Media+Center User Guide

The Reservation+Center Application is a web-based application designed to fulfill the requirements of any organization that supports a centralized lending facility of equipment or facilities to support its mission.

As released it is set up with a “Catalog” in mind that makes different types of audio-visual equipment and facilities (such as athletic fields) available to an organization. However the application is designed to be generic in nature and could be used in many different environments that parallel the general model it supports of a “lending library” of some set of devices or assets that need to be reserved and tracked against the available inventory in the catalog.

Types of Users

The system recognizes two types of users. The first is for one or more “administrators” who have full access to all its capabilities, including initial set-up and ongoing administrative tasks such as inventory management and generating delivery lists. The second are the “customers” who make reservations for specific types of equipment or facilities shown in the catalog. These two kinds of users use a common “Login” screen and are then distinguished by the system based on their username/password combination. The system uses the same database tables for this purpose as those set up and managed by Tech+Center and Customer+Center, and “management” of these entities is accomplished via those applications. Specifically – for this application to run it is a requirement that Tech+Center also be installed and available, as much of the system infrastructure such as database tables and configuration definitions are initially set up in Tech+Center.)

Inventory – Two Level Hierarchy

The Reservation+Center uses a simple hierarchical model for the inventory itself. At the top level the administrator will originally set up a list of “Inventory Types” that are to be supported by the reservation system. Each type has a name and some associated attributes reflecting the major types of things in inventory be managed. For example, “Digital Projector”, “Slide Projector”, “Baseball Field”, “Conference Room” might be the kind of things you would see at this level of the hierarchy.

Then within each of these “Types” are entries for each of the actual physical units available in inventory, together with their attributes. When a reservation is made via the catalog, the user specifies what “type” is desired. The system will then make a reservation (if possible) that allocates a specific unit of that type that is available in inventory for the requested time slot. Each unit (within a given type) is identified by a “Tag Id” that is displayed by the system on different screens as appropriate. This “Tag Id” is an optional field entered by the administrator when first adding the unit to the inventory. While this field is optional, it is strongly suggested that it be used, as that is the primary way the users (administrators and customers) have of relating a particular unit in inventory with the displays provided by the system.

Public Catalog Entries

Besides its textual description, each “Type” entry in the catalog contains a flag that defines whether this type is “Public” or not. This is an important attribute as it controls some aspects of how the system handles these entries.

In general, items in the catalog can be thought of as being reserved for an individual’s use (e.g. a projector to be used by a lecturer giving a class) or it is being reserved for some group activity – where the group as a whole may be interested in the reservation status for that item (e.g. a baseball field being scheduled for a practice session and where the team members might want to be able to check current or future reservations). In the first case, it is only the lecturer making the reservation for the projector who is interested in the details and the outcome of the reservation – the class attendees are not directly concerned. But in the case of the baseball field, all the team members may have an interest in being able to check the status of reservations, even though there is only one individual who “owns” a given reservation and was responsible for creating it.

Attributes Associated with Items in Inventory

There are a number of attributes that can (should) be supplied by the administrator both for the overall “Inventory Types” as well as each specific unit in inventory.

Attributes for a given “Type”

Each Type entry in the catalog supports the following attributes to be associated with that type, these are managed by the administrator:

Display Sequence. This is a simple number that controls the sequence that the different inventory types are presented on various screens (such as the Catalog Display). This is an arbitrary number (it can have gaps in its sequence) and is used by the system to sort types into “ascending order” so as to be able to display the different types in a consistent and controllable fashion. While this field is optional, failure to use it will result in the catalog being displayed in apparently random order and inconsistently across the different screens.

Public. This is the flag that determines whether a given type is to be treated as “public” or not. The primary effect this has on how the system handles such types is that their reservation status is viewable to the public without the necessity of logging in. Both a 2-dimensional chart and a listing type of display can be accessed by the general public whereas all other functions can only be accessed by users who have first logged in.

Caption. This is a short user-friendly name for the given inventory type. It should be short (on the order of one or two dozen characters) and descriptive of the equipment type. e.g. “Cart with 35 mm Projector”

Description. This can be a longer description of that inventory type and should include the major facts that a user needs to know when selecting that Inventory Type for reservation. e.g. “Package includes cart with projector, a carousel for 120 slides and a 4 by 6ft screen on tripod”.

