on that column and you will have your entities sorted by that column's values. Please note that:

1. Once our software is launched, by default, entities appear in the list by the order they have been added to the data-base. In other words, no sorting has been performed.
2. If a column is not bold and is just clicked, that column will be sorted ascendingly.
3. If a column is already selected and bold, clicking on it again will still let the column be bold but will sort the results, based on that column's values, descendingly.

For example, let us have 5 different entities in our list. We can click ont he First Name field in the Entities List twice in order to sort the entities by their First Name descendingly as shown below:





Figure 1.18 - Descending sorting of entities

 

If you had only clicked once on one of the unselected and non-bold columns, the list would get sorted ascendingly based on that column's values as shown below:





Figure 1.19 - Ascending search based on the Last Name field

 

In the next section of this manual, we will teach you how to manipulate the columns that are shown by default in the Entities List. Before that, let us discuss something in the main window of our program that we have not yet discussed. The viewing limits. You The Limits numerical boxes allow you to limit the amount of entities that are shown in the Entities List window. For example, let us say that you have searched for students in a University whose religion is Christian. After searching, you will get thousands of these students as the result of your search. In order to limit the number of students who are shown as the result of your search, you can change the Limit box to the middle left side of the main screen and our software will automatically take care of the displaying as many entities as you have set your limits up to.

However, this could be a little difficult to understand because a limit must usually be from 0 to a certain number but Mekashron Business acts even more clever when it comes to the limits. If you have found for example 2000 students after doing a simple search based on anything, and you want to just see the 100th student to 200th student, you will set the lower range of the limit to 100 and the upper limit to 200 as depicted below (in the red rectangle):





Figure 1.19.1 - Limits shown in the red rectangular box - Limiting the number of Entities in the Entities List






8 - Managing Columns in the Entities List




Maintaining security and stability of our software is and has always been one of our primary goals to achieve while writing Mekashron Business. In order to achieve this, we are allowing you to define your own users and their permissions. Alongside this, we also allow you to hide certain information from certain users. For example you might have saved your employees' private information such as their marital status or credit-card number. You as a manager might require to have access to this information but an operator that you have hired to work for you should not! Although this depends on your business' confidentiallity, we have thought it about it in advance and provided you with certain facilities that allow you to hide certain columns from certain users. This can be done in different ways.

If you want to hide certain columns in your search results or generally from the Entities List, you can simply follow the below steps:

1. Right click on the designated column.
2. Select the Columns menu-item.
3. Choose the Hide menu item.

This will hide that column from your view. This is depicted below in two step (assuming you would want to hide the Company field from the Entities List:





Figure 1.20 - Attempting to hide the Company column from the Entities List

 

And now the Company column is hidden from your view:





Figure 1.21 - The Company column is now hidden

 

If you feel the need to show a hidden column again, you can follow the below steps:

• If you are comfortable with the Mouse Device:
  • Click on the Main menu item at the top left hand side of the main window of our software.
  • Choose the Users menu item.
• If you are comfortable with the Keyboard:
  • Press the ALT+M key-combination simultaneously.
  • Press U.

At this time, you will be presented with the Users Management window in which you can find three main tabs to the upper right side of the window. These are:

1. User Information.
2. Employee Information.
3. Fields.

You can now choose the default user-name from the left side of the screen and then click ont he Fields tab as shown below. The below picture shows the tabs that are available to the user called "Admin" which is however, the user that has logged on to the system:





Figure 1.22 - Fields that are shown to the Admin user in the Entities List

 

As you can see in Figure 1.22 above, the Company field is not selected in the list. This is of course because we have already hid this field from the view. You can now check the check box near this item and you will have the Company field back and visible in the Entities List as shown below. Please note that once you have made changes to the Users Management window, click the Save button on the top left side of the window which is indicated by a red rectangular marker below:





Figure 1.23 - Saving changes in the Users Management window






9 - Mass Group Editing




Sometimes in a corporation, a group body might be renamed. For example, Porters in a University could be decided to be called Red Caps. Let us assume you have 1000 porters in your University and you want them all to be a part of a group called Red Cap instead of Porters. You can then delete the Porters category with ease as you were taught above. Our software allows you to simply change the Category and the Sub-category name of a list of entities to another with ease. All you have to do is to follow the below steps:

1. Select all the entities whose Category or Sub-category name should be changed. This can be done of course using the check-box near entities' name to the left side of the Entities List.
2. Right click anywhere (not on a white area) of the Entities List group-box.
3. Select the Group Edit menu item from the pop-up menu.
4. Select the Categories menu-item from the list.

The above steps are depicted visually in the below figure:





Figure 1.24 - Editing Categories of selected users in the Entities List

 

At this time, you will be presented with the Group Edit window as shown below:





Figure 1.25 - The Group Edit window for mass group management

 

After having read about a simple example, we will now see another intuitive use of the categories that are provided to you. For example, let us say that you are the manager of a University in the United Kingdom. You have some students from London, Sussex, Brighton and etc. You have now felt the need to create a new Category called Cities and sub-categories such as London, Brighton and etc. Now what you want to do is to put all students who are from London, into the main category of "Cities" and the sub-category of "London". For this, please follow the below steps:

1. In the main screen of the program, find the search functionality at the bottom of the screen and choose "City" from the search domain.
2. Now in the search box, type "London" with or without the quotation marks.
3. After having found your target users, you can select them all as you were instructed before. If you are not comfortable with these methods, simply right click on one of the found entities in the Entities List and then choose Select All.
4. Right click anywhere (not on a white area) of the Entities List group-box.
5. Select the Group Edit menu item from the pop-up menu.
6. Select the Categories menu-item from the list.
7. At this time you will see the window as depicted in Figure 1.25.
8. Assuming that you have already added your main category of Cities and the sub-category of London (as you were taught before), simply select the Cities item from the Main Category combo-box and the London city from the Sub Category combo-box as shown below:
   
   
   Figure 1.26 - Cities category and the London Sub-category
   
   
9. Now click on the OK button and viola! Mekshron Business will change all the selected items' category and sub-category to Cities and London respectively.
   
   

Now you have a chance of selecting your required Main Category and Sub-Category. After you are done, you can click on the OK button to allow Mekashron Business to save your changes. Congratulations! It might be surprising but if you have made it this far, you are already familiar with adding, editing and deleting entities. Also with changing columns, searching in the database of entities, editing user access to columns and many more. In the next chapter, we will discuss how you can import entities into your business database.