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1992-08-04
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TO: INTEGRA COMPUTING, 910 Cobb Place Manor Dr., Marietta, GA 30066 MT 6.1
Name __________________________________________________________
Firm Name __________________________________ Phone ________________
Address __________________________________________________________
City _________________ State ___ Zip _______ County ________
# Professionals _____ # Employees ____ Type of Practice ________________
I first heard of Integra Computing from ___________________________________
Prices and availability are subject to change without notice.
Send registered* copies of the following:
___ copies of MT-Tracker at $90 [+ $110 EXTRA to get 2 hr support]* $_____
___ copies of RAMdesk at $50 [only $25 w/MT-Tracker/BillPower] $_____
___ copies of ReSearch at $90 [+ $60 EXTRA to get 1 hr support]* $_____
Send unregistered* copies of the following:
___ copies of RAMdesk at $10 ea $_____
___ copies of ReSearch at $10 ea $_____
___ copies of BillPower at $10 ea $_____
To have programs supplied on 3.5" media, enclose $5.00 extra PER PROGRAM $_____
If you don't live in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico, please add $10.00 more $_____
TOTAL ORDER $_____
___% Sales Tax for ___________ county, if you're a GA resident $_____
If you live in a country that was formerly governed by communists, and
this order is being placed before 1 January 1994, you may subtract 50% -$_____
Please enclose CHECK or MONEY ORDER in US dollars -- GRAND TOTAL $_____
Credit card orders and purchase orders which are
not accompanied by payment will not be accepted.
A check or money order must show on its face the
name & address of a US bank that will accept it.
_______________________________________ _________________
SIGNATURE DATE
* Unregistered software is programmed to remind you to register.
MT-TRACKER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
BUILDING BLOCKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
SETTING UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
SCHEDULING MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
LOG MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
CLIENT MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
NOTE MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
UTILITES (BACKUP, RESTORE, PRINTER DRIVERS, ETC.) . . . . . . . . . 52
MESSAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
CAUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
POP-UP MT-TRACKER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
APPENDIX A DEPARTMENT/EMPLOYEE GROUPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
APPENDIX B AUTOMATED EXECUTION (MACROS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
APPENDIX C SHARING DATA AMONG SEVERAL COMPUTERS . . . . . . . . . 66
APPENDIX D MT-TRACKER ON A LOCAL AREA NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . 68
MT-TRACKER
INSTRUCTIONS
NOTE: Please read the CAUTION in Section 10.
SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION
MT-Tracker is a program that combines several functions:
Client, project, or job tracking;
Scheduling of appointments and deadlines;
Logging of accomplishments, expenses, and receipts;
Note-keeping.
The four basic modules (Client, Scheduling, Logging and Note-
keeping) are interrelated and may be accessed from each other's menus
by your pressing control-key combinations:
Ctrl-S Scheduler
Ctrl-L Logger
Ctrl-N Notes
Ctrl-C Clients (there's a utility that allows you to
rename this module, resulting in an-
other control-key combination)
Because MT-Tracker is an integrated system, you may even perform cer-
tain of one module's functions when you're actually looking at a re-
cord in a different module. For example, if you're looking at a cli-
ent's record (in the Client module) and wish to know everything sched-
uled for that client this week, you may press Ctrl-S to directly ac-
cess MT-Tracker's scheduler. Then, after you've looked at the cli-
ent's schedule, MT-Tracker will take you right back to your examina-
tion of his record. In a similar fashion, Ctrl-L will let you examine
recent work, expenses, and receipts logged for that client, while
Ctrl-N will allow you to peruse your notes relating to him.
You can even ask MT-Tracker to display all events scheduled for a
given day and then automatically take you to the record of each indiv-
idual client affected by one or more events. When you're finished
doing what you need for a given client, you may press a key, and the
next affected client's record will appear.
MT-Tracker will handle up to 4000 clients/projects/jobs, up to
12000 appointments/deadlines/trips/vacations/exercises/reminders, and
up to 12000 services/disbursements/receipts. It's accompanied by PC-
INTRODUCTION 5
Beep, a pop-up alarm capable of keeping 20 events in each day's cue.
