Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this episode, our host Bret Alarcon is joined by EDU Manager Zach Malloch to discuss the role of using Simple Permissions on the Menu Design Profile. Zach walks through setting up a System Menu Design Code, enabling Simple Menu Permissions in the Menu Design Profile, and assigning the Menu Design profile to a User Group.
Recording
Transcript
Bret Alarcon 0:08
All right. Hello and welcome to this week's edition of RecChat. I'm your host Bret Alarcon. So for today, Zack is going to be talking about menu design and covering simple menu permissions. So what is the menu may ask? Well, if you don't know, that's the little bar on the left side there when you're in RecTrac. It gives you the options to pick from to get into different Menus. So Zach's gonna be showing you how to set that up. So if you have any questions during the presentation, there's that little q&a Button down at the bottom, just Click that and it'll bring up the question box, and you can Type your questions in there. If you have any comments during the presentation, Click that little chat box, and you can leave your comment as we go along. So with that, you're up Zach.
Zach Malloch 0:53
How's it going today, Brett?
Bret Alarcon 0:54
Oh, that's going how you doing?
Zach Malloch 0:56
Not too bad. So I was informed by you actually, just recently that you have some jokes prepared, just in case there are any technical difficulties. So I've had a couple of issues with my internet today, I just rebooted everything. So hopefully, we have at least half an hour of good service to start talking about some Menus. But just in case, there is actually something to look forward to if you start seeing me get choppy here. So let's see what happens and start talking about RecTrac Menus. So I promised in this presentation that I would include basically your menu checklist. And I don't actually have like a physical checklist created. But it is three things. It is your menu design code, it is your menu, design Profile, and then it is your custom menu. So with those three things, we'll just revisit those really quickly. So if we go to system code management, we can create as many different menu design codes as we want to to cover all the different ways that you guys might have your employees accessing RecTrac and getting into the Menus. So it is actually called menu design, there is a system code that is just called design that is actually Screen design. It's the first one that was developed. So we just call it design, and then we added menu design as a separate piece of it. So that's why it is specifically called menu design. But that is the Type that we'd want.
Zach Malloch 2:25
So let's just say that I'm going to do one here for the virtual symposium. So any virtual symposium users will get to use this awesome version of the menu design. So step one system code created menu, design system code, complete, step two, is going to be it doesn't really matter which way you go in this direction, you really need the system code first, because the system code is what ties together step two, and step three in whichever order you go. So if we want to start with Profile assignments, we can certainly do that. And then in Profile assignments, we have our menu design, you know what actually, I'm going to start with just the regular menu design piece. And I apologize for changing my mind real quick, I hope that this will, because I want to focus on the simple menu permissions, I think this will make a little bit more sense. So if I then create my Custom menu design for the custom code I just created for virtual symposium, I hit continue. And so technically, if you want to use the simple menu permissions, then you don't have to adjust anything in here, you just have to make it exist as it is tied to that menu code. So if I hit done, I can see that I have one linked to the virtual symposium menu design code. And everything is just always based on the RecTrac menu defaults because we're in RecTrac. So that makes sense. So technically, that's all you have to do here. Now I'm going to come back to this. But now I'm going to switch over to the Profile.
Zach Malloch 4:05
So I could have created the Profile first. And we'll just call this VSI menu design. And it's going to be a menu design Profile. And that should only have one subtype available, which is menu design. And I'm going to use the code as the description. And now we're going to open up all of our options for the menu design Profile. So the most important piece of this is saying that I want to display the virtual symposium menu. And if I wanted to customize it for mobile, I have that option as well. I can also it doesn't actually do anything in this design area. It could just as well be a single Pick list. In Screen design. You can have kind of an order of hierarchy. So if a custom Screen exists with a particular code, it will show that one if not then it'll go to the second one on the list the third one And then just go to whatever the defaults are, if there's no custom Screen. With menu, it's really, you're just choosing one menu and you see that menu, there's no real hierarchy related to it, we have our position for panels. So these are the the option to switch back and forth between the various programs. Right now I have multiple panels set up, I think most of mine are at the top, but we can put them at the bottom if we wanted to. And then we could add a common code if we wanted to for the mobile interface. And then we have the option of hiding the ribbon after login. Now this, the ribbon is from our older version of the UI, where we had it kind of at the top and it would display when you Click on it, and then disappear when you Click off of it. If you wanted to auto hide it. I don't really think that that applies to the Next Gen UI. But here is where we get to all of the kind of the the crux of witnesses. So if we decide to use simple menu permissions, the users will be able to see all of the modules under each of these kind of broad areas for the system. So management modules, the processing, menu, Inquiry and Reports. And so when we're looking at menu design, you can kind of see the areas where things are kind of dropped down. But actually, every single individual program is classified as either a management program, an inquiry program, a report program, or a processing program. So if I just want to say that I'm making something just for my front desk staff, and I don't want them to get into anything related to management or reporting, I just want them to be able to do the daily processing and the inquiry side of things.