Image. This is a small image (90 by 90 pixels is recommended) of the associated inventory type and forms a major part of the user interface. It is shown not only on the main Catalog display, but is shown as an “at a glance” visual cue on many subsequent screens to remind the user of the context of that particular screen.

Attributes for a specific Unit in Inventory

Each item in inventory can also have attributes associated with it

Schedule Priority. This is a number assigned by the administrator to all the units of a given type. This number is used by the system when making a reservation for a particular inventory type to choose which specific unit to reserve. The number itself can be arbitrary (i.e. there can be gaps in the sequence). The lower a number, the higher the priority of that unit in terms of being allocated for a reservation request. Thus given three units with assigned priorities 1,2, and 3, the unit with the number 1 will be used to satisfy a reservation first (if it is available for that time slot) thereafter number 2 and so forth.

Tag Id. This is a short character string that is used to match entries displayed by the system with the physical units they reflect. Thus while this field is optional, you are encouraged to use it in any environment where it is necessary to be able to distinguish one physical unit from another.

Serial Number. This can be used to record the manufacturer’s serial number or similar identifier to the record for that unit. This value is not generally seen or used outside of inventory management part of the system and is optional.

Description. This can be used by the administrator to record a longer description for a particular unit. (It should be distinguished from the description field used for Inventory Type rather than each individual unit.). This value is not generally seen or used outside of inventory management part of the system and is optional.

History. This can be used by the administrator to record and maintain historical notes or similar about a particular physical unit. This value is not generally seen or used outside of inventory management part of the system and is optional.

Custom1 and Custom2. These are two “spare” fields provided to permit recording of other salient facts about a unit and may be used in any fashion that may be useful to a particular environment.

Status. This is a field which is set by the administrator to one of four values for each of the items in inventory. The textual description associated with each of these four status values is “soft wired” and can easily be changed when the system is installed. For purposes of the released version of the software the textual descriptions for each status value are as follows:

0 OK

1 Special Instructions

2 Prior Authorization Required

3 In Repair

The effect that these status values have on the operation of the system are as follows. When a customer makes a reservation, the unit with the highest-available priority that does not have has a status value of 3 (In Repair) is assigned. Any unit with a status value of 3 is not available as a candidate for reservation by a customer. (An administrator can however force the reservation of such an item through a special interface – this may be desirable if a reservation is to be made for some future date when it is known that the item will no longer be “In Repair”.

Any other unit can be reserved by either an administrator or a customer. The usual way to do this is to select the “type” of unit desired from the catalog display, and the system will then reserve a particular unit by choosing the highest-priority one that is available for the requested time-slot. (“Priority” here is the value of the schedule-priority field as defined for each unit.)

If a reservation results in the selection of a unit with a status value of 1,2, or 3 then that reservation is marked as “Tentative – pending approval” in any subsequent display involving that reservation. That is until an administrator uses the Approval interface to either approve or deny (delete) that reservation. But for all other purposes, during its “tentative” status, that reservation behaves as if it exists, e.g. it cannot be reserved by anybody else for the period of that reservation.

Indication of the tentative nature of such a reservation is shown on the various displays either directly by a color-coded textual warning message, a different colored type-font, or a single-character symbol identified by legend elsewhere on the screen.

Underneath two-level hierarchy of the inventory is the third and final level of data, namely the actual reservation records themselves. The whole data model for the reservation system graphically summarized as follows:

Two Button-Panels

Before using the system, you should become familiar with the concept that there are two separate “button panels” available to the administrator which are shown at the top of the screen. (This is because there is insufficient room to place all the buttons within a single panel – however most of the buttons for routine operations are on the “Main” menu and the lesser used ones can be found on the “Admin” menu.) Each panel contains a button to toggle to the other panel so it is easy to switch between them. If at any time you do not see the button you are looking for, merely click the top-left button (labeled either “Admin Menu” or “Main Menu” as the case may be) and that will take you to the other button-panel.

