Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
ERPAG 5.1 
The snippets
1. Introduction
The most common questions our users ask themselves when they open any document list in ERPAG are:
- What should I do now?
- Where the business stopped?
- To which documents I should pay extra attention to?
- Which documents should I pack?
- Which documents should I ship?
- Which sales orders I should invoice?
- Who should I contact today?
- Etc.
It’s hard to give a universal answer. The sole answer depends on the specifics of each business and the roles the operator has. In order to reach the wanted answer, the operator had to go through a few manual steps each time. Those steps mainly include filtering and searching data based on the specific criteria. The data list was there, the operator just had to find what interests him. That can be time-consuming if it’s done day-in-day-out.
Some developers would say: How can we know which data you need? Which data you consider important, while others you find trivial?
However, ERPAG developers have a different approach. We analyzed the user’s behavior, conducted surveys, and found the point agreement of operators’ needs. What everyone needed was from ERPAG to pull out the core of each list, eg. key point indicators (KPI). The view should be instant and clear with simple action if there is a need for more information.
A good example comes from one of our users which said: “When I go to CRM, in the Quotation list, I want to see who do I need to contact today, who should I contact in the next few days, and who did I miss to contact.” Until now, operators had to filter the Quotation list to today’s date, and then to filter out the status to be ‘in process’, and so on for every information each day.
The solution we came up with and implemented is called THE SNIPPETS.
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2. Snippet types
If there are snippets for any list, they will appear above the table. There are two types of snippets: filter and sum.
- Filter type
On the right slide, we have a funnel icon (filter), while on the right side we have a total number of documents from the list (document number is in the document lists, the item number is in the product and services list, etc.) that meet the condition.
If there is no data that meets the given condition, the snippet is transparent with gray text.
On this snippet, you can click on, and the list will be filtered out by the given snippet condition. When a snippet is “turned on”, it’s background is black, while the text is white.
This is how the list from our example will look when we “turn on” the filter snippet:
Ie. in our list we will just see the document(s) where the follow-up date is today.
Snippets support multiple filters, so you can turn on multiple filters at once.
We will create an example in which we will turn on 2 snippets on the sales order list.
By clicking on the “Deadline missed”, we will update the list and snippets with it.
The next click is on “Ready for packing”, and we will see all the documents we could pack, but we missed the deadline.
- SUM type
The primary function of this snippet is to show the summed up value. On the left side, we have the SUM symbol (Greek symbol Sigma) and value.
In most cases, there is no option to filter it by clicking on it.
This value (like the number value in the filter type) is dynamic, so if you turn on the filter snippets, the value will automatically be summed up according to the new parameters.
The value will also be summed up if we filter it directly from the list.
In this example, we filtered the “Retail” warehouse, and our filter and sum snippets automatically updated.
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3. Setup
As we mentioned, each business model has specific needs and each operator has specific roles, so we enabled the operators to select which snippets they want to track.
If there are snippets on the list, they are set up through the MORE > SNIPPETS option.
- On/Off
If “checked”, the snippet will show. If you don’t want to have any snippets on your list, just turn them all off.
It is best to adjust the snippets according to the resolution of your screen, in order to prevent scrolling around. The maximum number of snippets is 8.
- Color
The developers usually assign the color according to the traffic light principle (Red-Yellow-Green), but we decided that the operators should have the ability to select the background color of the snippets, according to their liking. For example, someone might want the “Deadline today” to be red-colored, in order to draw more attention.
- Position – left/right
Sums and values are usually displayed aligned to the right side, because numbers are usually aligned to the right for easier reading. With this option, we enabled the operators to select whether they want the snippet to be aligned from left to right, or vice versa.
- Sequence order
The sequence order is adjusted via drag and drop technique by mouse, or by clicking on the arrows.
Note that with the right alignment, the order is reversed.
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2019. ERPAG Inc.
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