Automatic Screen Refresh

[Bill D Michael]

We got around this by setting up a "reservation" system; a screen similar
to the order-entry screen, but "cut down" on the number of fields, in order
to show as many products as possible. When the sales person _thinks_
they're going to sell some product, they bring up the reservation screen,
look up a bunch of products and prices, and put a quantity in next to the
items they think they're going to sell - this "reserves" that much of the
inventory for that salesman, so nobody else can sell it. (It's almost a
quoting system.) They can make as many changes as they want here, affecting
available-to-sell inventory each time, but not yet creating an order. When
they exit the screen, they can either "erase" the reservation, freeing up
the inventory, or they can go straight to the order-entry screen, which
will be pre-populated with the data they had on the reservation screen.
(Finishing the order deletes the reservation data, so it's never "double
booked"...)

Once they've put a quantity next to a product, and the screen has accepted
it (it does a re-read to make sure the displayed quantity on hand is still
greater than the quantity entered) they're guaranteed that product is
THEIRS, it's not going to suddenly go away because of something someone
else does. And they can manually refresh the screen as often as they want,
for the ones they have not yet "claimed".

Downside is that if they don't eventually sell the product, someone else
might have been able to sell it but couldn't because it was "reserved". We
felt we could live with that better than telling a customer, "yes, we have
10 in stock - ok, you'll take 7, oops, sorry, now we only have 5 in stock".
Even if the screen auto-updated, they could be talking about the third, or
fifty-third, item on an order, and suddenly someone else sells some of the
_first_ item on the order, and now it all has to be rediscussed. Not good.

If an order comes in by fax or something, then the reservation screen can
be bypassed and the data entered directly in the order-entry screen. The
reservation system is an optional "nice to have" thing, that our sales
people _really_ love...

Bill

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"This posting reflects the individual views and opinions of the author and
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Somebody sugested a programmed refresh button, like f8 key.
But this is not practical.

Imagine the sales person, talking on the phone with a customer, in order to

sale a specific item.

While talking, he will have to continously hit the f2 key in order to be
sure that the item he wants to sale has not been sold by an other user.
You can not ask him to do that for the 10 minutes phone negociations.

In this case an automatic refresh is mandatory.