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SupremeSched Version 1.20 Demo Tutorial Copyright (c) 1990-1991 by SupremeSoft All Rights Reserved Tutorial Index: 1........Introduction......................................2 2........Before You Start..................................2 3........Starting the program and manipulating Employees...3 4........The Job View Screen...............................8 5........The Schedule View Screen .........................10 6........Operations on the Schedule .......................12 7........Printing without Verification ....................16 8........Other features in SupremeSched ...................17 9........Information on the Automatic Scheduling Feature...18 10........Getting more information about SupremeSched.......20 You are free to distribute this demonstration version as long as it is accompanied by all Data files and Documentation. Welcome to SupremeSched, and thank you for your interest. We are sure that you will not be disappointed in taking the time to review this product. This is a demonstration version of the program only, and while you have complete freedom with movement within the program, location files will not be saved, and you may not add any employees. (Though you are able to change employee information) So let's get started. Each of the following procedures are introduced in numbered form so that you will always know what step you are on. Also, any comments or things of interest will appear immediately following. Please be aware of the following notation: < > The item inside the two angle brackets is a KEY that should be pressed. " " Anything within the quotes should be entered, but NOT the quotes themselves. Before you Start: Before you begin, make sure that the computer has been turned on and that the distribution disk is in a disk drive, and that you have moved to that drive. I.e. made that drive the default. For example, if you inserted the disk into Drive A:, you would see: A> . Be aware that <Esc> will take you out of the current area or operation in most cases. However, some prompts will require a No answer and will not respond to an <Esc>. In the regular versions you may toggle the following features: Exploding Windows Sound Shadowed Windows In this demonstration version, the sound has been turned off so as not to annoy you with too much beeping. However the other features have been left active. Starting the program and manipulating Employees SupremeSched can be told where it should look for its data files in case you would like complete freedom in starting the program. This way, you can insure that no start-up error will occur. To do this you would enter in the following: "Set SCHED= [Drive] : [Directory] \ We will NOT be doing this in this demonstration. 1) Type: "demo" <Enter> This will cause the program to be loaded. SupremeSched also allows one to specify a location file when you start the program. If you do not specify a location, the program will load in the TEST location. 2) You are now viewing a welcome screen. Just wait a few moments and it will disappear. At that point you will be at the Main Menu. The View Screen is filled in with information. This View Screen is called the Schedule View Screen. 3) Press: <C> 4) Press: <E>. You are now in the Employee View Screen. As you can see a small Help line is displayed at the bottom of the screen where some commonly used key assignments are. But, even more Help is available. 5) Press: <F1>. You will see a detailed Help screen come up. Press: <PgDn> to scroll the information. Press: <PgUp> to scroll backwards. More on the Help system later. 6) Press: <Esc>. You are now out of Help. 7) Press: <Enter>. You are now Editing an Employee Record. As you can see the program allows you to keep a lot of information for each employee. There are a few important items that the program will use in its special Automatic Scheduling Feature and its Schedule Checks: a) The Preference Code. This is a number from 0 - 9 indicated how desirable this Employee is compared to the Jobs they will be performing. 0 is defined to be the lowest rating, while 9 is the highest. Essentially an employee with a rating of 9 can do any job, while one with a rating of 0 will be limited to one or two jobs. b) The Start and End Times. These fields should only be used by businesses that use Part-Time employees. The two fields indicate what time the employee can start work and what time they must end work. c) The Off Days. This field keeps a record of when the employee can not work. Again, this is most useful for such businesses that use part- time employees. d) The Code. This is the MOST important piece of information since an Employee is only known by their code. (Just like everywhere else in life, they are a number) Let's go and change some things for this employee: 8) Press: <Enter> 8 times. You should now be at the Phone Number prompt. We have bypassed the earlier prompts since they are only simple text fields and besides typing information there is nothing elaborate to do or think about! 9) Type in: "2032541234" <Enter>. Did you see how the program automatically formatted the input into (203) 254-1234? This helps speed keyboard entry. 