Application usage basics

1. Signing in to the portal

Once the portal address is entered, the sign-in form appears in the main window; the header and the navigation area around it are still empty. The user name and password are assigned by the portal administrator.

After several consecutive invalid sign-in attempts, sign-in is temporarily blocked for that user. Details — including unblocking the account and restoring a forgotten password — are described in the Security and users guide.
On a mobile device, the sign-in window also offers a display size option. Small screen is intended for phones — portlets and form controls are stacked below one another in a single column. Big screen is intended for tablets and shows content the same way as a personal computer. The default choice is Small screen; the browser remembers the last chosen size for one month after the last sign-in through the sign-in window.

It is advisable to change the password after signing in for the first time. The Change password item serves this purpose; it is in the menu that opens when the avatar in the right part of the header is clicked.

2. Orientation on the screen

After signing in, the main page of the portal opens. The screen has three parts that stay in place throughout the work:

Header — the coloured strip at the top. On the left is an optional logo, on the right the current date with the number of signed-in users, the avatar of the signed-in user, and at the very right the icons for signing out and for opening a new tab. Along the bottom edge of the header is the application groups bar, which is the starting point for reaching any agenda.
Navigation area — the left bar with the list of applications of the selected application group and with favorite items.
Main window — the working area that shows the actual content: the main page with portlets, view pages or edit forms.

In the right part of the header is the avatar — a circle with the first letter of the name and of the surname of the signed-in user. To the left of it is the current date, and below the date the number of users currently signed in; clicking that number opens their list. This number is shown only on instances with more than one licence and in NET Genium Online, and external users do not see it in user mode. Clicking the avatar opens the personal menu with the user's name in its heading; depending on the portal settings and the user's rights it contains Change password, Notifications, MCP token (only for users with administrator rights), Organize favorites, Organize portlets and Log out. On a mobile phone the menu expands in the mobile menu and contains only Change password, Notifications and Log out.

Useful details:

The navigation area can be hidden using the folded-page icon, which widens the main window. This is worth doing for large reports. Together with the navigation area, the upper strip of the header is collapsed as well, and the hiding is remembered in the browser. This option is not available on macOS, on mobile devices (except the Internet Explorer 11 browser and the older version of Edge) and in a portal displayed without frames.
To the right of the avatar are two icons — the first signs the user out, the second opens the portal in a new browser tab.
The personal menu under the avatar (settings of the signed-in user) is not the same thing as the Settings application group, in which the administrator manages the whole portal.
A user with administrator rights additionally sees in the header the switch between user and admin mode and that very Settings application group. A regular user sees neither of them, so their header differs from the images here in this small detail. The modes can also be switched with the Ctrl + M keyboard shortcut unless a dialog is open; the open record or overview stays displayed and the portal asks about unsaved changes first.

On a mobile device the header and the navigation area are not shown separately — their controls are part of the mobile menu, which opens by clicking the NET Genium logo; if there is no logo in the header, it opens with the menu icon. A detailed description of all parts of the screen, including the mobile variant, is provided in the separate guide Control area.

3. How the portal is structured

The content of the portal is organised into four levels. Knowing these terms makes the whole documentation easier to follow:

Application group — the top level, an item in the bar in the header. It brings together applications that are thematically related (for example Customers, Sales, Finance, Inventory).
Application — one specific agenda. It is shown in bold in the navigation area and consists of view pages and edit forms. Larger applications can be divided further into categories.
View page — a view of the data. It shows records in a table, calendar, chart or another overview component and is usually the entry point into an agenda.
Edit form — the screen of a single record. It is used to create the record, modify it and validate the entered values.

The relationship between the last two is the key one: records are browsed on a view page and changed in an edit form. From a report, the form is reached by opening a record or by using the button for creating a new one.

What a user actually sees depends on their permissions. An application group, application, page or individual field the user has no right to is not shown at all — a missing item therefore does not necessarily mean an error.

4. Moving around the portal

The procedure is always the same, from the top down:

Clicking an application group in the header shows the list of its applications in the navigation area. If the application group has no background image (or the user has turned off the “Background image” option), the first view page of the first application that contains a view page opens directly in the main window; in the first application group only if no portlets are set up, and never for the anonymous user.
Clicking an application expands the list of its view pages, or categories, and its first view page opens in the main window at the same time. Clicking a category behaves the same way. If some view pages of the application have a category and others do not, clicking the application or the application group opens the first view page without a category, even though it is listed below the categories.
Clicking a view page shows it in the main window.

