Menus…
Run SdKennel. After the About splash screen you will be presented with the Main Switchboard.
Click on About. Here you can see some license information. What’s New contains a history of the development of the software over time and versions. Click Close.
Sd Software Maintenance is also on option on the main switchboard. This is for Sd Software use only and is password protected. In case of trouble, this allows us access to protected segments of SdKennel while troubleshooting over the phone.
Click on Maintain Codes. You are presented with a menu of tables that drive your application. You use these tables to customize SdKennel to your business and environment. As you will see later, you can also access these tables from the primary data forms.
Click on Pet Types. This is a form where you define to the system the pets that you will board. Here you can add, change or delete any of the existing list. Let’s insert one.
Data Entry…
Click on Insert. You are now positioned on the last record ready to enter a new pet. Enter "Elephant". You’ll notice as soon as you type a pencil icon in the vertical bar to the left. This indicates unsaved data. Clicking on another record, tabbing to another record, exiting the form or clicking on that pencil will save the data. Save the data. SdKennel will always save your data unless you specifically tell it not to. Now let’s change a record. Maybe we only board Snakes and so do not really want it to say Reptiles.
Click on the Reptile. Change it to Snake. Save it. Be careful in your use of changing the names of items in code tables because if you previously added a reptile to a customer, it is now called a snake. This is primarily here to allow correction of spelling errors and the like. Now let’s delete the ones you will not be boarding.
If you will not be boarding Snakes, click on the block to the left of Snake. This is a record selector (where the pencil appears). When you click on it, it indicates so by the pointer and color. Now you can delete the record either with the DELETE key, or Right Click and follow the shortcut menus to Delete. You will be asked to confirm.
Next, let’s see what happens when we try to delete Dog. Try it. You get a message that in effect says that we cannot delete Dog because there are some Dogs in the database. To delete this entry, you must first delete all the dogs from your database. Let’s look at undoing something.
Click on Dog. Change it to Dogger. Notice the pencil. It says we have changed the field and therefore the record. Now hit the ESCAPE key. Notice it undo’s the change to the field. Undo has 2 levels. For example, change Dog to Dogger again. Then tab to the next field – the Notes field. Type "friendly mutt" but do not exit the field or record. Now hit ESCSAPE just once. Notice the first Undo undo’s the field, the record has changes. Hit ESCAPE again. Now the record has been returned to its original state. This is the 2 level undo. Had there been 5 fields on the record and we changed them all, before saving, if we hit ESCAPE, the first undo undo’s the change to the field we are in. The next ESCAPE undo’s the record.
As you know, in Windows there is usually several ways to do the same thing. For example, to add a new record, there is a button on the toolbar, or you just tab to an empty row, etc. Knowing the Windows interface is an asset, and the more you use it, the more techniques you will come across to add to your knowledge. The toolbars at the top also do many of the commands we just tried (e.g. Save, New Record). However, because this is a modal dialog (i.e. you must finish here and close it before opening another form, you do not have access to the toolbar from here). Let’s close this form.
Click Close and then from the switchboard click More>>>. Click License Information. Here you have a form with the full license information and information about your company that will be used on various forms and reports. You can also change the logo bitmaps here. You notice that some license information cannot be changed by yourself but only by Sd Software.
Close the form. Let’s go back to the main switchboard and click on Customer.
Customers.
The first thing you will see is the Customers Tab with all the customer related information. Let’s add a new customer. Click Insert New Customer. Enter some information, Kirk for the last name. You’ll notice the software assign the customer a number. One of the fields maintained by the code tables on this tab is Province/State. Let’s pretend this customer is from Florida. Enter Florida under Province/State. You’ll notice when you try to tab out you get an error. Florida is not in the code table for Province/State. Hit ESCAPE to remove Florida and thus there error. You could now go back through the menus looking for the Province/State code table. Or even better, look for a yellow file folder looking icon near the field (usually to the right or above). Click on it. Add the abbreviation for Florida and enter Florida. Close the form. Now your can enter the abbreviation for Florida or use the down arrow on the combo box to select Florida. Now let’s change the Province/State to NS. Go back to the Province/State table and delete Florida. Had we left Florida in the combo box, the delete would fail because Florida is in use in the database. (In database terms, this is called Referential Integrity.) Let’s give Kirk a pet.