10) Type in: "071245" <Enter>. Again, notice how the input is automatically formatted into 07/12/45 for you. However note, there is no checking done on the input here. You could easily enter in an invalid date. It is up to you to ensure that the input was correct. 11) Type in: "W4" <Enter>. This field needs only be filled in should you wish to keep this information in the employee record. It is not used by the program for any reason, but makes it convenient to keep such information along with the employee. 12) Type in: "086780987" <Enter>. Again, notice how this is formatted into 086-78-0987. Another speed convenience! 13) Press: <Enter>. We don't really want to change the code number. However, it is worth mentioning that when you enter in a new employee, the code numbering defaults to one past the total number of employees currently in the database. This default can be overriden with your own numbering scheme. 14) Press: <Enter>. Again, we don't want to change this right now. 15) Type: "405" <Enter>. Watch how the program replaces this with 4:05a! That's because the program can interpret a number of different time formats. Here is a list of all formats supported: a) Military time (0 - 2400). You just saw an example of this. b) Military time and colon (0:00 - 24:00). The colon does nothing but make things more readable for you. c) Normal time (1200a - 1200p). d) Normal time and colon (12:00a - 12:00p). Again the colon is only there to make things more readable. No matter what format you enter the time in, the program will always format it to Normal time and colon form. The program assumes that you will enter in the time using the military format, so you must be careful to enter in the "a" or "p". 16) Type in: "678" <Enter>. Whoops! We got an error message. Why? Well, 6:78a is not a valid time. Minutes only go up to 59. 17) Hit: <Esc>. Good now we are back to the prompt and can enter in a valid time. But, let's do something else instead. Let's change the designations back to "Any". 18) Press: <Shift-Tab> (Hold down the <Shift> key and then press the <Tab> key. There now we are back at the Start Time prompt. 19) Enter: "-1" <Enter>. Why -1? Well, the program will now interpret this as indicating that the time can be anything. Therefore it replaced the number with "Any". 20) Enter: "OFF" <Enter>. Why OFF? An off indication is used throughout the program to indicate days when the employee can not work, and the user might be so used to entering OFF that they might want to do so here as well. As you have noticed, the program interpreted this as "Any". 21) Enter: "Monday" <Enter>. Hmm, now why was that wrong? 22) Press: <F1>. Scroll around the help and try to find out why what you entered in was wrong. Once you find it, pat yourself on the back, you can always find help if you need it now! 23) Press: <Esc> <Esc>. Now you are back to the Days Off prompt. Did you figure out how to enter in Monday correctly? 24) Enter: "M" <Enter>. There, that was right. The program has now closed the window and returned you to the View Screen. 25) Press: <Cursor Right>. You have now toggled the screen to display some more information. Notice how the employee name remains the same so that you never forget who you are looking at. 16) Press: <Cursor Right>. Again, the screen is displaying some further information. There are three informational screens in all, each of which displays other information. 17) Press: <Cursor Left> <Cursor Left> <End>. Notice how you are now back at the original screen, and have highlighted the last employee. By pressing the <Home> and <End> keys you can quickly skip to the start and the end of the database. 18) Press: <Cursor Up>. The highlight bar has now moved up one employee. Both the <Cursor Up> and <Cursor Down> keys work as you would expect. 19) Press: <F1>. You are in the help system again. Look around the help screens to see what other keys you can use while in the database. 20) Press: <Esc> <Space> <Cursor Dn> <Space>. You have now moved out of the help system and have "tagged" the last two employees in the database. Notice the small check mark to the left of the employee name. The check mark indicates that this employee will be affected by any of the tag operations. 21) Press: <Del>. A window has opened up asking you to confirm the delete of all the tagged employees. Delete is one of the tag operations. 22) Press: <Y>. Notice how the check marks have disappeared and the employee code, preference, and off days have been replaced with "Deleted..." Naturally this indicates that the employee(s) have been deleted. The program will not actually delete employees until you pack the employee database. 23) Press: <Enter>. Another window has popped up telling you that you can't edit a deleted employee. Once an employee has been deleted that employee may no longer be edited or scheduled. But you can still edit the employee if you wish. 24) Press: <Esc> <Alt-R>. That is hold down the <Alt> key and then press the <R> key. Notice how the "Deleted..." indication has been replaced with the employee code, preference, and off days. You have now "restored" the employee and can once again perform any operations on the employee. 