CAPÍTULO 111: MARCO TEORICO

Viewing Contact Records

Office Tracker Contacts allows you to view contact records in two ways. You can change your view at any time by pressing the View button in the Contacts toolbar. This button toggles between three view options: List, Record, and Record and List.

When you are viewing List and Record, the left side of the window displays the list of currently shown contacts or the found set of contacts, depending on the tab chosen. The right side of the window displays the contact “record” where you can view and edit the information, depending on the tab chosen and the user’s privileges for that contact owner. Just like events, you must have the correct Sharing Privileges in order to make changes to another user’s contact records.

The Office Tracker Contacts window acts independently of the main scheduling window, allowing the user to minimize the main Client window while still editing the contact information and vice versa. Persistent information about this window such as size, position, contact header sort order, contact header display order and viewed contacts is stored in a separate document, tracker.otc, associated with the window.

Though you may resize the Office Tracker Contacts window, the window imposes a minimum size required to display the contact views.

Office Tracker Contacts is accessible either offline or while connected to an Office Tracker Server. Contact record changes are always stored to the local Client database first, then to the server when available.

List View

the found set of contacts, depending on the tab selected.

The List View shows the main screen contact information in columnar format and allows the columns to be rearranged by dragging the column header to a new location (to drag, click on the column header and keep the mouse button held down while you move the header to a new location, then release the mouse button).

Sorting the List View

The currently active sort column is indicated by the ascending or descending arrow displayed in the column header. You may re-sort the list by a particular column by clicking on the column header. The list allows you to select a single contact to view/edit on the right-hand view by clicking on the contact name.

The list view also allows you to mark the contact by clicking on the check box in the contact name. Marking records gives you an easy way to create a list of contacts to be printed or contacted.

Record View

The Record View lets you enter and edit contact information, or simply view it on a record by record basis.

When a contact record is selected via the List View, Office Tracker Contacts checks the user’s privilege for that record. In the event that the user does not have the privilege to edit the contact, the view will show all controls, except the Marked checkbox, as inactive and will display a message at the top left of the view stating: “You may view this contact but you may not make changes.” Marking records is local to the Client and therefore does not require edit privileges from the Server.

The contact owner, creation date/time and modification date/time are displayed at the bottom left of the view and the rest of the contact information is displayed in the various edit controls contained in the Main and Details tabs of the Record View.

The Main tab of the record view contains the most commonly used fields for a contact. Most of the controls shown are single-line edit controls, with the exception of the Salutation, Date, Category, Date Stamp, Notes, Private and Marked controls. The Salutation and Category are regular drop-down lists. The first is hard-coded to the normal salutations and the second is filled with the contact categories set at the Server. The Date field is a date-time picker control allowing the user to select the date from a calendar, if desired. The Date Stamp simply adds a current date stamp to the Notes field, which is a multi-line edit control that resizes as the entire window is resized, allowing the user to enter and view lengthy notes more easily. The Private and Marked controls are simple check boxes to indicate private contacts and marked contacts, respectively.

You may send e-mail to the address in the e-mail field by clicking on the “E-mail” text control. This opens your default e-mail program with the e-mail address included in the “To:” field.

Category

The “Category” choices are set up at the Office Tracker Server administration pages.

Details Screen

The Web field is a pre-labeled field to hold the contact’s web site address. You may access the URL in the Web field via a browser by clicking on the “Web” text control.

The Info. field is a pre-labeled field that you may use to put specific descriptive text about this contact. The Number field is a pre-labeled field that can be used to assign a customer number or other identification number for the contact.

The Linked Events field holds links to each event (appointment, meeting, etc.) that you have scheduled with this contact.

Custom Fields 1 through 10

The ten custom fields shown in the Details view may be assigned specific names via the Server Administration pages. Once these names are assigned, the fields will display the appropriate name in place of the Custom# placeholder on this view and subsequent printouts. The first 8 custom fields are single-line edit only, while the last two allow for multi-line editing to handle large amounts of information more easily. The view also shows the events linked to this contact, none of which are editable by the user from this view. The user may view a linked event by clicking on the event in the linked events list.

Record Locking

When any user activates one of the edit fields in the Record View Main or Details screen by clicking in the field, Office Tracker Contacts checks with the Server, if online, for that contact record’s availability. If the Server indicates that another client is currently editing the record, a message window will open to notify you: “Contact locked by User Name. You may view this contact but you may not make changes.” This occurs any time you attempt to select the contact record as long as it remains in use by another

user.

If the contact record is available, and you click in a field, Office Tracker Contacts locks the record on the Server and no other client may edit it until you release it. The record remains locked until you save the record, revert the record or select a different record.

The buttons at the bottom of the Record View “Save” and “Revert” activate once you make changes to any of the edit fields. Pressing the “Save” button saves any changes to the contact information and pressing the “Revert” button reverts the information to that stored in the local database via the last update.

If the Revert button is pressed, a dialog appears asking you to verify that the current changes should be discarded and the information reverted to that stored in the local database.

When you press the “Save” button the contact information is saved to your local database and to the Office Tracker Server database. If you are working offline, the changes are stored to your local database, to be reconciled at a later date when the Server is available.