Tailoring The Graphics for a Specific Environment

Once the software has been installed and has been demonstrated to be running successfully, the administrator can tailor it to reflect the “real life” environment in which it is to be used. This involves two major steps – setting up the list of “Types” and subsequently entering a record for each of the physical “Units” in inventory.

Assembling the contents of the Image Catalog

The first step is to assemble a collection of images to be used as visual props for the system and to aid customers in identifying the types of items they wish to reserve. The images to be used should be placed in the directory called Media_Image_Catalog (located inside the Directory called MediaCenter and where the application software is installed.)

Feel free to add more images than are initially envisioned to be used – in a subsequent step certain of these images will be associated with certain Inventory Types, but it is alright if some of the images are not used. The contents of the Media_Image_Catalog Directory should be viewed merely as a pool of images available for use by the administrator. The images should be stored as either .jpg or .gif formatted files and the image size should be consistent across the system in order to have a “tidy” and easily readable catalog display. A suggested size is 90 by 90 pixels. One easy way to obtain such images is to use “Froogle” (available via Google at the URL http://froogle.google.com/ ) to search for items in vendor catalogs of the type desired. For example, a search on this page for “Digital Projector” will bring up a collection of images of digital projectors – each sized at 90 by 90 pixels. Choose the one you want by doing a right-click on the image and do a “save picture as…”. Then if necessary rename the saved file to some filename that will be meaningful to you later.

After a suitable collection of such images has been placed in the Directory named Media_Image_Catalog you are ready to start defining the Inventory Types that will be available in the Reservation System.

Setting up Inventory Types via the “Inventory Types” button

Now Login to the Reservation+Center using the username and password of a “Tech” as set up in the Tech+Center, and click on the button labeled “Inventory Types”. This will take you to a screen that lists the Inventory Types currently that are currently “known” to the system. The system as initially installed may already have some entries that are listed here. These can be edited or deleted by clicking on the appropriate link listed under the “Action” column.

To create a new entry, click on the button labeled “Create” (top right of this sub-window) which will take you to a form. The fields on this form should be filled in as follows:

Display Sequence. This is an arbitrary number (need not start at 1 nor be a contiguous value with other entries) that will be used to determine the sequence that inventory types are displayed in the Catalog. If you are unsure at this point of the eventual sequence you wish the final entries to appear, just put any number in this field as it can easily be edited at a later stage.

Caption. This should be a brief descriptive title or caption to be associated with this inventory type. It will appear under the image associated with this entry when the catalog is displayed and should therefore be kept as terse as possible – around one or two dozen characters.

Description. This can be a longer description of the associated Inventory Type and should supply the salient facts required by a customer to determine if that is the type of item they wish to reserve. This description will appear in a floating box on the screen whenever the user “hovers” their mouse over the associated image.

Image. This field must contain the filename of the associated .gif or .jpg file to be associated with this entry. You can type it in yourself, or a more reliable and easy method is provided if you click on the small orange assist button just to the right of this field that is labeled “Find Image”. If you click on this button, a sub-window will open that provides a scrollable display of all the images currently available in the image catalog. Scroll down to the image you want and then click on it – this will result in the correct filename being filled in on your form and the sub-window will be closed.

Public Board. This radio-button should be set to either “Yes” or “No” depending on whether this “type” of item in inventory is to be displayed on either the “Public Board” or “Public Listing” displays where its current reservations status can be seen by members of the public without the latter having to log in to the system. See the heading “Public Catalog Entries” above for fuller discussion of this attribute.

Finally click on the “Create” button and the entry will be established in the system.

Setting up the Inventory via the “Inventory Mgmt” button

After the available “Types” have been set up as described above, the next step is to create an inventory record for each of the physical units that are to be managed by the system. Click on the “Inventory Mgmt” button.

This will bring up a graphical display of all of the Inventory Types established in the prior step. Associated with each image will be the brief caption associated with that image, and above each image will appear one or more numbers. These numbers reflect the quantity of items in the inventory for each Inventory Type. Each set of numbers provides a quick at-a-glance summary broken down by the “status” of the respective unit in inventory. If only one number is shown, it will be in green and indicates how many units are available and that they all have a status of zero (0) indicating “OK”. If a series of three numbers is shown, then these numbers reflect the quantity of units in inventory broken down into three categories by the value in the status field for units of the associated Inventory Type:

0 (OK – available to be reserved directly by customers) shown in green

1 or 2 (Special Instructions or Authorization Required) shown in orange

3 (In Repair) shown in Red

Furthermore, if there are no units of that given type available for direct reservation by customers (i.e. the first number is zero) the numbers will be displayed inside a red-bordered box to catch the administrator’s eye.

