This section of the PriceIt Demo simply shows PriceIt in action updating the QuarkXPress page. For a clearer understanding of how PriceIt works we would advise you to work through Part 1 of this Demo. It is assumed that if you are working through Part 2, you are either in a hurry to see if it works or you have had trouble with Part 1 and decided to start from a point where it is impossible to make any mistakes. Either way, you will soon be able to witness just how powerful PriceIt is.
The Demo page you are about to work with has already been prepared for use with PriceIt and all the steps in part 1 have been performed.
1. Launch QuarkXPress with the PriceIt Demo XTension already loaded. If you need help in installing PriceIt please see the DocMaker file 'Introduction & Installation'.
2. Locate & open the Price List Demo Marked file
3. Activate PriceIt by selecting PriceIt from the Utilities menu. If PriceIt does not appear on the utilities menu please refer to the DocMaker file 'Introduction & Installation'.
In front of you is an example of a price list in QuarkXPress. You will notice the stock numbers at the beginning of each row corresponding to the products in that row. (Although in this example the prices are in rows, in a tabular format, this is not essential, the prices could equally be scattered throughout the QuarkXPress document).
You will also notice that when you enabled PriceIt, certain elements of the QuarkXPress page became underlined in either blue or red. Each item that is underlined has been setup for use with PriceIt. These are either price fields or Record Keys. (See Chapter 1 for an explanation of Record Keys)
Updating the Document
The document can be updated as many times as you require to accomodate price changes, currency changes, version changes, zone changes etc.
Updating your publication is easy once the one-off process of marking up and configuring connections is complete. In fact it only requires on command from the PriceIt menu.
1. Select Update from Database from the PriceIt menu
The Database Update dialogue will appear.
2. Choose Select Database
3. Double-click or Open the PriceIt Demo Data.txt.LNK.DB data file
You are now promted to select the Update Now button.
4. Click the Update Now button
PriceIt now searches the QuarkXPress document comparing prices on the page with the prices in the database. Once it has done this you are prompted to Update, Update without further confirmation or to Skip. For this Demo you will select Update without further confirmation.
5. Select Update without further confirmation
Your page will now have been updated to reflect the latest prices in your database and should now look as follow
 
These simple steps you have performed illustrate the speed, power and accuracy of PriceIt in updating QuarkXPress documents from database information. Regardless of the number of updates, pages or location of updated information, PriceIt performs pricing changes, version or zone changes this quickly and easily.
That is all that is required for a full database update using PriceIt. As you have seen, this is an extremely fast process - typically 2000 prices can be updated in under 2 minutes!
If you would like to understand how this process works, then please work through Part 1 of this demo.
This concludes this PriceIt demo but now you know the concepts, please feel free to explore further, design your own QuarkXPress documents and update them from the LinkDB file supplied and discover for yourself the power of PriceIt.
Further Demos of other types of publication will be available soon from the MC Research Web Site http://www.mcresearch.co.uk
