Multi-lingual OpenInsight Application With ACCESS Backend.

In this application, developed for a European client the requirement was simple.

The application must be sized for a laptop.

The application must be so simple to use that a non-computer literate sales person could use it.

The application must be stunningly sexy as clients would see it on a day to day basis.

The application must be completely multi-lingual, displaying ALL prompts, menu items, button labels and data where the data is coded in the language of the user.

The application must use Microsoft Access as the backend. (Don't ask).

Development timescales and project budgets meant that development in a 3 GL was out of the question.

Lack of flexibility meant that Access itself was out of the question.

So Sprezzatura developers rose to the challenge and delivered the system you see below.

Firstly the user logs in and is asked to choose the client they wish to work with. As they begin to type the client's name the cursor moves through the list towards the closest match.

Having chosen the customer, the screen fills in and the user is presented with a neatly tabbed interface. Note the "Globe" button. As has been said, the system was to be easy to use, so clicking on this button...

Displays a hierarchical listbox which fills in region, country and sales region with just a few mouse clicks.

Similarly, starting to type on any coded field forces the automatic overlay of a popup of all possible code values for the prompt with the cursor positioned on the closest match. In this case the user has just typed "L" - pressing return will fill in "Light Truck".

Clicking on the "Profile Details" tab shows another cute feature - tabs within tabs.

On this screen the user wanted the salesperson to identify the kind of vehicle they were dealing with so clicking on the button next to vehicle type...

produces this popup. This encapsulated routine takes a popup definition and with an associated set of bitmap definitions allows the user to choose from pictures by highlighting with the mouse but still return a code to the calling screen!

On this screen, having chosen the vehicle type, the user has to indicate how many tyres the vehicle has and on what axle type. Simply clicking on the two spare tyres fills in the axle type as "Spare" - and see how the "Tyres/Vehicle" increments to 2!

And to really speed up data entry - to change the axle type, just click with the mouse on the axle bitmap and it will cycle through the available axle types!

Keep clicking until the vehicle is described correctly and there in the Tyres/Vehicle prompt is the correct count along with an on screen representation of the vehicle configuration!

We mentioned that this app is multi-lingual. The user can configure the screens to be in any language. How? Just follow the prompts...Every single piece of text in the system is stored in an INI file for that language and an OpenInsight screen is provided for configuring it.

Once the language is configured, just select the language for this work station, log out, log back in and...

... here we are back in the same app with the same data in another language!

And finally... just a snapshot of part of the ACCESS schema making up the database behind this OpenInsight application!