25) Press: <Esc> <E> <E>. You should now have moved to the Employee menu, selected the Edit an Employee option, and have a window open up. This window is called the search window. It allows you to search for an employee based up the employee name, code number, and preference code. However, you do not need to enter in all of the information, only the information you know. 26) Enter: "mandy" <F10>. You have told the program to search for any employees who have "mandy" any where in their name. A window has now opened up called the found employee display. This window displays all the matches the program has found. Notice how the first match is highlighted. You can move the highlight bar just as you did in the employee view screen. Since there is only one match here, you can not move anywhere. 27) Press: <Enter>. Another window has now opened informing you that the employee has been deleted and that you can restore the employee if you wish. If you answer no the program would return to the menu, but if you answer yes it will restore the employee for you and then let you edit the employee. 28) Press: <Y>. Now the edit window has been invoked, and "Mandy Williams" is indeed the employee you are now editing. 29) Press: <Esc> <Enter> <D>. You are now back at the main menu and have selected the Delete Employee option. Once again notice the search window that has opened up. This time we will go looking for someone other than Jack Hammer. 30) Press: <Enter> "88" <F10>. A window has now opened telling you that the employee was not found. In other words, there is no employee that has a code of 88. So, let's try it again. 31) Press: <Esc> <Enter> <Enter> <Enter> <Enter> "6" <Enter>. We are now searching for any employees who have a preference code of 6. Again, the found window is opened and it contains three matches. This time you may move the highlight bar around if you wish to, but notice that the <Home> and <End> keys will not work. 32) Press: <Cursor Down> <Enter>. We have chosen "Alex Mannering" from the Found window. The found window has now disappeared, and the program has moved to the Employee View screen, highlighted Alex Mannering, and is now asking if you wish to delete him. 33) Press: <Enter>. We have told the program that we don't want to delete him. Notice how the program has now returned to the main menu. We will not review the Pack Employee File, the Print Employee File , or the Sort Employee File as they are rather advanced topics. However, feel free to experiment with them as you wish. Adding employees is identical to editing them, except you are entering information rather than changing it. Again, experiment if you wish. The Job View Screen 1) First make sure that you are at the Main Menu. To do this, press <Esc> in order to get out of where you currently are. If the program is asking you "Save (Y/N) .... Press <Esc> to return" then you have pressed <Esc> once too often. Just press <Esc> to return. 2) Press: <C> <J>. You are now in the Job View Screen. Invoke the help system to see what you can do here, and after you have had your fill, exit the help system. (In case you forgot, press <F1> to enter the help system, <Esc> to exit.) Also notice how the bottom line displays the commonly used keys. 3) Press: <End> <Home>. Notice how you moved from Job number one to Job number 30. Just as in the Employee View Screen, the <Home> and <End> keys move you from the first entry to the last. 4) Press: <Cursor Down> <Cursor Down> <PgDn>. You should have first moved to Job number three, and then to Job number 18. The <PgDn> <PgUp> keys move you to the next "page" of information, but keeping the highlight bar at the same relative position. Experiment as you like. 5) Press: <Home> <Enter>. We are now editing the first Job record. The Job record holds information that the program will use when you are scheduling employees. Notice how some of the Jobs have "Description.....x" as their names. These are the default names which indicate that you have not yet described this Job. Also notice how these Jobs have OFF indications in their Start and End time fields. 6) Press: <Enter> <Enter> <Enter> "4". You have now changed this Job's Preference code to a 4, however you have not yet updated the record since the window is still open. For purposes of this tutorial, we don't want to change this yet. 7) Press: <Esc> <End> <Enter>. You have now exited the Editing window, and have moved to the last Job and are now editing it. Now we can change some information. 8) Enter: "Some Job" <Enter> "11" <Enter> "11:30a" <Enter> "3". We have now changed the Job name to "Some Job" , told the program that the Start time is 12:11am and the End time is 11:30pm. Why 12:11am? Recall that the program assumes that you are entering the time in military time. Therefore 11 is really 0011 which means 12:11am. We have also entered in the preference code as 3, but are still in the edit window. 9) Press: <Enter>. There, now we are back in the View Screen, and notice how the information has been updated. But we don't really want to keep this Job in there. Do you know what to do? 10) Press: <Del>. Notice how you weren't asked for confirmation. Any operations on the Jobs or the Schedule are not permanent until you save the current Location. Therefore this delete need not be permanent. Also, it is far easier to remember information for an accidentally deleted Job rather than an accidentally deleted employee. Also notice how the Job name has been reset to "Description.....30", the Start and End Times to OFF, and the preference code to 0. Remember that these are the defaults. 