INTRODUCTION 6
SECTION 2 THE BUILDING BLOCKS
Before you begin using MT-Tracker, you should first acquaint
yourself with some basics. To begin with, make sure your monitor's
contrast is set so that the screen can display different shades. If
it's not set properly, MT-Tracker's instructions will occasionally
seem confusing.
Terminology
Though you may customize the program to use another term, these
instructions will use the term CLIENT to refer to a person, company,
job, or project that you wish to track.
An APPOINTMENT is an event scheduled for a particular time and
day. A lunch date, for instance, would be entered as an Appointment.
A DEADLINE is an event for which your firm is responsible. It's char-
acter is such that failing to meet it may get you into trouble. A
MISCELLANEOUS event, on the other hand, is something which you expect
to take place, but for which you aren't responsible. For instance, if
another office is supposed to answer a complaint by 20 August, you
would enter that event under the Miscellaneous category. If YOUR of-
fice is supposed to answer a complaint by 20 August, you would enter
it as a Deadline. If the Deadline is absolutely crucial, it should be
entered as a GOTCHA (which is a super Deadline).
An EXERCISE is a test or a period of training. You might prefer
to use this category for scheduling an employee's work or some other
major category of event.
The TRIP and VACATION categories are self-explanatory. Multi-day
events, such as Vacations and Trips, need be entered only once, for
the date on which the event begins (eg: the beginning date of your
vacation). Whenever you need to change something about that recorded
event, you need edit only one record, the one entered for the event's
beginning date. Yet, despite the fact that only one entry is actually
kept in the data base, your daily schedule for each day of the multi-
day event will reflect that event.
It's necessary that you recognize the importance of Deadlines
(including Gotchas). If you occasionally enter an Appointment as a
Miscellaneous event, or a Trip as an Exercise, there won't be any ser-
ious ramifications. But a Deadline should always be entered as such
(or as a Gotcha). You see, only Deadlines and Gotchas are deemed im-
portant enough by MT-Tracker to be brought forward when they're past
due. In this way, MT-Tracker will continue reminding you of a Dead-
line, even after it's been passed, until you check it off. If some-
thing really should be entered as a Deadline, and you instead enter it
as an Appointment or Miscellaneous event, MT-Tracker won't keep hound-
ing you to take care of it after it's scheduled date passes. In other
words, that item will be dropped from your "to-do" list after the
BUILDING BLOCKS 7
scheduled date. In most cases this won't cause any problems, but
there may be times when you'll wish you had entered something as a
Deadline, so that you'll keep being reminded of it until it's done.
A REMINDER is an entry reminding you that an Appointment, Dead-
line, etc., will occur at some time in the future. A Reminder must be
set at least one day prior to the event of which you wish to be re-
minded. For instance, you might wish to be reminded on Monday that
you have an important meeting on Tuesday. Or, you might want to be
reminded that a report is due in a couple of weeks (the actual due
date would be entered as a Deadline, and a Reminder could be set a
couple of weeks prior to the due date).
Each Appointment, Deadline, etc., may have up to four Reminders
linked to it. This linking, a MT-Tracker exclusive, is handled aut-
omatically. Linking Reminders to the tasks to which they refer is
advantageous when you need to change the original task. When such a
change is made, all the linked Reminders are automatically changed
appropriately. Assume, for instance, that you originally scheduled an
Appointment for 1 September, and made a Reminder for 25 August (remin-
ding you of the 1 September Appointment). If you subsequently changed
the 1 September Appointment to 31 August, MT-Tracker would also auto-
matically change the 25 August Reminder so that it reflected the Ap-
pointment's new date (31 August). The date of the Reminder, itself,
would also be changed to 24 August, in order to maintain the 1-week
interval between Appointment and Reminder that had originally been
established.
A PLAN is a special file that lists the expected tasks for a pro-
ject with which you are involved. This listing contains the anticipa-
ted time interval between each task. When you enter or change a date
in the Plan, MT-Tracker will automatically change the dates for all
related tasks accordingly. Plans are very useful in planning compli-
cated projects, such as lawsuits or training exercises involving plen-
tiful milestones.
A SERVICE is an accomplishment, work that's been performed, or an
appointment/deadline that's been met.
A RECEIPT is money that's been taken in, while a DISBURSEMENT is
money that's been spent.
By the way, GOTCHAs, EXERCISEs, and MISCELLANEOUS events may have
their names changed (see the SETTING UP section).