Hovering the mouse over any of the images will show the longer description associated with that Inventory Type.

To manage the items in inventory, click on the image of the associated Inventory Type. This will take you to a screen with a listing for each of the units. Each entry has a set of clickable links to allow you to Edit, Delete, or Clone a specific unit. (“Clone” as used here effectively creates an entry to add a new device in inventory, whose main attributes are inherited from the unit that was clicked on). A completely fresh entry can be added into inventory by clicking the “Create” button near the top of the display.

Any of these actions will take you to a form where you can create/edit the relevant attributes for that particular unit in inventory. Three of these attributes are of particular importance to be filled out:

Schedule Priority. This field is an arbitrary number that will be used by the system when making reservations. It uses this number to prioritize which particular unit will be reserved. It will start by trying to reserve the unit with the highest priority (lowest number) but if there is a conflict (i.e. that unit is already reserved for that time-slot) it will then choose the next highest priority and so on.

Media Id. This is the brief textual “handle” that is used to associate a specific physical unit in inventory with its record in the system. As such it is important that this field is filled in in order to be able to associate various displays produced by the system with their physical counterparts.

Status. The default for a new entry is “OK” but this can be edited to any of the other available status values. For a fuller description of these status values and their effect on the operation of the system, see the description of this field under the heading “Attributes for a Specific Unit in Inventory” described earlier.

The rest of the attributes shown on this form (Serial Number, Description, History, etc) are not used by the system elsewhere – they are purely for the convenience of the Administrator in managing and tracking the inventory. As such these fields are completely optional and can be ignored if so desired.

The “Show Catalog” button - Making a Reservation

A reservation is initiated by clicking on the “Show Catalog” button which will bring up a graphical display of the Inventory Types available in inventory. This display is similar to the one seen on the “Inventory Mgmt” screen (described above) but with two important differences:

· The numbers indicating quantity of units available by status (above each image) are not shown

· Only those Inventory Types that have some quantity available for reservation are shown.

On clicking on the image associated with the desired Inventory Type, you are taken to the main “Reservation” screen.

Making a Reservation

On this screen, you are presented with a form in which details of the requested reservation are made. The top two lines are used to specify the desired “Start Date” and “End Date” times respectively.

The customer_id field must be filled in by the administrator – either by being typed in directly or via the orange “Assist” button immediately to the right of this field labeled

“Find Customer”. In the latter case a sub-window is displayed which allows you to find the relevant customer in the database and click on their entry to cause the field to be filled in.

When a Customer is making a reservation (as opposed to an Administrator) this field is not shown – it is filled in “silently” by the system based on the customer-id of the logged-in customer)

Typically a reservation is made for a single item and for a particular date and time. However, this screen may be used to make “repeat” reservations where the same reservation details apply except that the date/time are different and are to be repeated on a weekly schedule (such as every Tuesday and Friday for example). In this case the check box labeled “Repeat” should be checked as well as the days of the week where repetition is desired, as well as an ending date for the repetition.(e.g. end of semester). Whenever a subsequent attempt is made to edit such a “repeated” reservation, a subsidiary display will show the rest of the group as clickable entities so that each individual reservation may then be edited/deleted as desired.

At this point you can use the “Test Avail” button to see if the reservation could be made without actually making the reservation. Use of this button is for convenience only and does not cause any actions to take place in terms of making a reservation.

The other fields in this form are optional and may be used or skipped as desired depending on the operational needs of the user’s environment.

If the same reservation is to be made but for a different item, the reservation details will be “remembered” so that going to the Catalog immediately and selecting another item for reservation will result in the reservation screen re-appearing with the details already filled in. These may be cleared by clicking on the “Clear” button if so desired.