11) Press: <Esc>. We are now back at the Main Menu. There is nothing too elaborate about the Job Screen except you must remember that the <Del> key works instantly and that the Start and End times, and the Preference Code are essential to the correct operation of the program as you will soon see. The Schedule View Screen 1) Once again, return to the Main Menu if you are not there already. 2) Press: <C> <S>. You are now in the Schedule View Screen. For each Job/Employee combination there are a total of 16 fields. One for the Job, one for the Employee, fourteen for the Start/End Times for each Day. 3) Press: <F1> and look through the Help system to see all the commands available in the Schedule View Screen. Currently this location has certain fields filled in so we will go and change some of them. 4) Enter: <3> <Enter>. The 3 indicated what the Job number is, and notice how the program replaced the number with the description of that Job. Names are far easier to remember than numbers! We have also moved ahead one "field" or position and now the program wants to know what employee we wish to assign here. 5) Enter: "jac" <Enter>. The Found Display will appear with one entry, that for "Jack Hammer". What we have just done is search for an employee by name. SupremeSched allows you to enter in the employee code number or the employee name for this prompt. If you enter in the code number, the program will automatically replace the code with the employees name. Therefore, you do not need to know the code assigned to each employee, only their name! 6) Press: <Enter>. Notice how the employee name has now been updated and we have moved to the next field. 7) Enter: "-1" <Enter>. Since this is a time field, -1 indicates that the employee is off this day, and the program has replaced the -1 with an OFF indication. We have also now moved to the end time for Monday. 8) Enter: "off" <Enter>. Again, notice how this was replaced with the OFF indication. Any case combination of the word "off" will tell the program that the employee is off this day. The choice of using -1 or "off" is completely up to you. 9) Enter: <Cursor Down>. Notice how we have now moved down to the next Employee/Job. When you reviewed the Help system you saw that the cursor keys work as you would expect them to. 10) Enter: <Ctrl-PgDn>. (That is hold down the <Ctrl> key and then press the <PgDn> key). We have now moved to the last possible Job/Employee. You have 60 Job/Employee combinations that you may schedule. But remember, you may only have 30 Jobs. You are allowed 60 combinations since an employee may be off one day and another needs to fill their job. 11) Press: <Alt-J>. We have now moved into the Job View Screen. Why have we done this? Well, we forgot what number a certain Job was assigned and we needed to look this up. Pick a Job that you wish to use. (Make sure it is a valid Job and is not undefined) In case you are wondering, you may change/delete and of the Jobs, just as though you had entered here from the Main Menu. 12) Press: <Esc>. Ah, there we are back again, just where we left off. 13) Press: <Shift-Tab> <Shift-Tab> <Shift-Tab> <Shift-Tab>, then Enter in the Job number that you chose, and then press <Enter>. 14) Press: <Alt-F10>. A window has now appeared. In fact this is the same search window you say when you invoked the Edit/Delete Employee options from the Main Menu. Once again, you are searching for an employee here, but we don't know what the employee's name is. In fact, we don't care. We just want an employee with a certain preference code. 15) Press: <Cursor Up> <6> <Enter>. The found display will appear with several employees all of whom have preference code's of 6. Choose any employee you wish, and then press <Enter>. 16) Press: <Tab> <Tab>. We have now moved past Monday, and onto Tuesday. Be careful here, <Cursor Down> moves you to the next Job/Employee combination, NOT the next field. 17) Press: <Shift-Tab>. Now we are back at the end time for Monday. <Shift-Tab> moves you back whereas <Tab> moves you forward. 18) Press: <Ctrl-PgUp> <Shift-Tab> <Shift-Tab> <Shift-Tab>. You should now be back at the Job prompt for the very first Job/Employee combination. 19) Press: "0" <Enter>. (That's the number zero, not the letter o) What happened? Even though Job 0 doesn't exist, it indicates to the program that you are defining this Job/Employee combination. You saw this indication just previously. What happens if you schedule an employee for this Job? Nothing at all. You are allowed to do this, but when you verify the schedule you would receive an error message. (More on this later) Operations on the Schedule 1) Press: <Esc> <O>. We are now back at the Main Menu and have pulled down the Options menu. What are we going to do here? As you can see most of the more powerful features within SupremeSched are at this menu. 2) Press: <C>. Did you see the Schedule View Screen change? You should have. This option clears the schedule information and defines Job/Employee combinations so that all defined Jobs appear on the Schedule with their respective Start and End times. Notice one thing however, the employee's currently in the schedule were not cleared. What use is this? This is a quick and handy method to re-schedule the previous week. Now all you have to do is enter in the employees you wish to use with the associated Jobs, or modify the schedule as you need. At least you don't have to re-enter all those Start and End times! 