Entering the Program
Remember, you must always access MT-Tracker by entering "mt" at
the DOS prompt. This causes the MT.BAT file to execute. Never access
MT-Tracker by entering "mttrack" (accept as recommended in the SET-
TING UP section below). Don't even rename the MT.BAT file. MT-
BUILDING BLOCKS 8
Tracker must ALWAYS be entered through a batch file called MT.BAT. If
you want to access MT-Tracker through an automated menu program, you
may do so, as long as the the menu program calls MT.BAT (rather than
directly calling the MTTRACK.EXE file).
Control characters
On-screen instructions will frequently instruct you to press
control characters. A control character is represented graphically
as a letter preceded by an up caret (eg: ^A or ^H). If you are
instructed to press a control character, you must hold the Ctrl key
down, while simultaneously pressing the appropriate letter key. For
example, to press ^O, hold down the Ctrl key and tap the "O" (or "o")
key. Do not actually press the up caret key; the up caret is used
merely as a graphic representation of the control key.
Pausing
When you find the computer in the middle of some lengthy proce-
dure, such as printing a report, and you want to pause, press the
space bar. Doing so will cause the process to stop until you press
the space bar again. This use of the space bar will not work in all
of the program's operational modes, but it will in most. Pressing
the space bar may take a few seconds to have an effect, so be patient.
Aborting
If, instead of wishing that the computer pause in the middle of
a procedure, you prefer to abort that procedure altogether, press ESC
(the Escape key). As with the space bar, this key may not work in
all parts of the program, and it may take a few seconds to work.
EDITX.EXE
There are a few files which will need to be created or modi-
fied by MT-Tracker's text editor, EDITX.EXE, before you can realize
the full potential of the program. For instance, you may want to
create a Template of the course that you think a typical project will
follow.
EDITX manipulates simple industry-standard ASCII code. You
may access it from a menu by pressing ^E (for "Edit").
BUILDING BLOCKS 9
SECTION 3 SETTING UP
MT-Tracker should be placed into a MANAGEX directory on your com-
puter. If you've gone through the automated install routine, that's
already been handled for you.
You should also copy the BACKUP and RESTORE programs from your
computer's DOS diskette to the MANAGEX directory (or, alternatively,
make sure that they're in your computer's directory "path").
When you first begin using MT-Tracker, you will have to answer a
series of CUSTOMIZING questions. Very brief explanations follow:
-> Drive used for MT-Tracker: Enter the letter designation (C,D,
etc.) of the disk on which you want to store MT-Tracker's data. If
there's room, you will probably use the same disk for both program
and data. A hard disk is highly recommended.
-> Initials: Enter the initials of each department or employee for
whom Appointments, Deadlines, etc., will be stored by MT-Tracker.
A department/employee is an individual or office that you want to
track with the program.
-> Printer Port: The program needs to know the parallel port to which
your printer is attached. Press the 1, 2, or 3 key. By the way,
you may temporarily alter the printer port at the time a report is
prepared if you simply press the 1, 2 or 3 key just before begin-
ning the hunt thru the database.
-> Reset Printer: Before preparing a report, the program will momen-
tarily reset your printer (unless you've indicated a Laser prin-
ter). If you find this to be an unnecessary annoyance, answer
"NO" here.
-> Printer Lines per Page: Enter the number of lines your printer is
set to print on each sheet of paper. If you're unsure, just press
RET to keep the default setting (66). If you're using a laser
printer, this figure is irrelevant, so you should enter "LASER".
If you indicate that you're using a laser printer, MT-
Tracker will offer a wider variety of reports than would
otherwise be the case. MT-Tracker will assume that you're
using a Hewlett Packard Laser Jet printer (or one that
emulates the Laser Jet). If your printer cannot emulate
the Laser Jet, the program's reporting functions may not
operate properly. In this case, see the BATCH FILE
CUSTOMIZATION section below.
-> Faster Alternate Interface: To make or edit an appointment or
deadline in MT-Tracker, you are normally taken through a series of
prompts, such as date, time, etc. This sequence may be shor-
tened by a step or two if you want MT-Tracker to make a couple of
assumptions for you. To give MT-Tracker it's alternate short-se-
quence interface, you should mark this item "YES". When placed
into this mode, MT-Tracker will assume that the date for which you
SETTING UP 11
wish to make an entry or change is the date that is currently
highlighted on the main MT-Tracker calendar screen. It will also
allow you to make several event entries in a row without return-
ing you to the main calendar between each one.
