Welcome to the Training Guide

It's more than documentation!

These free tutorials are designed to quickly and efficiently walk you through each component of the system. This is the hands-off approach to training your employees.

System Design

The system is designed in an "umbrella" style architecture, linking all locations together like they were all in the same office. This means changes which occur on one station will appear on all other stations. The system achieves this by networking securely over the Internet.

The system architecture has been designed from the ground up with real world experiences. The system delivers each departments requirements while maintaining an eye on the big picture. The big picture is the modular design (think cookie cutter, building blocks) which allows the company's business model to be fully integrated.

Booking Agent

The Booking Agent is the client program used to access the database of customers and bookings. Once installed, you will find a shortcut in Start > All Programs > Officedoxs Software Inc. > Booking Agent. You will also find a Booking Agent shortcut on the desktop.

Worried about making a mistake?

As an agent, you have confidence that you will not mistakenly erase customer or booking information due to multiple warnings and barriers when deleting information that the system deems important. For example, you cannot delete a customer that has existing bookings. As well, payments cannot be deleted after they are made, only reversed so there is always a history of transactions.

This means you cannot accidentally harm the system!

Friendly Windows™ Interface

The program was designed to act like any other Windows based application, allowing keyboard entry and the mouse to your comfort. However, the keyboard does provide the quickest data entry. Here are the keyboard shortcuts:

• [Alt]-{Letter} automatically jumps to the "hot key" field. This is the underlined letter in the field descriptions. To jump to any field, all you need to do is hold down the [Alt] key and press the corresponding underlined letter. For example, from main window, you can press [Alt]-R-F to jump to the File > Preferences > Schedule Filter window. If you are reviewing an Address Book entry, you can press [Alt]-B-E to jump directly to the business phone field.
  
• [Enter] key can be used to jump to "highlighted" or bolded buttons. These buttons have a bold line around the edges. Whenever you see bolding around a button, you can press the [Enter] key and the program will automatically jump and click that button, just like clicking it with the mouse. You will normally see this bolding around the OK button.
  
• [Escape] will generally exit you out of any form without saving your changes. When you hit this button, it is equivilent to pressing the Cancel button.
  
• [Tab] and [Shift]-[Tab] will jump you through each field in order and reverse order respectively. This can save you time in the Address Book when entering information such as the address. For example, if you were in an address book entry on the City field and you hit [Tab] you would be taken to the State field.
  
• [Control]-[PageDown] and [Control]-[PageUp] allows you to scroll through tabs in order and reverse order respectively. This can save you time when moving from one tab panel to another.
  
• [F1] will display a help page for the area you are currently viewing. So, whenever you are in doubt, you can always hit [F1] and get the answers you need.
  
• There are also hidden hotkeys on selected windows, described in related tutorials.

The windows are sticky, that is, the size and location of the window is automatically saved when you close it. The next time it is opened, it will return to the same desktop space when it was closed. This includes resized and re-ordered columns, which can be done by dragging and dropping them.

If there are ever problems with the columns or resized windows, you may restore all the defaults with View > Window > Reset All Windows.

Logging

The system tracks a history of actions for each booking by employee. This allows managers to quickly resolve problems by reviewing the sequence of events.

Note: As an employee, this tracking will occur under your account, so be sure to logout when you have completed your tasks.

Garbage in, garbage out...

One important piece of advice comes from an old computer phrase, "Garbage in equals garbage out". And it is very true. You will want ensure the customer name and address are correct, plus any bookings have the correct date and time. This extra step can save you plenty of headaches. It can also make your customer database more valuable down the road!

» Continue to Key Features