3) Press: <Tab>. You are now back in the Schedule View Screen. This is because the <Tab> key when used from the Main Menu moves you into the currently active View Screen. Now go ahead and modify the Schedule as you wish. Just pretend you are actually scheduling for this location. When you are finished (or bored), proceed to the next step. 4) Press: <Esc> <Enter> <Enter>. You should now be looking at a window asking you if you wish to Check the Schedule. At this prompt you may answer No, Yes or All. What is All? All causes the program to verify all schedules in the current directory. This allows you to ensure that you aren't scheduling the same employee at different locations. 5) Press: <Y>. You will see the message "Verifying.....please wait". At this point, depending on what you did in the schedule, you will either receive the message "No errors found....press <Esc>" or you will be looking at some type of error message. 6) Press: <Esc>. If you had no errors, then skip to Step 8. Otherwise you will notice that you are back in the Schedule View Screen. Now why would you want to be here? The error message you received informed you of one problem the program found, and you are now given chance to fix the problem. Quite naturally, you don't have to if you don't want to. Why wouldn't you want to change anything? Sometimes you might know you are making a mistake and want to ignore the programs error. 7) Press: <Esc>. This moves you out of the Schedule View Screen and continues the error processing. If there are more errors you will again receive some message and once you press <Esc> you will be moved back in to the Schedule View Screen. Continue viewing the errors until you are returned to the Main Menu. Be aware that some errors are not caused by any specific entry in the schedule. In this case you will see an error message, but will not be moved back into the View Screen. (An example of this is "Not enough time scheduled") If you want to see what a certain error message means, press <F1> when the error message is being displayed. Scroll around until you find the error message you received. 8) Press: <Enter> <P>. This will produce the same prompt as the Verify Schedule option did. This Print option will verify the schedule before you print, and if it finds any errors it will not continue printing. 9) Press: <Esc> <Esc>. You have now escaped out of the entire operation and are back at the Main Menu. You had to press <Esc> twice since you had to escape out of the verify function first, and then out of the print function. 10) Press: <Enter> <N>. Now you are asked if you wish to print the schedule(s). You may enter Yes, No, or All. Once again All will print all of the schedules in the current directory. 11) Press: <Y> <Enter> <Enter>. Watch very carefully, you will see a number of things going on. First of all the program will display "Sorting schedule...". At this point the program is sorting the employee's by name so that the output will be in alphabetical order. (And to give it a chance to perform some other processing). Next you will see, for a brief moment if your printer is off, the message "...Printing....". If your printer is off-line, you will receive the message "Printer error....Press <R> or <Esc>" Pressing <R> will cause the program to retry the print, and <Esc> will abort the entire operation. 12) If you received the printer error message, Press <Esc>. 13) Press: <Enter> <A>. Now you are asked to confirm the automatic scheduling feature. You may answer Yes or No or <Enter>. The default answer when you press <Enter> is Yes. 14) Press: <Enter>. Now you are asked if you wish to use other locations. Usually you would answer Yes to this prompt since the automatic scheduling feature will only schedule employees that it determines are able to work. If you do not tell it to use other locations the program will not know if the employees are scheduled at other locations. 15) Press: <N>. We have told the program NOT to use the other locations. You will see the message, "Scheduling in progress....". Now there are two possible results you may receive. Either the program will respond "Could not Automate Scheduling...Press <Esc>" or "Scheduling completed....Press <Esc>". 16) Press: <Esc>. If you received the "Could not Automate Scheduling ...Press <Esc>" message then return to the Employee View Screen and make sure that no employees have been deleted, or that you did not change any preference codes. If you did, then restore the employees, or the data, and re-do the above operation. Should you have received the "Scheduling completed....Press <Esc>" message, then you should notice how the schedule has now been updated, and is most likely completely different than it was before. 17) Press: <Enter> <V>. Once again we are verifying the schedule. This time we should receive no errors. 18) Press: <N>. Should you receive any errors, just keep pressing <Esc> until you return to the Main Menu If you received the "No Errors" message, press <Esc> to return to the Main Menu. In most cases, you should have received no errors. 