We setup User Fields in PrintVis so that we can manually add extra info to various documents and reports.
User Fields are usually department-specific and are organized into groups.
Some User Fields can be pre-entered ahead of time and selected by users as needed, which speeds-up and standardizes communication in the plant.
Before we go ahead with user field creation, a thorough planning session is needed where we decide exactly what manual data is needed to be entered and where, and what manual data is not needed because it will be taken care of by PrintVis!
We will also need to decide how the User Field data will be viewed: onscreen, in report(s), or both.
INITIAL SETUP:
Choose which User Fields you want to use.
Go into PrintVis General Setup and enable these:
We have
- 1 level of “Order” User Fields (these user fields are usually called "Case"-based, because they apply to the WHOLE Case, not an individual "Job" line).
- 3 levels of “Job” User Fields
- and 3 levels of “Price Unit” (Calculation Unit) User Fields
We will talk about "Order" and "Job" User Fields and skip the "Price Unit" ones at this point.
Quick reminder: a PrintVis Case can have multiple "job" lines.
These lines are called "jobs", because they are all located on the fast tab named "Jobs":
Some of these "job" lines can in fact be "Quotes" and some can be "Orders".
In a usual workflow, we will have at least one "Quote" and one active "Order".
But this may not always be the case.
So, we have "Case"-based and "Job-based" User fields:
To make things even more "granular", PrintVis offers 3 levels of “Job” User Fields and 3 levels of “Price Unit” (Calc. Unit) User Fields.
Advise: do not go "overboard" with allowing too many places for user to enter the text into.
Work with your consultant to carefully analyze how many user field "layers" you really need,
We want to improve the communication, not to complicate it!
You can start with "Order" (a Case-level) and only one “Job” level - then expand on this if needed.
Remember: User Field entries are not managed by PrintVis – they are 100% manual.
CASE-LEVEL USER FIELDS SETUP
Open "PrintVis User Field Tables" page.
Here is where we would set the GROUPS and then the FIELDS.
To set the GROUPS:
1) Select the Table ID, then 2) hit the “Groups” button
Make sure you are in “Edit List” mode and then enter the desired User Fields Groups you will use to organize all of the manually entered text fields at the CASE level
In the example above, the "Case"-level user fields are going to be used by the Sales Reps to enter the details of the upcoming project.
This way, all data is entered manually as text, to be looked at and interpreted by estimator.
Close the “Groups” page when done.
1) Keep the “Case” Table selected and then 2) open the “Fields”:
Enter the specific data fields and link them to previously entered User Field Groups:
In this example, we decided NOT to show any of this data on the Job Ticket (or any other report).
So, we made sure that the "report Print" field is blank:
EXAMPLE OF A CASE-LEVEL USER FIELD USE:
Sales rep opens a new Case and clicks on this User Field button – on the top of the screen:
Sales rep types-in the rough specs into fields provided, making sure there is enough information to do the quote:
JOB-LEVEL USER FIELDS
As opposed to "Case-level" user fields, "Job-level" user fields are specific to whichever "job line" is currently selected.
PAY ATTENTION to which Quote or Order line you are selecting before you start entering data into Job-specific User Fields!
Many times users complain that their data disappeared, only to discover it has been entered into the wrong "job line".
Open "PrintVis User Field Tables" page.
1) Select the top “Job” line - not Job 1 or Job 2 - then 2) click “Groups” button to create the user field groups
Make sure you are in “Edit List” mode and then enter the desired User Fields Groups you will use to organize all your manually entered text fields that are supposed to apply to a JOB line.
In the example above, we've decided to have
- job-related notes that apply to each major department – these notes will appear on the Job Ticket.
- separate set of user field notes (group code 9500) that will go into a quote letter document and will not appear on the Job Ticket.
Now, to make sure your user field notes appear on the Job Ticket in the right place and are attached to the right department, we will open each department card and assign each newly-created user field group to each department.
In our example: to make sure all prepress-related user fields will appear on the Job Ticket under “prepress” department header, we open the "Prepress" department card, make sure that “Include User fields” is “on” and then select the User Field group 3000:
Basically, we are making sure that "Group User Field" codes on the Departments match the right User fields.
Now, we can go back into PrintVis User Field Tables, 1) select the top level "Job" line and then 2) select the “Fields”:
Start entering all the unique fields and assigning them to specific User Fields groups.
We can create more specific user fields and link them to the same user field group, so they appear under the same "Department" on the Job Ticket.
For example, here we have 3 separate user fields that will have the pre-press related notes:
We can pre-type specific text lines and attach them to specific user fields. This way, user can just select them with the checkbox instead of typing them.
This helps standardize the data entry.
Example:
1 – select the user field
2 – hit “Options”
In a new window, enter specific lines of text you want to be available for selection.
Enter the “Sorting” numbers to prioritize these lines:
Now, when users need to enter a “data”-related info into this Prepress user field, they click on the “edit assist” square button:
and then see the text available for selection:
Once users made the choice (this can be 1 or multiple fields), they hit “OK” and see this:
Bonus points for you if you still take Quark files :)
On the “User Fields setup” page, the numbers under “option values” show how many different “canned” lines of text are available to be selected:
We can even disable the free text entry on specific user fields, forcing users to select from pre-set “optional values” only:
We can also have some text appear on the user fields page automatically, by setting it as an “initial value”:
We can have some user field text appear “always” – usually when a specific “initial value” text has been selected.
Or, we can tell PrintVis to skip the user field if no text has been entered – by choosing “If filled in” option:
We can provide translations of the user field sentences in other languages – so, if the user field is set to appear on the quote letter, we can create quote letters in other languages:
To do that:
1. Select a Userfield sentence we want to be available in other language
2. Click “Translate” button
New window opens.
3. Select the language code
4. Type the sentence in that language. Sorry, no automatic translations :)
The info above is the "first step". Please work with your consultant to do more.
For example, we can make it so that when you enter a digit into a User Field, it will go into a specific calculation unit and be a part of an estimate calculation.
This requires a bit more of a setup, please talk to your consultant!