This is the next post in a series of back-to-basics, covering the navigation of the system, which began with Part 1, about the Default dashboard, navigation bar and navigation pane.
As before, I’d venture there’s more than a reasonable chance that even more seasoned users will pick up a thing or two here, particularly points highlighted in bold.
Picking up near where we left off, we’ll look at User options within the Settings menu, represented by the gear icon. Every enabled user of the system, regardless of assigned security role, should be able to see this:
Visual tab
You’ll note there are up to four tabs within User options, depending on a user’s security role. These are (i) Visual, (ii) Preferences, (iii) Account, and (iv) Workflow. All of these tabs are visible when viewing User options as an administrator1.
Starting with the Visual tab, there are essentially two options – the ability for a user to (i) chose their own colour scheme for the system, and (ii) change the size of the interface.
Setting different colour schemes can be a useful visual prompt if you work across multiple environments (e.g. production, UATUser Acceptance Testing is a process where end-users test software to ensure it performs as expected before launch., SITSystem Integration Testing is the testing of a system with extensive configuration, integration and/or customisation, to ensure all are functioning properly and data integrity is preserved., development), or can just be a nice, albeit limited, way of making the system feel like your own.
Interestingly, even when individual personalisation is disabled, users are still able to rebel against their corporate overlords and pick their own colour scheme!
Preferences tab
Moving to the Preferences tab, users (or administrators) can:
- choose their default company when logging in, if they have access to more than one legal entity,
- choose their default page when logging in – options will depend on the security role, but can be:
- Default dashboard
- System administration
- Feature management
- Essential dashboard
- Employee self-service
- Prospective supplier information
- set whether they want to (i) view or (ii) edit form data by default,
- choose language, number formats (ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2), time zone (by GMTGreenwich Mean Time is the time measured on the Earth’s zero degree line of longitude, or prime meridian. offset), and country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3),
- disable Document handling, which is the ability for a user to add attachments to records or not,
- enable automatic URL updates, which means when you filter a view, e.g. Customer groups in the Customer grid view, the URL in the browser will automatically update, for you to quickly bookmark or copy/share with colleagues2 (see screenshot below), which in my opinion is incredibly useful,
- enable Enhanced tab sequence, which includes all fields when using Tab to navigate,
- enable tooltips on focus, which brings up tooltips whenever a field is selected, and lastly,
- to include HR tasks on the Default dashboard.
Account tab
The Account tab includes some read-only fields, that reflect user configuration (i.e. how a user can login).
The Email provider section covers configuration for sending emails, which should be left for system administrators to manage.
The Electronic signature section covers user-specific configuration for electronic signatures, which we’ll cover in some future posts.
Workflow tab
The Workflow tab allows users to choose if they want:
- notifications to be sent via email, and if so, gives the option of an alternate email address to the one registered to their user ID,
- notifications to be sent to the Action Centre – that’s the bell icon in the top right of the navigation bar,
- multiple notifications relating to an individual workflow to be grouped or sent individually, and
- options to manage delegation (see next section).
Workflow tab: Delegation
This is worth a quick section on its own! Delegation allows you to automatically delegate the authority to approve/complete your work items to other users, such as if you’re anticipating any extended time off work, or if a colleague has interim DOADelegation of Authority is the assigning of decision-making power and responsibility within an organisation. or responsibilities, which doesn’t warrant editing workflows or user groups3.
You can define set periods for delegation, disable/re-enable delegation rules, and review historic delegations. The basic steps are as follows:
- Click Add and then in the Scope field, select an option:
- All – Delegate all work items that are assigned to you.
- Module – Only delegate work items related to all workflows within a specific module. If you select this option, you must select the desired module in the Name field, e.g. Purchase ledger.
- Workflow – Only delegate work items related to a specific workflow. If you select this option, you must select the workflow in the Name field, e.g. Supplier invoice journal.
- In the Delegate field, select your colleague’s user account to delegate the work items to.
- Use the Start and End date/time fields to specify when you want the rule to apply.
- The keyboard shortcut “T” is useful here, to set the start date to “Today”.
- Similarly, the keyboard shortcut “N” is useful to set the end date to “Never”.
N.B. You can also manually delegate work items on a one-off basis, by selecting the Delegate option in the Workflow menu and then entering the user to be delegated to, as shown below:
Usage data and Personalisation
Lastly, a quick word on the two main options you might notice at the top of the User options page, on the Action Pane, namely (i) Usage data, and (ii) Personalisation:
- Usage data is where individual application selections and interactions are saved between sessions. This isn’t configuration (e.g. system setup), or personalisation (e.g. custom views), rather it is information such as column widths or selected ranges or values on a specific report dialogues, batch jobs, or forms. You can browse these records, or in the event something is failing for a specific user, individual records can be deleted, or entire usage data can be reset. It’s a key early port of call when resolving user issues.
- Personalisation is where you can see a list of all personalised views, listed by form name (i.e. Page). Depending on your security role, personalisations can be exported, or copied to all users, groups of users, or individual users. We’ll definitely do more posts about personalisations in due course, as they help to tailor a system without the cost of customisation or (major) concerns when it comes to updates.
- Administrators can view and change User options for all users via the Users form in the System administration module. ↩︎
- It is possible to go to Options on the Action Pane, and select ‘Get a link’ on any filtered view to achieve the same effect, without enabling URL manipulation. ↩︎
- We’ll do more posts about workflows in future, including why it’s best to assign work items to user groups, and not individual user accounts. ↩︎