Manager Forum

Hello fellow members. This is my first post here, so please redirect this if I put it in the wrong place. We've recently upgrade from 5.9 to SE 6.5. I like a lot of the upgrades, however this "lock record" feature is becoming quite a pain. We were told there is a way to disable this feature, so I'm trying to find a reasonable work around. I have a front counter person who needs full access to write up customers when they arrive. I do the majority of billing and parts ordering. My business partner also does some of the billing as well when I'm busy. Is there anything we can do to avoid the ownership issue, at least for these 3 locations. I've also considered putting in the tech viewer for other locations, however than they lose the ability to direct link to their repair data. What are you guys doing about this? Thanks, Scott

Welcome to the Forum.

I wish I could tell you what you want to hear, but you cannot turn off this feature. It is vital to database stability.

Are you aware that you can take ownership when another workstation has a record locked? Just click on the More Info button in the pop-up dialog. It will show you which workstation has the record and give you an opportunity to take it.

It was a little weird at first, but after a few weeks my staff easily adapted to the new format.

Yes, I do know how to do this, it's just a PITA in my opinion, and don't know why it's being forced upon us that don't want it. Was hoping there was some other way to give the techs what they need without interrupting those with full access.

The problem is as ive experienced if you do not have this feature then you lose all the info either one inputs while open on another station. I agree its kind of a pain but way less of a pain then losing all the information you inputted.

In 5.9, when one workstation was working on an order and another workstation had that order open and made a change, the result was the loss of data. Sometimes a lot of input had to be redone. Locking records prevents that UNLESS you manually unlock the order. It takes less than 5 seconds to manually unlock an order, although I wouldn't do so without advising the locking workstation first.

I understand it's frustrating, but 5 seconds now could prevent 5, 10 or even more minutes of retyping. Seems like a fair trade to me.

We agree the the locking stations is a pain.. BUT it is a great saver of information. We had loss of information & that is an even bigger PITA.

If you are typing up orders then maybe do your work in the 9 estimate fields on the other pages. A person can be in the order & another work in the estimate at the same time with out locking each other out. Then your work can be copied & pasted into the order or sold as a revision at a later time. We use Revisions/Estimates all the time. You can even have 2 people working in 2 different estimates.

I hope this helps a bit.

ARS

Thank you all for the information. I kind of figured this was just the way it is, but never hurts to ask. I do understand the benefits of not losing data, just don't remember ever having that problem in 5.9. I guess my only request now would be that we could somehow get a tech viewer that links repair data, that would at least help.

I don't like using the unlock feature, Still not trusting. I hate losing info. But I find if I dont use the unlock feature I waste a ton of time each day walking to the other computer to shut down the RO i need to get into. It drives me nuts.

So this "user issue" keeps happening. How much would it cost for a hack, um i mean "fix", that when someone leaves an RO open on their monitor for a set amount of time, say 5 minutes, and that RO has zero activity on the machine, that something is triggered. That machine is locked and to unlock it the user must type something like "I will close down ROs when I am done with them" ten times before they can use the system again.

Rich wrote:So this "user issue" keeps happening. How much would it cost for a hack, um i mean "fix", that when someone leaves an RO open on their monitor for a set amount of time, say 5 minutes, and that RO has zero activity on the machine, that something is triggered. That machine is locked and to unlock it the user must type something like "I will close down ROs when I am done with them" ten times before they can use the system again.

I will kick in for this one!!!!! Trying to train the boss to close them is like pulling hens teeth....

We're fortunate because I'm guilty of this as well. Everyone here has a 2-way radio and it's a simple thing to just call over before taking possession of an order. And the radio's help in a lot of other ways too.