Administrator Grid Screens

Every domain object in the system has a grid screen that provides a number of tools for finding and working with the individual records in bulk. It is typcially the first screen you see when you click on a link in the side menu. For example here is the grid screen for Shipping Methods:

Here are the topics related to grid screens that we'll cover in this document:

A Note About the Overall Design

The SoftSlate Cloud Platform fundamentally follows a "domain-driven design" (DDD). This is a fancy technical term but it means it is oriented around the nouns that make up the platform. Orders, products, agreements, units, locations, customers, and so on - these are the nouns (aka "domain objects") that make up the features of the platform. To a fair degree the Administrator application is organized around these domain objects also, as you can see from the main menu.

If you're looking to make changes it's useful to think in terms of which noun, or which domain object you're interested in working with.

For every type of object, the Administrator provides a common suite of features that allow you to view and manipulate their individual records. The features are shared by every type of object, so once you become familiar with searching and managing Transfers, for example, you will know how to find and manage Shipping Methods, Forms, Categories, etc., in the same way.

What follows is an explanation of these common features used across all the various domain objects that make up the platform.

Keyword Search Function

By default the 50 most-recently entered records of the domain object are shown on each grid screen. (Certain domain names may sort the records differently by default.)

There are several ways you can narrow down the records you need to find. The quickest and often easiest way to find specific records on the grid screen is to type a keyword into the search box:

This performs a search for the entered text across almost all the fields of all the records in the system for the domain object. If you have entered a number, this includes searching in numerical fields. For the above example, entering "25.00" will include all orders with a subtotal, total, tax amount, weight, etc. of 25.00.

Filters Function

While the search function is quick and dirty (and often all you need), sometimes it pays to be specific about what you're searching for. The filters function lets to you define very specifically, field by field, which records you want. To show the filters tool, click the filter icon in the toolbar:

For example, this filter asks the system to return all orders whose total field matches 25.00:

And here are the results:

You can add multiple filters. For example, here we've narrowed the results down further to orders whose total is 25.00 and whose delivery state is Texas:

Ranges are also possible, for example, you can search for all Orders whose total is 25.00 or less:

Filtering date fields gives you a few additional options. You can enter both a "from date" and an "to date" to specify the date range. In addition you can select a pre-defined time period, such as "Last Month", or select a pre-defined point in the time for both the "from" and "to" date. In this example we're filtering for orders that were placed between 60 days ago and 30 days ago:

The ability to use pre-defined terms such as "Last Year" or "This Month" helps when creating reports (described below). When a report is saved with a pre-defined terms for a date filter, the dates will change according to the terms, whenever the report is run in the future. For example, choosing "This Month" in the future will filter the report based on whichever month the report is run in (not the month the report was created in). If you wish to save a report with set dates, you can do this too. Just set the "from" and "to" dates manually, without using a pre-defined term.

Don't forget to click the "Apply" button at the bottom of the "Filters" popup to apply the changes.

Displayed Columns

The next tool in the toolbar simply lets you define which fields or columns are shown on the screen:

In this example, for the Products grid, we are choosing to hide the Code and Supplier, and display the Product Order and Manufacturer:

Note, you can also drag and drop the column names in the popup, to change to order the columns appear in. Place the mouse over the "grabber" icon to the left of each column name, hold the mouse button or your finger down and drag it to another spot in the list:

Don't forget to click the "Apply" button at the bottom of the "Displayed Columns" popup to apply the changes.

Sorting and Pagination

Most columns are "sortable". They have arrow to the right and left of their name on the main screen, which let you sort the page by that field, either ascending or descending. In this example we have highlighted the sorting links for the product's name column:

At the bottom of each grid there are tools to control the pagination of the records in the grid:

By default the system shows 50 records per page. This value may be increased up to 1000 but no higher. Expect the page to take significantly longer to render when using high page counts, and when displaying a large number of columns. You can also change the default value of 50. This is done from the Advanced System Settings screen, by adjusting the "Default Administrator Control Screen Items Per Page" setting.

Adding New Records

The next tool in the main toolbar on the grid screen is the plus icon, which is used to add new records:

Adding and updating individual records will be covered in a later section.

Exports and Imports

The next icon on the toolbar is a three-dots menu; clicking reveals additional tools including the export and import tools:

You can create an export of every page of every grid screen by clicking the "Export Page" tool. The result is a file downloaded to you in the browser in tab-delimited format.

Conversely, after making changes to the file you can turn around and import it back into the system with the "Import Records" tool. This takes you through a wizard to upload, preview, and then import the records in a file.

These two tools are described in much more detail in the Exports and Imports document.

Save Grid Screens As Reports

The other option under the three-dots menu is to "Save Page As Report":

Clicking this link brings you to the "Add Report" form. It allows you to save all of the filters, displayed columns and other parameters of the grid screen you were just looking at, as a report. The report is stored under the Operations -> Reports section of the administrator, and it can be run manually later at any time. In addition, reports can be configured to be run automatically on a schedule and emailed out to any recipients.

For full details, refer to the Reports Feature document.