19) Press: <Enter> <V> <Y>. We are now verifying ALL schedules in the current directory. At this point you will receive error messages. 20) Press <Esc> until you return to the Main Menu. However, notice the errors you received were mostly caused by employees already being scheduled in other places. 21) From the Main Menu. Press: <Enter> <A> <Y>. We are now going to tell the program to schedule for us again, but this time to pay attention to the other location files. 22) Press: <Y>. The program will now take a little while to process the other locations, and attempt to create the schedule for you. Eventually you will receive the same success or failure message as in Step 15. 23) Press: <Esc>. Now we are back at the Main Menu. If you received the failure message, do not continue and go to the next section. Only if we had ESP could we tell you what to change to fix the problems. If you wish to go through this process without any failures, restore all the files from the demo disk and start this tutorial at the start of this section. 24) Press: <Enter> <V> <N>. We are now verifying the current schedule. You should receive no errors. 25) Press: <Esc> <Enter> <P>. This time, make sure that your printer has been turned on. If you do not have a printer connected then return to the Verify option and select <Y>es this time. 26) Press: <Y>. All schedules are now being verified, and you should not receive any errors. See how easy it was to schedule employees! We now have a schedule that doesn't conflict with any of the other schedules. Great! 27) Press: <Esc>. If you received any errors then skip to the next section of this tutorial. 28) Press: <Y> <Enter> <Enter>. Printing will start after the schedule sorting has completed. Once printing has completed, look over the output. Notice how the employees are all in alphabetical order. And, as they say in the old Ginsu knife commercials, but wait! there's more!! Find an employee that is listed twice, and then look over the time fields for both Jobs. Notice how some fields have an "Other Job" indication. The program has scanned the schedule before printing and found all Employees working more than one job. It then looked to see which Job the employee was working for each day. For the Job the employee is not working at, the "Other Job" indication was given. Therefore, any "OFF" indication is completely valid. The employee is truly off that day. 29) Press: <Esc> <Enter> <M>. You should now have activated the Managers Report option, and if you look quickly, the program is telling you it is analyzing the data needed for the report. Once completed the program will ask you if you wish to output to the Printer or File. 30) Press: <P> or <F> as you wish. If you choose to go to a file, the report is put into a file called, what else, REPORT. Look over the report to see what type of information it contains. The report might not be useful for everyone. 31) Press: <Esc>. You are now back at the Main Menu. Imagine what you have just accomplished, you have created a schedule without even typing in a single piece of information in the schedule! For more information about the automatic scheduling, refer to the "Automatic Scheduling Feature Information" included in this tutorial. Printing without Verification Printing the schedule need not involve the verification procedure described above. There may be several reasons why the schedule may not be completely "correct" and you wish to leave the schedule as is. You may wish to skip the following section if you successfully completed the previous section. 1) From the Main Menu: Press: <O> <N>. You are now asked if you wish to print. You may answer Yes, No, All. If you choose All, then all the schedules in the current directory will be printed, without verification. Make sure that your printer is turned on for the next step. 2) Press: <Y> <Enter> <Enter>. Printing will start after the schedule sorting has completed. Once printing has completed, look over the output. Notice how the employees are all in alphabetical order. And, as they say in the old Ginsu knife commercials, but wait! there's more!! Find an employee that is listed twice, and then look over the time fields for both Jobs. Notice how some fields have an "Other Job" indication. The program has scanned the schedule before printing and found all Employees working more than one job. It then looked to see which Job the employee was working for each day. For the Job the employee is not working at, the "Other Job" indication was given. Therefore, any "OFF" indication is completely valid. The employee is truly off that day. 3) Press: <Esc> <Enter> <M>. You should now have activated the Managers Report option, and if you look quickly, the program is telling you it is analyzing the data needed for the report. Once completed the program will ask you if you wish to output to the Printer or File. 30) Press: <P> or <F> as you wish. If you choose to go to a file, the report is put into a file called, what else, REPORT. Look over the report to see what type of information it contains. The report might not be useful for everyone. 