Clicking the logo in the header returns the user to the main page.

The portal controls are meant for moving around, not the Back and Forward buttons of the browser. The portal keeps the state of forms in progress and of filters, which the browser history knows nothing about; the browser buttons may therefore be disabled for a given portal. If two parts of the portal need to be open at once, a second tab can be opened using the icon near the right edge of the header.

5. Main page, portlets and favorite items

Portlets are windows on the main page that show what matters most without having to go through the individual agendas — typically new tasks, messages or records awaiting a response. They can be arranged into one, two or three columns and each user arranges them using Organize portlets in the menu under the avatar. A detailed description is provided in the separate guide Portlets.

Favorite items are quick links to frequently used view pages. The currently displayed page is added using the icon in the navigation area and removed the same way; they can be renamed and rearranged using Organize favorites, which is in the menu under the avatar as well as directly at the favorite items in the navigation area. A detailed description is provided in the separate guide Favorite items.

Changes in both dialogs always have to be saved.

6. Record reports

A view page contains one or more view tables. Each of them shows records from one agenda.

The number of rows per page is chosen in the drop-down list in the bottom left corner of the table. If not all records fit, the buttons in the middle of the bottom edge switch between pages.
The number of displayed records is shown in the top right corner of the table. This number reflects the active filters, so it also indicates how many records match the conditions.
If the table has Details enabled, clicking a row shows a panel with further information about the record below the table — the record does not have to be opened for that. Rows can also be traversed using Ctrl and the up or down arrow.
A record is opened by clicking the pencil icon on the left-hand side of the row.

6.1. Table toolbar

The more advanced functions become available by hovering the mouse cursor over the table header — the table name is temporarily replaced by a bar of icons. In the order in which they appear:

New record... — opens the edit form for a new record.
Refresh — reloads the content of the table.
View table settings... — choice of displayed columns, details, tooltips and sorting.
Search... — shows and hides the search row.
Default sorting — returns record sorting to the default.
Hide — hides the content of the table so that only its title remains visible.
Mark records... — shows and hides the check boxes for bulk operations.
Composed condition... — a filter across several columns at once.
Reset filters... — removes all filters set in the table.
Import data... — loads data from a file.
Export data... — saves the displayed data to a file.
Delete records in the view table — deletes the records displayed in the table.

The toolbar adapts to the situation, so all the icons are never shown at once:

New record... is shown only if the table has record creation enabled.
Reset filters... is shown only if a filter is actually set — otherwise there is nothing to cancel.
Hide changes to Show once the content is hidden.
Search, marking of records, import, export and deletion can all be turned off for a particular table; the user's permissions play a role as well.

6.2. Searching and filtering

Records can be narrowed down in three ways, which can be combined:

Full-text search — the searched text is entered in the field above the table and the columns to be searched are selected. After pressing Search, only the matching records remain displayed.
- The words of the search term are separated by spaces; a phrase enclosed in double quotes is searched for as a whole. Each word is searched for in all selected columns, and it is enough for a record if any of them matches the word.
- By default, the connective “and” applies between words – a record must match all words. A written connective “or” or “and” is used between the previous and the next word and also between all further words until another connective changes it. The connectives are written in the language set for the user. A word that cannot be searched for in any of the selected columns (for example text when only numeric columns are selected) is left out of the search; if none of the words can be searched for, no record is found.
- In text columns, a vertical bar “|” at the beginning of a word means that the value must begin with the word, and at its end that the value must end with it; with a vertical bar on both sides, only a value equal to the whole word is found. In columns with a full-text index on an MS SQL Server database, whole words are searched for, and a vertical bar at the beginning of a word finds words that begin with it.
- In numeric columns and date columns, an exact match is searched for; a word that cannot be converted to a number or to a date is not searched for in such a column. A date without time finds the records of the whole day. A column with a reference to another record (foreign key) is searched by the value stored in the database (usually the ID of the referenced record), not by the displayed text.
Column filter — selecting a value in the column header filters the table immediately. Choosing Search (or double-clicking the filter) shows a field in which it is enough to type the first letters and the portal itself offers matching values. Custom filter is used to enter a condition such as equal to, contains, begins with, bigger or less. If a column contains a large number of different values, the Load values option is offered first — the list is not loaded in advance, for the sake of speed.
Composed condition — a filter across several columns at once, for example “invoice price > 5000” and at the same time “due date = today”. It is opened using the icon in the toolbar, after which a column, a condition and a value are selected. On the Templates tab the condition can be named and saved as a button above the table, which applies it with a single click next time; it can be deleted in the same place.

