18 hours ago, sixwheeledbeast said:

If it is the issue I suggested earlier it's a Admin only thing, mods can only sweep up and make tea.

 

One sugar please

Yes boss.

On 30/01/2022 at 11:35, PeterJames said:

TBF I have used all three of the main contenders now all be it I used the dos version of (I cant remember its name)

I also used Kiss for windows which looking back I think was probably quite good but the administrator I had at the time was not so good. I am very used to AM, and that makes it that much harder as CFW is quite a bt different. You can open as many windows as you like, have several customer data bases open at once, which is handy as it means you dont have to close what you're doing to look at another customers folder or sales enquiry ect. The same with the diary you can have several instances of the diary open or customers open or sales enquiry open. At first I found this annoying clicking on minimised tiles only to find it wasnt what I wanted, but as long as you close the folder when you are finished its not so bad. It is very quirky and I am managing to get used to the quirkyness.

 

Probably my only moan is I said at the very beginning that I didn't want every model camera in the products, with Filemaker I used to update a camera when it was superseded as models change weekly. Cash said that I should just add more models and I was out voted by admin, but as I predicted when writing a quote now I have hundreds of cameras to hunt through most which are obsolete, and none have any sort of order to them. All we needed was IP or analogue bullet or dome. The Irony is that Admin have stopped adding cameras to products. CASH said that it would feck up the PO for returns etc if we dont add the correct model numbers I said we will just have our own product number and change the manufacture part number in products as we stop using it. I may see if I can delete some of the old ones I am not sure if that will have a effect on anything else though

I’m lost with that, we need all the parts so we can track the asset onsite for firmware, warranty and specifications.

7 minutes ago, alterEGO said:

I’m lost with that, we need all the parts so we can track the asset onsite for firmware, warranty and specifications.

Surely thats in your customers database? We do the quote in Cash this then makes up a excel sheet with all the product numbers part no's of the time of installation. this is also linked to the PO all saved in the customers database. If the quote is accepted the database is live. It was the same with Fmaker, the part numbers at the time are saved on the customers quote. What I dont need is superseded parts in my products list, especially the speed that the CCTV industry is changing, I want to be able to get my quotes out the door quickly and efficiently and most importantly using the latest products, and not accidently quoting something obsolete.

35 minutes ago, PeterJames said:

Surely thats in your customers database? We do the quote in Cash this then makes up a excel sheet with all the product numbers part no's of the time of installation. this is also linked to the PO all saved in the customers database. If the quote is accepted the database is live. It was the same with Fmaker, the part numbers at the time are saved on the customers quote. What I dont need is superseded parts in my products list, especially the speed that the CCTV industry is changing, I want to be able to get my quotes out the door quickly and efficiently and most importantly using the latest products, and not accidently quoting something obsolete.

I agree it’s a headache finding parts on quote building, but there is live info you may want to record against the part. All systems work differently though, so tbh I’m probably talking out of turn without knowing how Cash works in that regard.

10 hours ago, PeterJames said:

What I dont need is superseded parts in my products list, especially the speed that the CCTV industry is changing, I want to be able to get my quotes out the door quickly and efficiently and most importantly using the latest products, and not accidently quoting something obsolete.

I think you do need them. When do you discover a part is superseded? At point of ordering? Contract review?

Whenever it is you mark the part in your parts section of your system so it can’t be added to future quotes but the record stays for past installations. It’s similar to marking graded product so you can’t include G2 on a G3 job or intruder on fire etc.

As for the latest product, that’s up to you how often you check and add new (superseded) product, but once you decide on what your approving remember to mark older product so it can’t be used in the future as well as altering your quote template, simple housekeeping tbh.

3 hours ago, jb-eye said:

I think you do need them. When do you discover a part is superseded? At point of ordering? Contract review?

Whenever it is you mark the part in your parts section of your system so it can’t be added to future quotes but the record stays for past installations. It’s similar to marking graded product so you can’t include G2 on a G3 job or intruder on fire etc.

As for the latest product, that’s up to you how often you check and add new (superseded) product, but once you decide on what your approving remember to mark older product so it can’t be used in the future as well as altering your quote template, simple housekeeping tbh.

I am not saying that the part number is deleted from all existence once I decide to stop using it, and it wont be because the original part no's will be saved to the original quotes and the original purchase order. In fact the PO is the most important thing to be saved as this tells me exactly what was ordered for the job. Therefore in the unlikely event of a warranty claim I have a record of what it is where it was purchased, and when, on the customers database.

 

The irony of it all is that if an engineer changes a camera under warranty, he will not likely have the same camera onboard (most likely a later camera) when we send the faulty cam back we will most likely get a later model in return. 

 

How often do I check: Everytime I do a  CCTV quote I compare the suppliers quote to my excel sheet  

 

What I do not need is superseded part numbers in my products database, as this means I have to trawl through 20/30 different products to find the current one.

 

I dont need 20 different 5mp cameras when I am currently only using vfocal or fixed lense bullet or turret, white or grey.

 

We only use 4 different detectors for precisely that reason quad, rfquad, dtG3, rfDT, 

I also have no idea how each of these database products function but it seems to me all about housekeeping, I'd say you still need that part in there. It just depends how the product search works.

Personally it seems backwards to need to remove data from a database to make it more efficient, that would indicate something is wrong.

If you were designing a database system you could have a "obsolete" checkbox for the product, then an option to hide non-current products during quotes/searches; maybe more granular if needed.

The notes of that product could then have a link to the new product, even if you had a chain of dead product links you would eventually find the current replacement via these.

 

Completely generic data housekeeping ramble - but maybe useful to someone...

Databases and computers are tools, I try to work in a way that the tool does most of the work were possible. If that tool needs replacing the housekeeping should try to be standardised so it's easily compatible with a yet unknown future replacement.

I organise a lot of data by date and any date specific data (files/folders) are stored big endian. I use no whitespace only [a-zA-Z0-9_-] inclusive. Everything is camelCase, compact but easy to read, ordered numbers are prefixed (eg 001) to make them naturally ordered within a location. For obsolete data I need to hang around but not pop up every time in searches I prefix with "ZZZdate-" date being the big endian date I archived/obsoleted.

 

For part numbers most of the above can't be done but the latter or something similar maybe an option to help and shove them to the end of the database, if there isn't a way for the db to handle it.

Edited February 11, 20224 yr by sixwheeledbeast
typo

I think nobody seems to think of the bigger picture here. The more I think about it, holding old product numbers in your products area of your database is just another form of hoarding in a paperless way. Maybe I am wrong, but if I need to know when we installed, I can see that on the front page of the customers database. If I need to know what we installed I can look at the spec in the cabinet on the customers database. for warranty I can see it on the PO. I am sure that newsagents didnt keep Marathons on their purchasing list when mars changed the name to Snickers, chocolate bars are only superseded once in a blue moon cameras are changing every other week. 

 

8 hours ago, PeterJames said:

What I do not need is superseded part numbers in my products database, as this means I have to trawl through 20/30 different products to find the current one.

 

I dont need 20 different 5mp cameras when I am currently only using vfocal or fixed lense bullet or turret, white or grey.

 

We only use 4 different detectors for precisely that reason quad, rfquad, dtG3, rfDT, 

 

once obsolete, they'd not show unless you checked the box for obsolete ?

 

if you describe your product as 10 ir leds turrent, 3.2 mm lens ect...

 

what happen when the latest batch is 12 ir leds & 2.8mm lens ect ?

 

if you just amend the part, should you print a spec then it won't match up ?