Those of you who know me or have watched me demo know I have probably WAY too many RCC

screens open at one time!! While I don’t recommend that, often users don’t realize that multiple

screens can and should be open for a single user in RCC to be more efficient. There are some screens

that are safer to leave open than others, so that is today’s tip!!

To understand multiple screens open at one time, let’s discuss ‘record locks’ first. If you have ever

opened a ‘shared’ Microsoft document and someone else has it open, you would get a message similar

to this: (telling you someone already has that item open and could be changing it)

THAT is basically Microsoft’s version of a ‘record lock’. Two users can NOT edit or update at the same

time. It would confuse the ‘save’ to know WHICH change to accept. RCC needs to do the same thing,

not allow users to access the same record and try to change it. So if user A has a customer on their

screen in customer maintenance, and user B tried to do something with that SAME customer, we would

create a record lock and it would look like so:

IMPORTANT: That does NOT mean that this user showing the record lock should abort or ctrl-alt-del out

of that screen!! All that needs to happen is for the first user to get out of the screen they are in or press

‘clear’, that will release the record so user B can access it. IF you are wondering WHO has that screen

open, go to Utilities > What’s Running > Program List so see who is in customer maintenance and may

then have that customer open on their screen.

As to the screens users can safely leave open:

The Fuel ‘Customer Inquiry’ screen should be left open on any user machine that works in RCC

throughout the day. That does NOT mean it should be left open 24 hrs a day. It should be closed when

done working for the day, so updates and other cleanup work can be done by the system. There are

some locks (journal locks) in the system that can clean up themselves if ALL users exit out of RCC. So it’s

good practice to close ALL RCC screens at the end of the work day. Customer Inquiry is a relatively safe

screen to leave open for the whole work day since very little ‘updating’ can be done, only notes can be

added. So the chances record locking are very slim. You can have as many customer inquiry screens

open as you want.

Next I suggest users open the screen or screens that they typically work in during the course of the

day. If my main job responsibility it ‘Enter sales’ I would open that window separately. If my main focus

for the morning is collections, I’d open a collections window. IF I’m the person that preps the deliveries

for the day I’d open the delivery prep screen.

The next window I suggest many users open is manual tkt/SWO entry. Any user that takes the initial

calls from customers that could be a potential request for delivery or service work, those users should

have the screen open, empty and ready to input the request from the customer.

One of the tricks to keeping multiple screens open is to NOT leave customer information up on any

screen that allows you to do data entry. If you get interrupted, get up from your screen, go to lunch,

etc, just press the ‘Clear’ (or Ctrl X in vs 80203 or Ctrl Q in 80601) so that you would be leaving an empty

screen up. Remember this suggestion is for maintenance screens, it does NOT apply to customer

inquiry. Since the main purpose of customer inquiry is for reviewing info, not data entry, you can leave

information pulled up on those screens and not record lock.

So the moral of this story, if you find yourself backing out of the menu you are in, just to go look up

something, you shouldn’t need to do that. If you have multiple screens open, you just click on the other

window instead of going all the way thru the menu. Also don’t forget about the magic of the ‘Edit’

button to move between maintenance areas.

P.S. for those users already on 80601 (and a tempting tidbit for those not yet on it), there IS a ‘hot

button’ in the customer inquiry screen that will now allow users to jump from customer inquiry to

SWO/Manual Tkt Entry screen.

If you have other personnel in your office that you would like to add to our list server to get these tips –

you can to use this link to read more about how to get them signed

up: http://www.rccbi.com/registration.aspx