XpertMart Quick Start Guide: Embedded Catalogs

XpertMart^™ Quick Start Guide

Lesson 6:
Embedded Catalogs & More Data Entry

User Manual Chapters to Read
Topic: XpertImage™
Topic: XpertDate™

Other Resources

Lesson
Now that we've laid a solid foundation, it's time to proceed with the data entry. We are now ready to enter the Departments that you first brainstormed during Lesson 2.

You will want to do this in steps. The first step is to open the Lines Catalog and enter each of the Lines you came up with previously.

Next, open the Classes Catalog and enter each of your Classes. If you will be using Subclasses and Types, do the same for these.

Open the Departments Catalog. Notice the 3 ?s in the records bar. Now you still haven't created Departments, these are just different levels of classification for your merchandise. An actual Department is a unique combination of a Line, Class, Subclass and Type.

Go ahead and click the New Record button. Select a Line from the drop-down menu, then a Class. If appropriate, also pick a Subclass and Type. When you've made all four selections, press Save. This is your first Department.

Press the New Record button and repeat these steps to create a second Department. Notice the drop-down menus. Up until now all of our data entry has been in open fields. For the first time we are selecting data that has already been entered.

These are embedded catalogs: they are pointing to a catalog that already exists. Notice the faint gray box around the Lines Catalog and the other three. Notice the two buttons: one pointing down and one pointing to the right. The one that points to the right is the Zoom button that will take you directly to the original catalog. Click on the Zoom button if you want to make any changes to the original entries in the catalog, such as editing the name of an existing Line or adding a new Line altogether.

Note that when you zoom out to the original catalog you do not have to close the catalog you are working on. As you are adding Departments, if you realize you need to create a new Subclass you can zoom to the Subclass catalog, add your new Subclass, Save and Exit and you'll be right back in the Departments Catalog. The change you made to Subclass Catalog is now part of your database.

Go ahead and enter all of the Departments you came up with into the Departments Catalog. Note that the Departments Catalog is an excellent place to use the Copy button to cut down on data entry time. If you have 8 Departments that will all use the same Class, for example, you can enter one of these and then use the Copy button 7 times instead of reentering all of this information.

When you are done entering your Departments, practice doing some Queries in this catalog. So far all of the Queries we've done have been in open fields. Now try doing a Query in a closed field (i.e. an embedded catalog).

As an example: follow these steps:

1) Clear Form
2) Select one of your Classes from the drop-down menu
3) Execute Query

You'll notice the Query pulled all Departments that have the Class you chose. Try a couple different Queries this way.

Now that you're done with Departments, let's go to the Brands Catalog. If you haven't already, add some of your brands to this catalog. You do not need to enter every single brand at this point, since you can add these on the fly using the zoom button. However, the more data you enter into your Vendors, Brands & Departments catalogs upfront the easier it will be when you have to work on Styles & Items.

Optional Exercise 1:
Download the logo of one of your brands as an image file (such as .jpg or .bmp) and save it in /Main/Images. If you do not have one, get on the Internet and do a search for your brand and right-click on the logo to "Save As."

Now go to your Brands Catalog and find the entry for this brand. Double-click the blank space on the left and use XpertImage to add the logo. Click Save. Even if you may decide that it is not worth the effort to enter photos and images into your database, it is still good to know that this feature exists and how it works. On the other hand, if you plan on having a web store you will definitely want to learn how to use XpertImage.

Optional Exercise 2:
Open the Seasons Catalog. Enter a new season, such as "Fall 2005". Use XpertDate to enter a start date and end date to the season. Save changes. If you do not plan on using Seasons then you can delete the entry.

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