The “Show Listing” button

A summary overview of current reservations can be obtained by means of the “Show Listing” button where you specify some preliminary parameters for selecting which reservations you wish to see summarized.

You are now given four choices to control the overall selection for which reservation(s) you wish to see displayed in the summary listing. (The subsequent screen allows you to refine these in terms of the time-span to be covered by the summary)

All Reservations. For this you merely click on the “Show” button without filling in any of the fields on the form.

By Reservation Number. If you wish to see the details for a single specific reservation, you can supply the reservation number (created when the reservation was initially made) and click on the “Show” button to be taken directly to the “Edit” screen for that reservation. Here you can see all the fields associated with that reservation and/or edit them if desired.

By Customer. If you wish to see a summary of the reservations for a particular customer, then you can supply the customer_id for that customer (again using the “Assist” button if desired) and click on the “Show” button

By Media Type If you wish to see a summary of the reservations for a particular Inventory Type, click on the image associated with that Inventory Type.

The next screen will now show a summary listing of the relevant reservations, but further controlled in terms of what “time span” is to be used for selecting which reservations to show.

You can now further adjust which reservations qualify to be shown in the summary listing via two controls shown in the form near the top of the window:

· Time-Span. This controls the time-span of interest for which reservations are to be shown in the summary listing. This is specified in terms of a beginning date and the period (how long of a time span). On first arriving at this screen, the time-span is defaulted to “today’s date” and a span of one week (7 days).

· Which Date to use. Records may be qualified to appear in the summary listing in terms of which date is to be checked against the time-span:

(a) The “Start” date for that reservation

(b) The “End” date for that reservation

(c) The “Duration” of that reservation i.e. wherever a unit is effectively “reserved” anywhere within the specified time-span.

Modifying any of the selections in the form and clicking on the “Show” button will cause the summary listing to be re-displayed using the new selection criteria.

Opposite each entry in the listing is a clickable link which can be used to take you to the “Edit Screen” for that reservation.

The “Show Chart” button

This button will take you to a screen which will initially give you two choices

· Show All. This button will take you to a display of the Reservation Chart that shows all items in inventory.

· Media Type. Clicking on the image of a particular Inventory Type will take you to a display of the Reservation Chart that show only the entries for the selected Inventory Type.

On clicking either of the above you will arrive at a “Chart” display selected above and with the time-span defaulted to “today’s date” with a period of two weeks (14 Days).

The chart shows a row in a table for each of the units in inventory (this includes all units of the type selected – whether their inventory status is zero or not). The different dates are shown as columns in the table with two columns per date. The first column (for a given date) indicates the reservation status for that unit before 12 noon on that date, the second column indicates the reservation status after 12 noon on that date.

Each cell in the table has either a green background and containing an “O” or a red background containing an “X” or an orange cell containing a “T”. Each cell forms a clickable link which if activated will cause one of the following to happen

Red or Orange Background – if there is only one reservation for that unit within the relevant ½ day covered by this cell, you will be taken directly to the “Edit” screen for that reservation. But if there are multiple (short) reservations for that unit within that ½ day, you will be taken to an intermediate display showing each of these reservations and then you can click on one of those to go to the “Edit” screen for the reservation you have chosen.

Green background – this will take you to the “reservation” screen for this unit. i.e.you can now make a reservation specifically for the unit identified by the row of the cell you clicked on. This is as distinct from making a reservation in the normal way (by clicking in the Catalog) where the reservation mechanism will choose which specific unit to reserve based on its “Schedule Priority”. If the unit (row in the table) that you have clicked on has an inventory status that is not zero (“OK”), you will be warned of this fact by a caution box on the reservation screen. Note – this is the only way that a reservation can be made for a specific unit in inventory, and because this chart display is only available to users logged in as Administrator, it cannot be done by a customer directly – it has to occur with the assistance of an administrator.

This is also the only way that a reservation can be made for a unit whose status is currently set to “In Repair”. This facility is provided so that an administrator can force a reservation for such a unit when for example it is known that the unit will have been repaired and is again available for the time the reservation is being scheduled.