-> 24-hour Time, etc: If this item is answered "YES", MT-Tracker
will use 24-hour (instead of 12-hour) time. It will also use the
DD/MM/YY (not MM/DD/YY) date format.
-> Prompt for Remarks: Immediately after you schedule an event, Mul-
tiTrack will allow you to enter up to 17 lines of remarks that can
be attached to the event. If you're not likely to need remarks,
you may wish to skip this step. If so, enter "NO" here.
-> Prompt for Priorities: If you find it useful to assign priorities
to your deadlines (to-do's), you'll want MT-Tracker to prompt you for
a priority at the time you enter a deadline into the system. The
default for this item is "NO", because very few people actually pay
attention to the priorities originally assigned to deadlines when
they're put into the system. Instead, as each new day arrives,
they review ALL of that day's deadlines and decide AT THAT TIME
which deadlines are most important (completely ignoring whatever
priority was originally assigned to each event). But, if you in-
sist upon having MT-Tracker prompt you for a deadline's priority as
you enter it into the system, you should answer this item, "YES".
When MT-Tracker knows that it should follow priorities, it will
display each deadline's priority number at the left margin of each
day's full-detail "daily view".
-> Prompt for Employees: If MT-Tracker will be used to schedule more
than one person, this item should be "YES"; otherwise, answer "NO".
-> Prompt for Alarms: If you plan to use PC-Beep (MT-Tracker's compan-
ion alarm program) to provide pop-up alarms for the appointments you
enter into MT-Tracker, you should answer this item, "YES". If you
do, MT-Tracker will ask you for an alarm time whenever you enter an
event for which you indicate a beginning time of day.
-> Colors: Press "M" until the main foreground color you want appears.
Press "S" until the secondary color appears. Press "B" until you
have the desired background. Only computers equipped with color
video cards will be given the colors options.
There are some secondary items that may be customized if you
press the F9 key after passing through all the above ones:
-> There are three types of events whose names you may change:
GOTCHAs, EXERCISEs, and MISCELLANEOUS events. To give each a dif-
ferent name, just type the name you want. Whatever the name you
substitute for GOTCHA, the event type will have the characteristics
of GOTCHAs and DEADLINEs (eg: they'll be automatically brought for-
ward from day to day). If you change the name of MISCELLANEOUS or
EXERCISE, the traits of the event will become similar to those of
ordinary APPOINTMENTs. Please don't make ANY changes here until
you're thoroughly familiar with the program.
-> TDY & Leave: Military offices may find these references more ap-
propriate than "trips" and "vacations".
-> Employees or Departments: Choose the term by which you wish to
SETTING UP 12
refer to the people, positions or offices in your firm.
-> Workday Begin and End Times: Whenever you ask the program to find
a block of free time, it needs to know how early and how late you
want it to check each day. Without reasonable begin and end times,
the program would always find time in the middle of the night.
-> Partition Interval: When the program prepares the "Printed Daily
Schedule" report, it needs to know how many partitions should be
printed per hour. If you desire two partitions, enter "30" min-
utes; enter "15" for four, etc. By the way, the "Printed Daily
Schedule" is always centered on 1:00PM, and the Begin and End
times entered above are used to estimate the total number of hours
you want shown on that report.
-> Show Partitions on Standard Reports: Normally, the program does
not waste space in displaying partition lines on its standard re-
ports. If, however, you want it to partition each day into half-
or quarter-hourly blocks, answer "YES" at this item.
If you make any mistakes in filling in the blanks, don't worry; you
may always come back to this series of questions later if you press ^U
at the Schedule menu and then "C" at the Utilities menu.
There are also a few things you can customize at the batch file
level. In the MT.BAT file, there is a line that reads, "MTTRACK"
(don't confuse it with the line that reads, ":MTTRACK").
If your printer is connected to your computer's SERIAL port,
rather than to its parallel port, you should insert a couple of lines
into the MT.BAT file, just above the "MTTRACK" line. The first
line should contain the appropriate MODE command (see your DOS manual)
to enable your serial port to communicate with your printer (these
parameters should be in your printer manual). The second line should
read, "MODE LPT1:=COM1" (or "MODE LPT1:=COM2", if using comm port 2).