Pets…
Click on the Pets tab. Now, if you haven’t entered data in all the required fields, you will get an error message and the pencil will remain. Fill in the remaining required fields (required fields are Last Name and First Name). The data is saved. Enter a pet name of Boots, a cat. As you can see, you can enter minimum information if in a hurry or if you do not have it all at a particular time. Now let’s do a booking.
Bookings…
Click on the Bookings Tab. Double click on the Arrival Date. A calendar comes up, select 01sep2001 and then OK. For Departure Date, type 22sep01. Click on the pencil to save. You will be advised that the time fields may be empty. But we made an error. Boots is leaving on 25 September. Click on the Departure Date field, then holding down the SHIFT key, hit the "+" key 4 times. Oops, one too many, release SHIFT and just click on the "-" key once. As you can see there are several ways to enter dates. Enter boots as the first pet this person is bringing in. In this case it is the only pet. We are done, close of form.
Comings and Goings…
Click on the Comings and Going button. Enter a date of 28aug01. There is no one in the kennel that day. Increment the date by a day then another, then another (wait a second between each for data to load). Eventually on 01sep01 we see some data. Kirk is arriving with Boots. Now continue ahead one day at a time. 11sep01 is interesting, a couple people are showing up. Click on Preview Report. You could print this and take it with you. It shows you your schedule for the day. Continue forward watching the days until all customers are gone. OK, so today is the day Boots is leaving. Let’s do an Invoice for Kirk. Close the form. Close the report.
Searching…
Click on the Customers form. Customer are returned in alphabetical order. Let’s say we have hundreds so we would not want to advance to Kirk via the VCR buttons at the bottom of the form. Put the cursor in Last Name, click on the Binoculars on the toolbar. Under Find What enter "kirk". Note the options below, the field it will look through and how (i.e. the match field). Under certain search conditions you may wish to search all fields and/or any part of those fields… Lick Find Next and then Cancel.
Invoicing…
Click on the Invoices Tab. The top right hand corner of the form show Kirk’s name to reinforce that we are on the correct record/customer. Select a Booking ID. The combo book only shows the one booking. Pick it. Select Cat Days for the product, 25 days, and 10% discount for the long stay. Boots also had a 6" rawhide, tough cat. The total displays after the detail record is saved. Print the Invoice. This software is not meant to be a full invoicing system in this version. You do not have to use this function. For a small business, it is nice and short and simple.
Preparing your database…
To illustrate how to get rid of information, we will now delete all of Kirk’s data. Normally you would not do this as it would delete history. The next version of SdKennel will have some cleanup facilities, however, you would usually not want to delete this type of information.
Click on the Customers Tab. Make sure we are still looking at Kirk. Click on the record selector to the left. Notice it is a bit larger than when there is rows of records. The selector illustrate all the data that will be deleted. Hit the DELETE key or use the toolbar. Because you have bookings for this customer, referential integrity will not allow this delete. Click on the Bookings Tab. Click on the record selector to the left of the Booking ID field. Same problem. Click on the Invoice Tab. Delete the invoice. All details will be deleted. Good. Now delete the Booking. Good. Before going back to delete the Customer, we must delete the Pets. Delete Boots, then delete Kirk. Done. Seems painful, it is. But it would be worse if the database allowed invoices or bookings or pets to be in the system for customers that do not exist etc. And a one button delete all could be written – and once used, all data for a customer would be gone. Ouch.
ZOOM fields…
Notice the Warnings field for Jones’ pet Trix. And read the contents of the Notes field.
End…
This tutorial could go on forever, however, the main features have been pointed out. Knowing the Windows interface makes this very easy to use, knowing Microsoft Access even easier. More information on Microsoft Access forms, Access shortcut keys etc.
Continue on experimenting. The when finished, you can delete all the data you do not want. Any data you do enter will be there after you register your license.