Each unit is identified at the beginning of its row with its “Media Id” as well as a symbol in red indicating its inventory status if it is non-zero. (The legend for these symbols is shown at the top of the table)

The “Print Listing” Button

The purpose of this button is to provide a hard-copy print-out of all the deliveries or pick-ups that are scheduled for a given day. On clicking the button, a you are asked to make a selection between ”Delivery” or “Pick-up” and to provide the date for the listing desired. (On entry to this screen, the value for “tomorrow’s date” is provided by default.)

Clicking the “print” button will cause a separate sub-window to be opened which will contain the desired output in a format suitable for printing, and the print process will be automatically initiated. The listing is formatted to repeat the headings and page number at the top of each page in the case where multiple pages are output. (But see note under the heading “Customizing Parameters” below.

The “Approvals” Button

This button provides the interface through which any existing “tentative” reservations can ether be “approved” or disapproved (deleted). Clicking this button will bring up a display of all reservations that have “tentative” status. For each such reservation (either individual or repeated) three clickable links are provided which allow the administrator to either approve, edit, or delete the relevant reservation(s).

The “Purge Expired” Button

This button is purely a convenience for the administrator and its use is entirely optional. When you first click on this button it will tell you how many reservation records currently exist in the database (total – whether expired or not) as well as how many of these are expired (i.e those whose ending date has passed) and how many expired over 150 days ago. (The number 150 is as released with the system – it can easily be tailored for local requirements – see below under “Customizing Parameters”) If there are any records in the database that are older than this expiry threshold, you will also be shown a button that you can click to cause physical deletion of the latter records (expired over 150 days ago) from the database. It is not necessary to do this, but it can help control the size of the database and thus potentially prevent the slow degradation in speed that might be encountered in extreme cases. The responsiveness of the system is a function of many factors including the load on the database, and what keys/indexes have been defined for the database. Letting the number of “dead” records in the database grow continuously over time might eventually cause a slow-down, particularly whenever reservation checking is performed to establish feasibility of a requested reservation.

The “Tech+Center” Button

This button is merely a convenience for the administrator to be able to “go to” the main screen of the Tech+Center with a single click. Clicking this button will result in the opening a of new browser window where the administrator can then perform other functions that are part of the Tech+Center, such as registering/editing/deleting customer records etc.

The “My Reservations” Button

This button is intended primarily for users logged in as customers, however it is also provided for users who are logged in as administrators as it can be useful depending on the organizational set up of the institution using the system. This button performs the same function as the “Show Listing” button but limits itself to showing only those reservations made by the currently logged in user. Thus a “customer” can see a summary listing of his/her reservations.

In those operating environments where all reservations are made by (a team of) administrators on behalf of third parties, this button is also useful under an administrator’s log in as in that case the administrator is acting on behalf of a customer and may wish to see a listing of all reservations that he/she is responsible for without requiring the intervening selection steps under the “Show Listing” button.

The “Self Registration” Button

This button is provided only on the Log In screen and is provided to allow customers to perform their own registration. This module is identical to its twin in the “Customer+Center” application and allows a user to create an entry in the customer database, specifying name, password, address, email address etc. After registering through this mechanism, a user can then Log In and make reservations.

The “Edit Profile” Button

This button is only available to users logged in as “customers”. It allows a user to modify his/her registration details as they currently exist in the database.

The “View Public Reservations Board” Button

This button is available on the Log In screen as well as on the button panels as seen by administrators and customers. Use of this button does not require prior log in by the user.

Use of this button brings up a display that provides a two-dimensional table overview of all reservations for items defined in inventory as being “Public Board”. It does so on a month-at-a-time basis, initially showing the current month. Buttons are provided on the screen to select any of the next six months.

Reservations are shown as colored squares in the table, and the user can click on any such colored square to pop up a sub-window that shows the details of that specific reservation

The “View Public Reservations List” Button

This button is available on the Log In screen as well as on the button panels as seen by administrators and customers. Use of this button does not require prior log in by the user.

Use of this button brings up a summary listing that provides an overview of all reservations for items defined in inventory as being “Public Board”. In the released version of the system, this display provides a summary for two weeks starting at the current date. This value may be changed from 14 days to some other value by adjusting an installation parameter as discussed below under the heading “Customizing Parameters”.