Also, the 11th parameter on the "MTTRACK" line should be "NORESET"
(eg: "MTTRACK x x 10-30 x x x x x x x NORESET").
If you're using a laser printer that CANNOT emulate the Hewlett
Packard Laser Jet (and if you have been unsuccessful in modifying the
the LASRCODE file, discussed in the next section), you should make
sure that the second parameter contains the character sequence "NLJ".
Examples:
"mttrack x NLJ x x x x x x x x x EURODATECAL"
"mttrack x PWNLJ x x ABC DEF F:\MANAGEX C:\MANAGEX x MR 1"
Finally, if you use desqVIEW, you should add a line at the bottom
of the TX.BAT file, saying "EXIT".
CUSTOMIZING FOR LASER PRINTERS
If your printer is not compatible with the Hewlitt Packard Laser
Jet series, you may not be able to take advantage of some of the re-
SETTING UP 13
ports offered by the program. But there is still a slim possibility
that you can, if you'll need to modify the LASRCODE file with a text
editor, such as EDITX.EXE (Ctrl-E from the Main Menu).
The LASRCODE file contains a series of lines, each of which
begins with a description of a code and ends with the actual code that
will be sent to your printer to achieve the results described. The
codes that are currently in that file are for the Laser Jet series of
printers. If your printer has different codes for exactly the same
functions, you may substitute them.
Be sure to change only the code section of each line (following
the equals sign). The code must consist of actual characters, not hex
or decimal numbers. If you use EDITX.EXE, remember that, to enter the
ESC key (or any control-key combination), you must first press Ctrl-P,
then the ESC key (or other control-key combination).
If you can't successfully modify the LASRCODE file, you'll need
to tell MT-Tracker that it should ignore the file. To find out how to
do so, read the BATCH FILE CUSTOMIZATION section's discussion of the
NLJ command at the second parameter.
SETTING UP 14
SECTION 4 SCHEDULING MODULE
The INTRODUCTION of the instructions contains descriptions of the
various types of entries that you can make: Appointments, Deadlines,
Gotchas, Vacations, Trips, Miscellaneous events, and Reminders. Also
mentioned there are Plans.
You may use any of MT-Tracker's five alternate menus: four "cal-
endar menus" consisting of a large calendar and a single menu bar at
the bottom of the screen; and the "full screen menu", which uses the
entire screen to explain each of your choices. MT-Tracker will de-
fault to one of the calendar menus the first time you enter the prog-
ram. If you wish to switch to another calendar menu, press the TAB
key; to switch to the full screen menu, press TAB twice quickly.
Whichever menu is last used before you exit the program will be the
menu to which MT-Tracker defaults the next time you load it.
Most users will prefer a calendar menu, even though it takes a
while for it to be written to the screen (because the program must
conduct a lot of research as it's drawing the calendar and filling in
events). If you have a relatively slow computer, however, you may
appreciate the full-screen menu, which takes almost no time to flash
onto the screen.
One of the calendar menus displays the types of events scheduled
for each day. Each day's box on the calendar contains up to eleven
a's, D's, etc. Each of these characters represents an Appointment,
Deadline, etc., that falls on that date. The more characters you see
in a day's box, the more things have been scheduled for that day. To
save space, no more than one Reminder (reminding you of an actual
event sometime in the future) will be shown in each day's box.
Another calendar menu displays the blocks of time that have been
scheduled for each day. Each day's box contains from zero to twenty-
four rectangles, arranged in two rows of up to twelve rectangles each.
Each rectangle represents one-half hour that's already been scheduled
for that day. The top row shows which half-hour blocks have been
scheduled between 7:00 AM and 1:00 PM. The bottom row represents 1:00
to 7:00 PM. You will also note that there is a vertical line marking
each hour (on the half-hour) from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM. This calendar
will quickly give you a very rough idea of how much time has been
scheduled for each day of the month.
A third calendar menu will combine BOTH event types AND time
scheduled (7:00AM to 5:00PM) for each day.
The fourth calendar menu will split the screen in half, display-
ing a calendar on the left and up to seventeen abbreviated event des-
criptions on the right. Each day's box in the calendar will be blank
if there's nothing scheduled that day. If, on the other hand, there's
at least one event whose ending time is later than its beginning time,
the box will display a rough horizontal bar chart showing the times
SCHEDULING MODULE 15
during which that day's events take place. If no time has actually
been blocked off during that day, but there IS some non-time-blocked
activity, the box will contain a single dot.