31) Press: <Esc>. You are now back at the Main Menu. Other features in SupremeSched There are numerous other features present in SupremeSched which can not be fully described here since they would take up too much room in a short tutorial. We hope that you have a better idea of what SupremeSched can do, and how useful it is. Not to mention how extremely user friendly the interface is. To get an idea of the full power of SupremeSched, review all the Help topics available. To do so, use the following steps: 1) Press: <H> or <Alt-F1> from the Main Menu. Choose a Help topic and press <Enter> to view it. 2) When you are finished looking through the topic, Press: <F1>. You are now back at the Help Topic Index. Choose another topic and press <Enter>. Repeat this step until you are finished. Feel free to try any function within the demo program. All features are active with only the limitations described at the beginning of this tutorial being present. For further information regarding SupremeSched, please refer to the last page of this tutorial, or contact the person you received this demonstration disk from. Information on the Automatic Scheduling Feature How exactly can SupremeSched create a schedule for you? Well, the exact methods are "confidential", but some information will be useful for when you invoke the feature: 1) The ASF (Automatic Scheduling Feature) will scan the Employee file for the first valid employee it can find. Since you are able to Sort the Employee file, the exact employee found may change. The ASF doesn't care who the employee is, or in what order they might appear in the Employee file. Therefore, running the ASF with the Employee file sorted in Last Name order, and then with the Employee file sorted in Code number order might produce two completely different, yet valid, results. 2) When the ASF schedules, it schedules the Jobs in descending order of preference levels. In other words, a Job with preference level 9 is scheduled first, while one with level 1 is scheduled last. 3) The ASF will determine when an Employee is off and will try to find another Employee that is eligible to work for that job at that time. If no such employee is found, the ASF will return a failure. Otherwise it will schedule the newly found employee to work for that Job on that Day. 4) The ASF is smart enough to know that you do not want ten different employees scheduled for only one day of the week. Therefore if an Employee has been partially scheduled (in other words is filling in for an Employee who is off), that Employee will be the ASF's first choice when it needs another employee to fill some Job. As long as that employee is eligible, they will be used before anyone else. However, this produces some strange results. You may have an employee with a preference code of 9 scheduled to be say, a Cashier (preference level 9) for Monday only. In other words, that employee is filling in for one that is OFF on Monday. Then, say the next Job to be scheduled is that of a Sweeper (preference level 3). The employee who was scheduled to be a Cashier on Monday is now the ASF's first choice to fill the Sweeper position, and will be scheduled for that Job. While you as employer have no problem with that, the employee might be slightly offended at having to do such a "menial" task. What if there was a Job after the Sweeper that had a higher preference level? That is impossible since the ASF schedules in descending Job preference order. The ASF is not smart enough to realize when it produces an outrageous schedule where an employee with a high preference level is scheduled for three different Jobs with preference levels ranging from high to low. In most cases the employee would rather be OFF than to do those "other" Jobs. However, if the ASF doesn't fail, you have a guaranteed perfect schedule. (Well guaranteed is all relative. If you have not set up the program correctly, and that means the Job preference levels, the Employee preference levels, Start and End times etc, the program may not produce a good schedule no matter what!) Whether or not you choose to use the ASF produced schedule, you at least have a better basis to start from than you did before. Also, if you ask the ASF to use other locations, you will know which employees are still available to fill certain Jobs. Getting more information on SupremeSched If you are interested in learning more about our corporate site licenses for SupremeSched, or wish to obtain your own personal copy, please write to: SupremeSoft 105 Deerfield Drive Easton, CT 06612 (203) 261-7510 As of 07/17/91, SupremeSched's price is US $100.95. Please include your Name, Address, Telephone Number, where you obtained this demo version from, the Tag ID that appears on the opening screen, and what you would like further information on. There is also a file on the demonstration disk called ORDER.DOC. Print this out by typing: "Print order.doc" <Enter>. This is the order form you should use if you wish to receive own copy of SupremeSched. Please be sure to include the Tag ID, otherwise we won't know who to thank for spreading the message about SupremeSched. SupremeSched was designed to be a generic program, it will can be made to adapt to any business. However, if you feel that you need certain specific features, we are more than happy to do any tailoring necessary for your business. Give us a call! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SupremeSched is (c) Copyright 1990-1991 by SupremeSoft, All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------