Office Express' Customer Page is where you view, insert,
delete and edit individual customer records.
The Customer
Page is displayed below. To view the Customer Page
simply click on the Customer List icon in the navigation bar at the top of the
Office Express window.
The sections below will describe these components.
THE MAIN VIEWING AREA
The main viewing area is divided into two panels, the left panel displays your list of customers while the right panel displays information about the customer that is highlighted in the left panel. These two panels will be discussed next.
The Customer Panel
In the above image, the left side of the Main Viewing Area is where your list of customers are displayed in a grid. This is called the "Customers Panel". The Customers Panel also contains two additional components other than the list of customers.
Below the customer list is a bar with the letters of the alphabet called the "Alphabet Bar". By clicking on a letter you can limit the customer list to only the customers whose last name begin with that letter.
Below the Alphabet Bar is the Row Filter Box. At the bottom of the customer panel is the Row Filter tool. This is a very powerful tool that lets you view only the records you want to see. Explaining how to use row filter is out of the scope of this section and will be covered in a later section. To the right of the Row Filter edit box is the Row Filter Coach button. The Row Filter Coach helps you construct valid filters. Again, this lesson is only to introduce you to the Customer Page features so we will not go into detail here, a small example below gives you an idea of what you can do with row filters
EXAMPLE: With the row filter you can view only customers who have an outstanding balance by typing [Balance]>0 into the Row Filter edit box. You can filter by town, zip code or a combination of fields.
Click here to lean more About Row Filters...
TIPS ABOUT THE CUSTOMER GRID: 1. You can sort the grid by simply clicking on the column heading of the column you want to sort on. For example, to sort by zip code, click on the word Zip at the top of the zip code column. 2. You can resize any column my moving the mouse over the divider line in the column heading and dragging the mouse left or right (dragging means holding the left mouse button down while moving the mouse).
The Current Customer
Let's introduce you to the concept of the current customer. Simply, the current customer is the customer who is currently highlighted in the Customer Panel. The current customer will have a small arrow on the left edge of the customer's last name. When the customer is selected, the highlight bar will turn the customer's information gray with black text to make it stand out.
As you move up and down navigating through your customer list, the current customer changes to the one one with the arrow on the left edge pointing to it. Everything that is displayed in the right panel, to be described next, is related to the current customer in the left panel.
The Current Customer Information Panel
The right panel of the Main Viewing Area displays information about the current customer. As previously mention the current customer is the customer who has the arrow in the left panel pointing to it.
The Customer Information Panel consists of two components. The Information grid and the Information Selection Buttons. Simply, you click on one of the buttons at the bottom of the Information Panel to view the information assigned to the button. For example, if you want to view the invoices for the current customer, simply click the Invoices button.
The Active Panel
As you work inside the Main Viewing area you will "jump" between the two panels. The panel that is active will be surrounded by a black border and the heading for that panel will also turn black with yellow lettering, The inactive panel will not have a border and it's heading will be light gray with dark gray text.
It is important that you understand the concept of the active panel. Office Express is "context sensitive" which means items like the Insert and Delete buttons, change context as you change what it is you are viewing. The Customers Page allows you to do many functions like entering payments, inserting customers, scheduling jobs for customers, creating invoices and proposals and so on to name a few. It is not practical to have a button on the screen for each feature, there would be no room left to display customers! So the idea is that these features perform in context with what it is you are viewing.
This is one of those concepts that is easy to learn but not as easy to explain, so bear with us. If the active panel is the customer panel then when you click the Insert button you will be inserting a new customer. If the active panel is the Customer Information Panel and you are viewing scheduled jobs now when you click the Insert button you will insert a scheduled job for the current customer.
Do you understand yet that one single Insert button allows you to insert many different things? What you will be inserting when you click the button depends on which panel is active and what you were viewing in the panel. The same holds true for the Edit and Delete buttons. This is a very effective design because only three buttons allow you to insert, edit and delete a wide variety of items without taking up much space on the screen.
The next page will explain further these concepts and eventually "tie it all together" for you.
Viewing Customers Continued...
To
continue learning about viewing customers, click
here for part two.
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