By default, each calendar menu will show events scheduled for ALL
your departments/employees. If you wish to see only one particular
department's schedule, press the F3 key. Then, tell MT-Tracker which
department you want shown on the calendar. If you want ALL depart-
ments to be displayed, just press RET when MT-Tracker asks you for
one. An alternate way to change the department being shown on the
calendar is to simply press the number key corresponding to that de-
partment's ID number. For example, pressing "1" results in department
1's being shown on the calendar. Pressing "0" tells MT-Tracker to
show ALL departments on the calendar. Of course, this scheme works
only for departments 1 to 9, so if you want to see a department from
10 to 20, you'll have to use the F3 key.
You can move from day to day with the arrow keys. When you land
upon a day for which you'd like to see more detail, press the RET key.
When you do, the calendar will be replaced by a screen that fully des-
cribes each of that single day's events. To zoom back to the calen-
dar, just press the RET key again. Whether you're looking at the
large calendar or an individual day's events, the arrow keys work
identically:
left arrow: go back one day;
right arrow: go forward a day;
up arrow: go back one week;
down arrow: go forward a week;
PgUp: go back one month; and
PgDn: go forward one month.
Whether you're looking at the big calendar or an individual day, you
have the full range of options shown in the same single-line menu at
the bottom of the screen. And the TAB key also works in the daily
view to toggle between alternate views of the day:
--> three spell out the beginning and ending times for each event:
1: without a small calendar in the upper right corner;
2: with a small calendar in the upper right;
3: with a small calendar and each event's full notes;
--> two fill in blocks representing the events' times:
1: without a small calendar in the upper right corner;
2: with a small calendar in the upper right;
The long box at the bottom of a large calendar will display the
first several characters of each of four Gotchas and Deadlines sched-
uled for the day that is highlighted. If there are fewer than four
Gotchas and Deadlines, other types of events may also be shown (remin-
ders and events tagged for omission, however, will not appear here).
NOTE:
If you ever want a printout of the calendar that is
SCHEDULING MODULE 16
currently on the screen, press the CTRL-PrtSc key combina-
tion. This will work, however, only if you have entered
into line 2 of the PRNTINIT file (which accompanies Multi-
Track) the "escape sequence" needed to utilize your printer's
character set that includes the IBM graphics characters.
Instructions for doing so are contained in the PRNTINIT
file. Take a look at it with EDITX (press ^E at the menu
to access EDITX).
At the daily view, CTRL-PrtSc may be used to obtain a
printout of the day's complete detail, including each event's
Notes (which are not displayed at the daily view) and any
events that, due to the screen's limited space, aren't dis-
played.
MAKING AN ENTRY
When you choose the Make option, you will be asked to specify the
type of entry you are about to enter. The definitions of most are
found at the beginning of this documentation. If you choose to enter
a new Plan, you will be taken through the straightforward sequence
discussed in "Editing a Plan", below.
When you are asked to enter the date, a small calendar may appear
on the screen. You have the option of either: 1) entering the date at
the prompt; or 2) using the cursor movement keys to locate the desired
date on the calendar and then pressing RET. The PgUp and PgDn keys
will change the month displayed on the calendar.
If you don't know the date you need to enter, but do know that it
is a certain number of days before or after a given date, enter the
given date, followed by a plus or minus sign, followed in turn by the
number of days you wish to add or subtract. If, for instance, you
need to enter the date that is 120 days after 2 OCT 89, you should
enter "2 OCT 89 +120". MT-Tracker will automatically figure the cor-
rect date for you. If you need to move forward or backward a given
number of months (instead of days), just highlight the appropriate
date on the calendar and press the PgUp or PgDn keys appropriately.
The next item you fill in will be the department/employee affec-
ted by the event. If you wish to schedule more than one department,
each should be separated from the next by a comma and/or a space (eg:
"ABC,DEF GHI JKL" will tell MT-Tracker that you wish to schedule
identical events for each of four departments -- ABC, DEF, GHI, and
JKL).
