Finding your way

Xperios Essentials, section 1 of 7. How the product is laid out, and how every screen in it behaves.

What you will be able to do

• Find any screen in Xperios from the bands down the side
• Search and filter any list without scrolling it first
• Explain why a list that should be full is showing almost nothing
• Read a list's colours without opening a single record
• Add and save a record, and know what happens if you walk away part-way through

Step 1 of 7

One screen, one pattern

Xperios Fusion runs in a browser, and it is built from one pattern repeated. The menu down the left groups everything into bands. Whatever you pick from it opens to the right. Once you have learned how one screen behaves you have learned nearly all of them, which is why this section is worth ten minutes before you go looking for the job you actually came to do.

Home also shows Needs attention, top right - your waiting tasks, unread notifications and issues with news. When there is nothing in any of it, the panel is not there at all.

Use the arrow keys to move between steps.

One screen, one pattern — press Escape or click to close

1. One screen, one pattern

   Xperios Fusion runs in a browser, and it is built from one pattern repeated. The menu down the left groups everything into bands. Whatever you pick from it opens to the right. Once you have learned how one screen behaves you have learned nearly all of them, which is why this section is worth ten minutes before you go looking for the job you actually came to do.

   Home also shows Needs attention, top right - your waiting tasks, unread notifications and issues with news. When there is nothing in any of it, the panel is not there at all.

2. The bands are the product

   Services is what your service offers. Contacts is everyone you deal with. Queries, Reports and Dashboards are the three ways of asking the data a question and showing the answer. Business Management holds the working lists, the things waiting on a decision. Tools does the housekeeping. And Settings holds the lists Xperios works from, which is where most of what you see on every other screen is set up.

   Which bands you see depends on your user group and on the modules your service runs, so your menu may be shorter than a colleague's.

3. Nearly every screen is a record card

   Most screens are record cards. The list of records sits on the left, and the one you choose opens on the right. Click a row to open it. That is the whole idea, and it holds for contacts, resources, service types, queries and almost everything else. Learn it once, here, and no screen in Xperios will be unfamiliar.

4. Typing searches the whole list

   Above every list is a box. Type into it and the filter runs as you type, searching the whole list rather than only the rows you can see. So you never need to scroll first, and four thousand contacts are as quick to search as ten.

5. The funnel, and the list that looks empty

   Beside the box is a funnel, and it opens the extra filters for that screen. Two things to remember. The funnel shows when a filter is set, and the panel opens by itself if you arrive at a screen that still has one applied. And closing the panel clears the filters, which is deliberate, so you can never be left looking at a filtered list without realising it. If a list you use every day looks far shorter than it should, the funnel is the first thing to check.

   This is the commonest reason a list looks like lost data when nothing has been lost.

6. The colour tells you the status

   Each row carries a coloured tile with an abbreviation, the record's name, and a line of fainter detail beneath it. The colour usually carries the record's status, so you can read a screen full of records at a glance without opening any of them. Which instruments are out, which activities are running.

   Some screens give two statuses the same colour - on a resource, out on hire and with a pupil look alike. The record itself is what settles it.

7. Adding, saving, and walking away

   Add starts a new record and fills in sensible defaults, so you change what does not suit rather than completing an empty form. Save checks the record before writing it, and tells you what is missing rather than failing quietly. And if you click away from a record with changes you have not saved, Xperios asks before discarding them. Anything in use is archived rather than deleted, so the history it belongs to stays intact.

The recap

• The menu down the left groups Xperios into bands, and Settings holds the lists the rest of it works from.
• Nearly every screen is a record card - the list on the left, the record you pick on the right.
• Typing in the box above a list filters the whole list as you type, not just the rows on screen.
• The funnel holds the extra filters. It shows when one is set, and closing the panel clears them - so a list that looks far too short is nearly always a filter left on.
• The coloured tile beside a row usually carries the record's status, so a list can be read without opening anything.
• Add gives you a new record with sensible defaults rather than an empty form, and Save tells you what is missing instead of failing quietly.
• Leaving a record with unsaved changes gets you a question first - Xperios asks before discarding them.

Now take the test

Six questions, in Xperios itself under Training. The pass mark is 80%, and you can take it as often as you like — every question you get wrong comes back with the right answer and why.

Everything the test asks is in The recap above.

If you want the detail

This section teaches you how to work. For the full description of every screen and every field, the guide itself is the reference:

• Xperios Fusion — what is in each band
• Record cards — the pattern in full, including Run Query, Extract Data and History
• Field reference — every field on every screen, with its real property name