E-Mail Notification of Reservations

You can choose to have automatic email notifications generated whenever a registration is initially made, approved and or deleted (if approval was required for the unit that was reserved). The email is sent to the person who made the reservation, or on whose behalf it was made of the reservation was made if performed by an administrator. This facility may be turned on or off by means of an installation parameter as described under the “Customizing Parameters” described below

Customizing Parameters.

The system supports a number of parameters that may easily be customized by a systems administrator by means of editing a simple text file. (Modifying these parameters does not require a re-install or any other action beyond editing the file)

These parameters are in the file called wcMediaLabels.inc which can be found in the “MediaCenter” Directory with the rest of the Reservation+Center modules. This is a simple ascii text file which contains a series of ASP (Visual Basic) assignment statements that assign a textual value to some variable. Most of the entries in this file are for purposes of changing the “labels” and the various text-messages that are output by the system, but a few as identified below are parameters which may be used to control other aspects of the system’s behavior:

wc_param_number_of_images_per_row This parameter controls the number of images that are displayed on a single row of the “Show Catalog” display as well as related displays such as that for “Inventory Mgmt”. The system is released with this value set to 6 – this works well where individual images are round 90 by 90 pixels and the user’s screen is 1024 pixels wide. But if you have a very extensive catalog and/or opt to use different sized images you may wish to optimize this display by changing this number.

wc_Width_Media_Print_Window This parameter specifies the width (in pixels) of the sub-window that is opened up for the “Print Listing” function. In the system as released this value is set to 700 to provide an approximate reflection of the listing as it will appear on 8 ½ by 11 paper printed in portrait orientation. Although the display width of this window (on the screen) has absolutely no effect on the format of the resulting printed hard-copy, you may wish to adjust this value if you plan to use a radically different size of paper.

wc_media_deliveries_per_page This parameter may need adjusting for your local environment based on a number of factors. Basically it controls how many “reservations” will be printed on a single physical page of the hard copy generated as a result of the “Print Listing” function. However, exactly how many will fit on a given page is somewhat unpredictable in the case where certain text fields involved in a reservation are unusually long. If any of the fields such as “Tag Id” or “Address” or “Instructions” contain a text string that is longer than the column they occupy in the print-out, they will “wrap” causing an extra line in that reservation, and thus occupy more vertical space on the paper than would otherwise be the case. If this situation occurs within more than a few reservations on a given page, it may cause the printed page to overflow to a subsequent sheet of paper before the planned page break. Accordingly this parameter may need to be adjusted to leave a degree of empty space at the bottom of each page in the case of “normal” reservations - thus leaving room for expansion when “long” text fields are encountered in one or two reservations on a given page. This way you can avoid the contents of a given “page” spilling over more than one sheet of paper.

wc_Customer_reserve_single_day This parameter controls whether a “Customer” (as opposed to an administrator) will be restricted to only making reservations that begin and end on the same day. Making this parameter = “Yes” effectively causes the “End date” form element on the reservation screen to be hidden from the user, and it is filled in by the system to always be the same as the “Start date”.

wc_Media_status_1 (and 2 and 3) These text strings are descriptive of the meanings assigned to the values of the “status” fields associated with items in inventory. (Such as “Special Instructions”, “Prior Authorization Required”, and “In Repair”). They can be changed to reflect other meanings appropriate to the environment that the system is used in. These strings are used in generating informative messages for the user when appropriate, so they can be as long as necessary to be clearly understandable. This is as opposed to the “terse” versions below.

wc_Media_status_pulldown_0 (and 1, 2, and 3) These are very terse forms of the same meanings, but as used in the actual pull-down menus associated with their use. Thus they need to be fairly short. The system is released with the values "OK", "Special Instr.", "Auth.Required.", and "In Repair" respectively.

wc_Media_status_legend If you change the meanings associated with status value of items in inventory (as described immediately above) you should also edit this string as appropriate. This is the “Legend” that is displayed on the screen when symbols are used to flag entries with non-zero status, and it describes the meaning associated with each of these symbols to remind the user.

wc_param_purge_threshold This is a number (set to 150 in the released version) that represents the number of days beyond which all expired reservations can be purged us