NOTE:
I you're using the program to schedule only one
person, you may find it annoying to be asked to enter a
department/employee. To tell MT-Tracker that it will never
be used to schedule more than a single person, you should
SCHEDULING MODULE 17
modify the MT.BAT file. Find the line saying "MTTRACK",
and add two parameters following that word. The second
parameter should be, "SINGLE", so that the line now reads,
"MTTRACK X SINGLE".
After you enter the date and the department/employee, the screen
will clear, and you'll be presented with a summary of what is already
scheduled for the designated department/employee on that date. Also,
the bottom of the screen will show a summary of the event you are pre-
sently entering. If you discover that you need to back up to a prev-
ious item, just press the left arrow to move the cursor to that item.
NOTE: If you don't need to fill in an item, just skip it by
pressing the RET key. Never feel compelled to make an entry
for an item that you don't think is important. If, for in-
stance, the department/employee is not important, don't fill
in that item. The only items that MT-Tracker requires are a
date and an event.
There are two "Time" items, one for each of the beginning and
ending times. If you enter a time that has already been "blocked off"
for the day, MT-Tracker will remind you of a possible conflict and
afford you the opportunity to change the entry if you need to.
NOTE: MT-Tracker assumes that an event with no ending time
or an ending time identical to the beginning time) is not
intended to be blocked off. Hence, you may schedule multiple
Deadlines for 11:00 (no ending time), without MT-Tracker's re-
minding you of possible conflicts. If, however, you have an
Appointment scheduled from 11:00 to 12:00, subsequent at-
tempts to enter anything during that period will trigger
MT-Tracker's time block protection response.
The "Client Number" item contemplates an alphanumeric entry up to
twelve characters long. You need not enter anything, but you may wish
to, since this item may help you to search through the data base
quickly to find only those events involving a specific client. If you
enter something, you may use the same scheme your office has always
used to identify each client. For instance, the client number for
John Smith might be "8801-JS-1" or "Smith, J", or "SMITJO", or any-
thing else.
NOTE:
If the time, client number, or description of the event
you're presently entering is the same as the corresponding
item in the preceding record just entered, you can save some
time by just entering "S". Whenever "S" is entered for a
time, client number, or description, MT-Tracker will pick up
that item's text from the last record you've just entered.
After you enter the "Event" item, you will be afforded the oppor-
tunity to add up to 17 lines of remarks to the entry. Use this capa-
SCHEDULING MODULE 18
bility sparingly, only when you are unable to adequately describe the
entry in the 37 characters allowed in the "Event" item. MT-Tracker is
limited to tracking a maximum of 15,000 lines of remarks. That sounds
like a lot, but if you abuse the program's remark-keeping capability,
you may exceed its capacity. Ten lines here and five lines there WILL
eventually add up if you attach long remarks to many entries in the
distant future. If you ever run out of remark-keeping space, omit
some entries. Every time you omit an entry, the remarks that were
attached to it are discarded, freeing space for more.
NOTE:
If 17 lines of remarks won't be enough, you may wish to
like to link an event with a text-based disk file. Just
Place "FILE=" at the beginning of a remark line, followed
immediately by the name of the file, and nothing else. When-
ever a report containing that remark is prepared, the remark
will include the text of the file you've designated. Example
of a line specifying a file: FILE=C:TEXT.DOC. You may use
EDITX.EXE (^E at the main menu) to create the text file.
If you've customized MT-Tracker (in the ^Utilities module's Cus-
tomize routine) to request a priority number for each DEADLINE and
GOTCHA, you'll be prompted for it after entering your remarks. Just
enter a number from 0 to 9, the lowest number connoting the highest
priority. If you prefer, you may enter a letter, instead of a number.
If you've customized MT-Tracker to request an alarm time for each
future event that contains a beginning time of day, you'll be prompted
for it after entering your remarks and priority. This prompt will
appear only if the event being entered is for a future date, if that
event has a beginning time, and if you haven't already indicated an
alarm time at the beginning of the event description (see the ALARMS
section below).
Blinking Events
If an event is so important that you want it to blink whenever
it's displayed on the main calendar screen, press Ctrl-B at the end
of the event description item. When you do, stylized "B" will appear.
A Note about Reminders
Reminders are created most conveniently at the time you original-
ly enter the event to which they refer. MT-Tracker will automatically
prompt you to create such Reminders after each Appointment, Deadline,
etc., has been input.
