Newsletter 2000-03       Go Back March 3, 2000 Highlights: More good enhancements recently completed

More good enhancements recently completed: The OE30 single line order entry screen has been enhanced to allow you to search the Trade Service database and make it easier to pull in nonstocks into your order/quote. This screen already offered you the option of creating a nonstock or special order item from the TS file, however you needed to know the DCI number. The newly enhanced screen allows you to search the file and X-off the item you want to create. OE30 has also been enhanced to allow you to quickly review the past prices you've charged the customer for an item. This is similar information to the OI35 inquiry, but it's built right into the O/E screen. OE30 has further been enhanced to allow for a new "H" option at the bottom of the screen, which will bring you into order header maintenance. New screens (FM81-83) have been developed to allow you to maintain the following customer/item information: Stock Levels: This will help enable you to set up automatic replenishment of a customer's inventory whether it be consigned or not. For example, a customer may maintain a stockroom with a hundred of your items. The customer (perhaps with your assistance) would establish a desired stock level on each item, and this would be entered via the FM81 screen. If the items are bar-coded, you could on a periodic basis go into the stockroom, scan the bar-code with a Palm Pilot / scanner or similar device and punch in the current quantity. This could then be transmitted to your system and an order could be created for the differences between the desired stock levels and the actual counts. Favorites: This is a prelude to the Web Customer Service Center that some users may be implementing. One of the really neat features of WCSC is that it allows customers to have a list of favorite items they can select items from. You would probably want to initially populate this dataset based on the customer having bought the item X times in the last year or something like that. Then, you would fine tune the list by adding or deleting items from the favorite list via these new screens. Pricing Items: Lastly, we had a user that wanted to be able to selectively specify those items that they wanted to send their customers pricing on (either electronically or the OE/226 printout) as opposed to sending entire vendors or the entire file. These new screens will allow you to maintain such lists. A new dataset has been added, VV-DATA, which tracks sales history by customer and vendor abbreviation. Over the years, several clients have wrestled over whether they wanted to maintain CV-DATA based on category/class, as it was originally designed, or change it to be by vendor. With the low cost of storage these days, why have to pick? Now, the data will be stored both ways for your reporting pleasure. The SI10, 30 and 60 inquiries also now have a "V" option to allow you to inquire into this new dataset. Springfield Electric recently ran a successful test run of the IDW price file update using the Trade Service PFMS format that is a byproduct of the Datamart software. The next phase will be to review the new SDS format (90+ fields per item) that is also produced. However, there are presently only about ten manufacturers populating these additional fields at this time. A few more Y2K related patches came up in March. Below is a quick recap. Since the patch for the AI01 screen is about as simple as you can get, and since it's potentially the most important, we've included the patch itself in the recap: AP/001 FM/001 GL/626/C&R OE/137 When you use the "A" for all invoice option on the AI01 inquiry, and say "Y" to display most recent first, it skips over the paid invoices for year 2000. Patch: 842332 AND AH-DATE-INVOICE = 99999999 EM03 display of e-mail messages not continuing properly onto 2nd page. Problem with date in headings Year in headings is incorrect.