Filters and searches remain in effect even after leaving the page and after logging out. If a table looks empty or expected records are missing from it, the filters are the first place to look for the cause. They can be cancelled using the Reset filters... icon in the toolbar (if a composed condition is set, the icon first cancels only the condition and the column filters only with the next click), using the All option in the filter of an individual column, or using the Cancel search button in the search row, which cancels both the search and the column filters. If the filter returned no record at all, the table also offers the Reset filters... option directly in the message about the empty result.

6.3. Bulk changes

If they are enabled in the table, several records can be modified or deleted at once. A bulk change applies to all filtered records; if marking is enabled and at least one row is checked, it is carried out only in the marked ones.

Before a bulk change, therefore, it is always necessary to check what is filtered and what is marked. Records that do not pass the validation of entered values are not saved, and the portal does not report them individually during a bulk operation.

6.4. Custom view of the table

Unless the administrator has forbidden it, the table can be adapted using the View table settings icon — show and hide columns, change the display of filters, details and tooltips. The portal remembers the setting for each user separately and it does not affect other users. A complete description of the options of a view table is provided in the separate guide View page — DataGrid.

6.5. Other ways of displaying data

A table is not the only form a report can take. Depending on the agenda, these components may also appear:

Tree structure — records organised into folders, typically for documents. A new record is created at the level currently selected in the tree.
Calendar and planners — records laid out in time. Besides a calendar, the portal can also show a Gantt chart or a timetable.
Charts and statistics — summary views of the data.

7. Entering and modifying records

Records are created and changed in an edit form. The controls in it are divided into sections by headings and, in longer forms, split into tabs.

Fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory — the record cannot be saved without them.
Most controls have help on the right. If there is a question mark icon instead, the help is shown only after clicking it.

7.1. Saving and deleting

Every form has three basic buttons at its end:

Save — saves the record, closes the form and returns the user to the report.
Delete — removes the record.
Back — closes the form without saving.

The administrator can hide any of them and can additionally show two more save buttons, so some forms also contain these:

Save and continue editing — saves the record and leaves the form open.
Save and new — saves the record and immediately opens an empty form for the next one.

Changes are not saved until one of the Save buttons is pressed. When the form is left in another way, the portal usually asks about the unsaved changes.

Keyboard shortcuts in the form:
Ctrl + Enter = Save
Ctrl + Delete = Delete
Ctrl + Backspace = Back
Ctrl + 1 = Save and new
Ctrl + 2 = Save and continue editing

The digits in the last two shortcuts are entered on the numeric keypad, not in the top row of the main keyboard area. The shortcut only works if the button in question is actually shown in the form.

7.2. Most common form controls

Picker — selection of a record from a list, for example a supplier from a list of companies. Clicking the icon opens a floating table, which disappears again after the selection. It works in the same way as a view table, so searching and filtering work identically. A detailed description is provided in the separate guide Picker.
Nested table — a view table inside a form that shows records belonging to the open record (for example invoice items). It works the same way as a table on a view page.
File attachments — a file is selected using the Browse button, or dragged with the mouse from the computer onto the appropriate place in the form. An image can also be inserted using Ctrl + V from the clipboard.
Scope — determines who will see the record. Users or whole user groups are selected; all those selected will then see the record. If the field is left empty, everyone will see the record.
Inform other users — after ticking it, a list of users and a field for a message appear. After saving, the selected users receive an e-mail with a link to the record. It is a one-off notification, useful when someone needs to be told about a change outside the usual procedure.

8. Printing and export

Print reports create a finished document from the data — an individual invoice, an order, a stock document or a list of records. The portal first saves the record and then generates a filled-in template in MS Word, MS Excel or PDF format, which the user downloads and prints.

Depending on the particular application, print report buttons are either in the edit form of the record or on the view page. How the reports are created is described in the guide Print templates.

Export saves the content of a view table to a file — it offers MS Excel, CSV, MS Word, HTML, TXT, XML and other formats. Two things apply to it that are easy to overlook:

The records matching the filters and the search are exported, from all pages of the table; marking records does not limit the export. To export everything, the filters have to be cancelled first.
Only the columns displayed in the table are exported. If all the data is needed, it is enough to tick the option for all columns during the export – unless the administrator has disabled it for the table.

A complete description of the formats and their particularities is provided in the separate guide Datagrid data export.

This guide describes working with a finished portal. Designing and managing applications in NET Genium is described in the guide Administration basics.