Zach Malloch 6:41
So I'll just go ahead and save this. Now I have this Profile created. So if I open up my menu design area, or there's my virtual symposium menu, design vs menu design, and I'm currently in here as my zo M user, just as a real quick thing, if you are used to using the Z Z Z, the master user of RecTrac, the super user, it will never change the menu design no matter what you link to it, to prevent people from locking themselves out entirely if their database or from an important areas of the database, we make it so this easy user can never have anything other than the full access to the menu. So there have definitely been people trying to set things up. And they were using the Z Z user as their test. And that does not work very well. So I'm linking this Vermont system or the sorry, virtual symposium menu designed to my zero am user. And if I log out, then when I log in, I should have a much more limited menu. Actually, it doesn't work if I then log in with the wrong account. So I'll log in with the right one. And it shouldn't really matter what user group I'm picking because yeah, there I go. So all my favorite buttons are filtered based on that requirement. If I go to my menu, and I opened up management, nothing there if I look at reporting very, very little. So these reprint options aren't technically report options, but we're printing something. So they're kind of grouped with reports. So these are technically processing programs. And then I do have inquiry because I had that turned on. And I do have all my processing stuff. So without ever doing any actual menu customization, just by using the menu design Profile, I was able to drastically change the experience of somebody logging in with that account. And actually, I can't even get back to Profile assignments to undo that, because I limited my access to that. So I will save myself by logging in as the ZZ user, which can never be locked out of those important programs.
Zach Malloch 8:57
Here we go back to full menu access with all of the different programs that we have available to us. So that is the like if there's any such as like the if there's a goal for this being a tip or a trick, that's really it is the simple menu design, permissions. But that being said, I invite any questions down in the q&a area, so we make sure that we're hitting them. But there are a couple other things that we can do with Menus. So let me jump into menu design. And I'm going to temporarily turn off that menu permission simplemente permission. So now, it's not going to look at this. It doesn't care about this. It now only cares about what is actually set up in the menu design. So I'll go ahead and save that and we'll get into menu management again. And now I'll actually start editing the design itself. Okay, so right now, the center of this Screen should match exactly the hierarchy and the way that we have everything laid out over here. Once it actually loads up
Zach Malloch 10:16
see if it's working. Brett, can you just let me know, give me a thumbs up. Do you still hear me?
Bret Alarcon 10:20
Yes, we can still hear you. while that's loading, we got a question. Is there any way to limit what people have access to in the management area, for example, having access to activities but not facilities?
Zach Malloch 10:31
Absolutely. And actually, that is, let me just jump right back into this. That is like, we have that per module option. So here we have our management. So I can check everything except activities, if I wanted to make sure they're not going into activities, or I could uncheck everything except for facility. And then they would only have actually I can, yeah, we can just log back in as this person real quick. So we'll log out as zzz user. log back in as zom.
Zach Malloch 11:14
And so now, if I look under management, I have facility management, and I can get to that, and I can start editing everything that's under that facility management header. So I can create new locations, I can create class, I can create the individual facilities and adjust and edit all of that sort of stuff. So I'm gonna go ahead and log back out so I can get back into the assignment area.
Zach Malloch 11:44
Now it is a broad stroke when you're doing that, so you can limit it. So you're just seeing the facility programs. But then if you want to say specifically, I don't want them to be able to create locations, but I do want them to be able to create regular like the facility and pick from the list of locations I've already created, then we wouldn't be using simple menu permissions, and we would be getting back into menu management to start customizing things there. So we'll see if we can get this to work now. populate that center area. That's what I was looking for. So yeah, this this should match up, basically, exactly with what I have over here. So under processing, access ticket check in? Well, actually, I made a little sales of favorites. So it automatically moved up. But then we have all everything should be here. Maybe I'm using an old custom menu over here? Well, no, I mean is this easy user? Well, regardless what the layout doesn't really that's not really the point that I'm trying to make here. The point is that we have access to all of these different individual lines from this point. So if I was wanting to say that the other way I could do this, like if we don't care about simple menu permissions, and I wanted to replicate, what I was doing is I could just get rid of activity, the whole folder, get rid of system management, the whole folder and everything except for facility, then I get into facility management, and I can get rid of the individual components that I don't want them to have access to.
