When you log in to Workbooks, the Workbooks User Interface will be displayed. Here you will see the Welcome Message (unless you have switched it off within Preferences), along with any Bulletin messages or Notifications you have received, a link to our Training Videos page, any records and/or Landing Pages you have marked as pinned to launch when logging in, and any Desktop Shortcuts you have created. To the right of the Search bar, there are two icons, one to Close all windows, the other to Show only the current window.

Start Menu

Clicking on Start  activates the Workbooks menu. From here you can:

• See all the areas of Workbooks your System Administrator has given you access to.
• Create new records.
• Search for records on your database.
• View recently opened records.
• Set your Preferences.
• Access Welcome Messages and Bulletins.
• Link to the Knowledge Base for more help.
• See information about which database you are using and which login you have used.
• Log out of the system.

Search

It's important that you can find the record(s) you need quickly and easily, and Workbooks includes a powerful Search capability for this purpose.  The magnifying glass icon  indicates that you can search for data and there are 3 places to search from the Desktop:

1. Using the Search option in your Taskbar.
2. Using the Search option on your Workbooks Desktop
3. Using the Search option that appears when you click the Start button

Each option allows you to limit your search to a specific record type.  For options 1 and 2 you do this by selecting from the field called Within.  For option 3, you do this by clicking on the down arrow next to the magnifying glass.  If you select a record type to search with using option 3, the system will remember what you've chosen (for the rest of your login session) so that the next time you use that search it will be restricted the the record type you've specified.  This is particularly useful if you regularly search for records of just one type.  Alternatively, you can search the entire database.

The Search defaults to being a 'quick search', which returns all records that start with the search term you looked for. For example, if you search for 'Alan' you'll see all the records that start with the word Alan (and only those records), as shown below.  NOTE:  You can control the default behaviour for Search (either quick or full search) using the checkbox in the Search settings section of your Preferences.

If you want to find records that contain your search term anywhere in their indexed fields you should carry out a full search. To do this remove the tick from the quick search checkbox and click the magnifying glass. The screenshot below illustrates the different search results that are returned when carrying out a full search.

Here you can reveal and hide columns in the Search Results section, this includes the Relevance column which is a numerical score provided by Workbooks to indicate the likely hood that the Record is the one searched for based on the search term used. You can also save the Search View so the same format is returned for every subsequent Search. It is also possible to sort by the Record Name and Object Reference columns some of the available columns in ascending and descending order.

Alternatively, you have the option to carry out a 'sounds like' search, which can be useful if you're unsure of the spelling of a name. For example, if you search for 'Alan Smith' using the 'sounds like' search, the results could include 'Alain Smith' or 'Alan Smyth', and searching for 'Leslie Kaye' could find 'Lesley Kay'.

If your search term contains multiple words you may want to ensure that the 'All Words' setting is configured. This checkbox ensures that only Records where each of the word in the search bar is present. For example, searching 'Samuel Harris' will only return results where the words Samuel and Harris are present.

Removing this setting will return any result where either Samuel or Harris is present on the Record. 

Remember too that you can limit the type of records that are searched using the dropdown picklist next to 'within'.

By clicking on a search result the Record will open and the Search Results Window will be closed automatically. If you want to keep the Search results window open, right click on the name and use the Context Menu to select 'Open, keeping Search results' as seen below;

Personalising the Desktop

System Administrators can personalise the look of the Workbooks User Interface(and of printed output) by replacing the default Workbooks logo with an image of your choice. Click here to find out how. In addition, you can control which, if any, windows open automatically when you login, by 'pinning' Landing Pages and/or records using the pushpin symbol towards the top right-hand corner . 

Clicking on this symbol changes its appearance so it now looks like this and causes the Landing Page or record to open when you first login. 

Information about this can also be found here.

Desktop Shortcuts

All Users can customise their Workbooks User Interface by creating shortcuts to specific Workbooks Records, Views on Landing Pages, or Reports. Clicking on the Record icon in the top left-hand corner of a Workbooks record will open a menu with a list of options. Select Add shortcut on the Desktop. This will now add an 'All People' icon shortcut to your Desktop.

The Desktop icon will adopt the name of the Record, View or Report for which you are creating the shortcut. To remove any Desktop Shortcuts, right-click on the shortcut and select Remove Shortcut.

About Workbooks

Clicking Start > About   gives the user useful information about the current Workbooks session. From this screen, you can find out the following information which is always useful for assisting the support team.

You can find the following information from here:

• User information, including who you are logged in as, name and email address, plus information on which licences are allocated to that user. You can also see which User Groups the current user is in.
• Account information such as the name of the account and database. You will also find the current database ID.
• Licence information including the Workbooks licence and any extensions you may have purchased.
• Session information including your current user id, customer id and which database server you are using.

Workbooks Sessions

You can log into more than one Workbooks database at a time by using separate browsers or private browser windows for each session. Just be aware that as soon you try to log into another Workbooks database in the same browser instance one of your sessions will be cancelled and you will be unable to carry out further actions.