MS Addons Smart Open. User Guide Smart Open

Transcription

1 User Guide Smart Open 1

2 Overview Smart Open feature enables the user to search a project in the project server. Besides, it contains all the regular capabilities offered by the default open dialog box. Figure 1. The business need The default open dialog box in the project server lacks the capability of searching projects by name. The effort of searching after the desired project, can cost the user both time and unnecessary effort. 2

3 The Solution The Smart Open custom dialog box we provide enables you to find projects found on the project server by name, quickly and efficiently. Besides that, Smart Open feature offers additional capabilities, and is very intuitive and has an easy interface to work with. 3

4 Before start using the software, you need to acquire a valid license. Licensing In order to start the licensing option, press the License button at the opening screen (Figure 2): Figure 2. Figure 3. This form allows you to do two things: 1) Acquiring / Restoring a license 2) changing our service URL 4

5 Acquiring / Restoring a license Acquiring a license involves 4 options: 1) Acquire a trial license. License is valid for 14 days - a 14 days license, for new customers. 2) I have a serial Key. Let's activate the product. license key registration 3) I already acquired a license. Please restore it - restoring and existing license (for customers who already acquired a valid license in the past). 4) Organizational Activation - activation for registered organizations. Each option, leads to different process: 1) Acquiring a trial license An automatic new licensing acquiring starts, and the following form appears: Figure 4. 5

6 If, by any reason, the activation process failed, a proper message would appear, and you are more than welcome to contact us for support (Support@ms-addons.com): Figure 5. When succeeding, the following window would appear: Figure 6. Either way, you should press the OK button to continue. 6

7 Figure 7. This message (Figure 7) is common to all the activation options. Just press OK to get back to the main window, to start using the software. 2) License key registration The following form opens: Figure 8. 7

8 In this form, you should enter your customer name and serial number, as given to you when you first registered. If you can't remember your details, Please contact us for a reminder (Support@ms-addons.com). To acquire the license, Press the Next button. After you click next, the rest is the same as for the acquiring new license option explained before. Continue as discussed. 3) Restoring an existing license An automatic process of restoring your license starts, and the abovementioned next forms appears. Continue as discussed. 4) Organizational Activation This is a special option for our organizational customers who purchased an independent licensing service. For this option to be activated, you need to contact us first to discuss terms. When activated, the following field appears: Figure 9. After entering your organization code, the above-mentioned next forms appear. Continue as discussed. 8

9 Changing our Service URL This is our service URL (Figure 10), where the license is acquired from. You do not need to change this field, unless we specifically tell you so. Figure

10 When your license is acquired, you can start using the Smart Open feature. Smart Open Before using the Smart Open feature you can configure weather it will make use of SQL access or not. SQL access will make your Smart Open feature much faster. In order to configure SQL access, please click on the setting button under MS-Addons tab: Please make sure you have at least DBReader permissions on the above databases. 10

11 In order to start using the Smart Open feature, you will need to click the Smart Open button in the MS Addons box (Figure 11). MS Addons Smart Open Figure 11. Then, all the projects current found on the project server are loaded, and you get the Smart Open main window (Figure 12). Figure 12. As you can see, there is a great similarity to the default Smart Open dialog box, and many capabilities are the same. So, first of all, let us focus on the uniqueness of our product: the searching for required products, found in the project server, by name. In order to search a project by its name, take a look at the search box (Figure 13): 11

12 Figure 13. As you can see, you can type a part of your project name, and the view would be updated immediately with the matching projects. Besides projects in the project server itself, our Smart Open feature also enables you to search for directories. By clicking the open folder button (Figure 14), a folder browser dialog would be opened (Figure 15). Figure 14. Figure 15. Then, choose a directory to show on display (Figure 16). 12

13 Figure 16. The display shows the current projects and directories found in your chosen directory. Notice that the button Retrieve the list of all projects from project server is enabled, allowing you to show back all the projects from the project server. In addition, the button Clear is also enabled, allowing to you to retrieve all the initial projects loaded from the server, making the query act faster (Figure 16). Also notice the combo box, which allows you to filter your display according to the file type selected (Figure 17). Figure 17. When a file is selected on display, 2 things happened (Figure 18): 1) You can see the file name on the bottom of the screen 2) The Open button is enabled for use 13

14 Figure 18. You can open any project shown on display after marking it, by double click on it, or clicking the Open button. In addition, you can do it in a write/read mode, or in a read only mode, by changing the proper combo box (Figure 19). Figure 19. Key Features & Benefits 14

15 Features & Benefit Has the ability of searching project saved on the local machine by name Smart MS-Project MS-Project Open Adds the ability of searching project saved on Project Server, in the open project form, by name 15