Zach Malloch 13:20
So I can either just Click and drag it, as soon as it turns green over here, if I let go, it'll disappear from the center column. Or I can make the Field a hidden Field. And then that should make it so that they don't see that in their menu group. And then there's of course you could undo, in this case, I'm going in and I have to make these decisions individually. Because I'm wanting to be that specific with it, I want to be that nuanced with the decisions that I make in this case. The other option that we have here, that's a little bit of a I don't know if it's used all that often. But we have this auto open. So if I always am in facility management, and I'm always working on facilities, and it's just part of my default workflow. I can turn on this auto open, hid this Check mark and then finish editing and now it says auto open. Yes. So now if I'm linked to this virtual symposium Menu Group, when I log in, and I should be able to do that I can't remember if I let me turn off the super simple menu permissions in the other one. Can't remember exactly where I left that. So rather than get an incorrect result, we'll double check
Zach Malloch 14:44
because I think if I have an auto open on the menu permission, but then I have simplified your permissions and I don't have access to that part of the system. In this case, I should have been okay, but it would have prevented that from happening. But let's go ahead and hit save. I will log Get out and back in as the other user.
Zach Malloch 15:15
And so now, I didn't take over an old session, I just launched a brand new session. And because it was set to auto open, I automatically have this panel in place. So you could imagine for your front desk staff that's always using touch Point Of Sale, anybody logged in as the front desk user could have touch automatically launch so that you don't have to then Click any Button on the menu. It's just there, it's ready to go. Same deal with global sales. Those are definitely the most common ones. But you know, we've also set it up so that somebody that's in finance can log in and automatically have the four or five reports that they run, automatically open. So they just go through them from left to right. And they don't have to go through the menu system and actually find things to launch them and get back going.
Bret Alarcon 15:55
Hey Zach, we got another question if you got an absolutely, that's great. All right, Sally wants to know, can a Menu Group be able to set up a new art setup new users? If so, where do you add that?
Zach Malloch 16:08
to set up new users? Well, I mean, to access new users, you have to go to User management. So as long as this is an available Button, or available menu item in your menu design, they would be able to launch it. Now, if you have somebody that basically just creates new users in the system, and that's what they do, then you can also customize this and make sure that it is set to auto open. So once again, when they log in, they just get to user management. Now, if there's a couple other ways I could think about this. So you just said specifically set up new users, if you wanted to make it so they could add users but not change or delete users, then we're getting into a little bit more of either permissions or Screen design where we're actually trying to control the buttons here. menu design is really limited to basically giving you access to even launch the program. And then permissions come into play once the program has been launched with what do you see Screen design and permissions. So if I went into, I should be able to get to it now. Yeah, I turned off the simple menu permissions. So now I'm in here and I can edit my own menu. So actually, this is another point to make your most other areas in RecTrac. If you make a change, basically, as soon as you save that change, it takes effect with menu design, because it's loaded. As you're logging into the system, when I'm making changes, I won't see those changes until I log out of RecTrac. And then back into RecTrac. And if you're well, I'll get to this that in a minute. Just a little tip, I'll share. But we're talking about users.
Zach Malloch 17:49
So users are under management, and then system management. And there's user slash menu Profile. And here's our user management item. So from here, if I wanted to, I could say that I wanted to auto open so that they're just automatically getting this panel open as soon as they log in. Or if I wanted to go the opposite direction, I could hide that from them so that they do not have access to create new users in the system. So a couple of different ways of going about that. Hopefully that answered your question, Sally, if not, give me a little bit more. And I can go into a little bit more depth. The perfect. So I did mention just real quick, a little tip or a trick about things. And that is when you are creating your Profile assignments. It's really frequent, or really consistent, or it seems to be the most common situation is that your menu designs will relate to your user groups. So the people that are going to consider front desk users, they would probably share a similar level of access to the system, and have the ability to launch similar programs to each other. And so we can manage them kind of together. So if that's the case, and if you are linking all your different menu designs and Screen designs to your different user groups, it's actually really easy to log in as those different groups so you can kind of compare and test things back and forth. So if we look at where am I going? User Management again, actually, I still have that open right here. If I edit my user, I can actually link multiple user groups to my user ID. And that's what I've kind of been getting every time I log into the system. It's asking me to pick which user group so if I have the different designs linked to the different user groups, I'll go ahead and just show you that real quick. I'm sure it makes a lot of sense without having to look at it, but that's what determines this. behavior right here where I get to pick between different menu groups. So actually, it's interesting. They're technically user groups, we call them menu groups here, because we used to call them many groups. So once again, as long as you're not the ZZ user, and the menu groups are just linked at that user group level, then you'll be able to switch back and forth between them as you're logging in and see those differences and those changes. And Brett, did I see another question pop up?
Bret Alarcon 20:27
Yes. Actually, before I asked the question, I just want to add a little bit, I think it's much easier to if you add them to the user group, instead of individual users. Because if you create a new user, you would have to go through make sure everything's added to that new user. And like such like menu, design, permission, everything like that. Whereas if you have it linked to the user group, all you need to do when you create a new user is just link it to that user group. And it just inherits everything that's already there. So in my opinion, it's much easier to keep everything at the user group level.
Zach Malloch 20:58
I agree with that entirely.
Bret Alarcon 21:00
All right. Laurie has a question. If we are hosted, will you be doing this Type of thing for us?
Zach Malloch 21:07
I mean, I have very reasonable rates, and I can negotiate something with you individually if you'd like to. So typically, the menu design is not going to be a part of hosted services, menu design is going to be part of just database administration. So if you went through us through like our VSI, assist program, I know we had that at least a year ago, I'm not sure if we're still currently doing that. But we're you you kind of contract with us to do file management stuff for you, then it could be included in something like that. But it's not something that's inherently different between somebody that has the database on site versus a hosted customer.
Bret Alarcon 21:49
Another question popped in from Suezette, can we hide the support Button located on the left side of the Screen?
Zach Malloch 21:55
Yes, you can. However, that is not a minion design thing. But because I'm feeling generous, and its you Suezette I will show you that it's part of the permission Profile. So in permissions, we have this miscellaneous and buttons tab. It's the third one here are buttons in miscellaneous. I have reversed it. Oh, shame. So I think it's actually here in the interface settings. Yeah. So enable VSI Support link in the application sidebar, uncheck that, and it goes away. And this is also I mean, who would ever want to limit application or access to the RecTrac lab, but that's also where that Button is controlled. So a couple of the small things, but important things in the Button and Miscellaneous tab of the permission Profile. But absolutely can understand why you would think that that would be menu designed, because it's definitely in the sidebar, where most of the other stuff is controlled. So very welcome, Suzette. And, yeah, so we're getting already close to the end, as always, time kind of flies with these. And Megan, absolutely, actually going to show you the exact same place. It so her, Megan just asked, Can we hide the VSI ads at the bottom of the Screen? Or can we add our own so there is an enhancement that is requesting that we can let you guys write it yourself? Right now. It's just our product announcements, but this is the Toggle for that. So once again, in the permission Profile. This is the Next Gen. It's arranged side by side in the old UI, I believe that this area, this area still exist, but I believe it's at the bottom Well, no, it doesn't. Because this is not a part of the old UI. And neither is the support link or the RecTrac. Lab. So the top three pieces will be there and important, but I believe it's underneath this area. So if you're looking for it in the old UI, it's gonna look a slightly different. Okay.
Bret Alarcon 24:01
Oh, actually, she said, Yes. Thank you looking forward to it.
Zach Malloch 24:05
Perfect. Well, I think that that is basically what I wanted to get to a little bit of a review of the menu itself a little bit of time for question and answer and kind of covering those simple menu permissions if you just want to make big changes all at once. I will also just real quick point out, it's kind of inherent in this, it's a subjective thing, but I feel if you can use the simple menu permissions, it's a lot easier to go back and forth. Like if I didn't mean to turn off paths, all I have to do is turn it back on. If I was in the other one and I was just dragging stuff off and moving it to the side and accidentally grabbed the wrong folder and there might be 20 different items under that folder. Sometimes it's easier just to scrap the whole thing and then recreate it from scratch. So it it can be simpler to manage as long as it is those broader strokes are going to be effective for You guys. Okay. Bret, did you want to take us out with the joke since we do have a couple extra minutes?
Bret Alarcon 25:08
All right, I'm gonna reuse the one I use the new earlier. Sorry Zach you had heard this. Yeah. So the stock market started the climb again. So I decided to take a risk and bought some stock and toilet paper. Well, they touched bottom. Yeah, I'm wiped. Yeah, everything had went down the drain.
Zach Malloch 25:29
Yeah, so. So on that note. We will let things go and try to recover via this point in two weeks time. And yeah, we're so a quick change. For those of you that are subscribed to the virtual symposium next week was going to be about letters, waivers and rules. There is an upcoming enhancement to waivers. So we're going to actually be pushing that back to August. So we're going to have to come up with another topic for next week. Anybody that has an idea, please feel free to email me directly. Otherwise, I'm sure we can pick it from one of our list of available things and and present that as well. And of course, we'll see you guys with the next RecChat in two weeks. Talk to everybody soon.
Zach Malloch 26:19
Thanks Zach
Zach Malloch 26:20
Bye everybody.