Reminders may also be entered subsequent to your entry of an
Appointment, Deadline, etc. To do so, you will first be asked the
date of the event for which you need a Reminder. Then, MT-Tracker
SCHEDULING MODULE 19
will show you the record number of each primary event scheduled for
that date. You will be expected to use the arrow keys to highlight
the specific record of which you wish to be reminded (or, if you pre-
fer, you may simply enter its record number). Then, MT-Tracker will
flash that record to the screen and ask you to enter the date for
which you wish this new Reminder to be set.
EDITING ENTRIES
When you choose the Edit option, you will be asked to enter the
date of the item you wish to modify. If you want to edit an entire
Plan, instead of an individual item, enter "P".
Editing Individual Items
If you want to edit an individual item, you should enter the
date on which the event you wish to edit occurred. If you aren't sure
about the date, guess. If you wish to edit only events that apply to
a particular department/employee, you will next be allowed to enter
the appropriate ID number (if you don't care which department is in-
volved, just press RET when asked for the ID).
Next, all events scheduled for the date/department combina-
tion specified will be listed. You will be asked to enter the Record
number of the event you wish to edit/examine. If you don't see the
one you're looking for, you've probably guessed incorrectly about the
date. Use the arrow keys to change the date and display a different
set of events. When you finally find the event you want to edit, en-
ter its record number.
The selected record will then appear on the screen, and you
may modify it as you wish. Press F6 when you're done. If the record
just changed is referenced by any Reminders, they will be automatical-
ly updated to reflect the changes you made. Then, if one of the
changes you made was to the event's date, you'll be shown all of its
Reminders, so that you can confirm the changes automatically rendered
by MT-Tracker.
Editing a Plan
When you choose to work with a Plan, you'll be shown a listing of
all Plans presently on the hard disk. Then, you'll be asked to choose
one of them. Before we go any further, however, let's discuss exactly
what a plan is and how it's set up.
A Plan is a file that may be used to chart the course that a pro-
ject is expected to follow. Each Plan may be set up individually or
it may be based upon a general Template. Plan and Template files may
be created with EDITX. You may establish a separate Template for each
SCHEDULING MODULE 20
general category of project your firm handles. A real estate project,
for instance, might use a "REALTY" Template.
Each Plan/Template contains a listing of the tasks that usually
take place in the type of matter tracked by the Plan/Template. Each
line in the file consists of a task, an abbreviation for that task,
the type of task (eg: Deadline or Appointment), and remarks about that
task. Also included is the interval (expressed in days) that is ex-
pected between that task and the preceding one. If an item is com-
pletely unrelated to the preceding one, the interval item should be
left blank. The remarks item may also be left blank, if you wish, but
every line in the file MUST have both an abbreviation and a descrip-
tion. A Template or Plan file may have NO empty lines.
MT-Tracker comes with a sample Template file called "SAMPLE".
Take a look at it with EDITX. Note, as you view it, that no actual
dates are filled in. Never fill in Plan/Template dates with EDITX.
Enter dates ONLY in the main MT-Tracker program.
BRIEF EXAMPLE OF A TEMPLATE:
ABB -------DESCRIPTION------- INT TYP DATE ---REMARKS-----------
INJ Injury -
CMP File complaint -
ANS Expect answer 30 M
SL Stat Of Limitations runs 730 D inj\
SLN Note: Now it's too late 730 N inj\
The first line reflects the injury. Remember, this is a Tem-
plate, not an actual project Plan. Therefore, no date information is
filled in. The next line is for the filing of the complaint. It has
no interval item because the date on which it is to take place is not
necessarily related to the date of the injury. The third line ref-
lects that an answer is expected 30 days after the complaint is filed.
The fourth line indicates that the statute of limitations will expire
730 days after the injury takes place. The "inj\" in the remarks item
ties the SL interval to the first line, which begins with "INJ". Were
in not for the "inj\" notation, the fourth line's interval would be as-
sumed to be tied to the immediately preceding line (the "ANS" line).
The fifth line is a note for the 4th line. Its type is 'N', and it
must use the remarks section to refer to the event from which the 4th
line's interval is calculated.
When you set up a Plan for a project, it will initially consist
of an exact copy of the Template from which it was copied (assuming
you didn't write an original Plan "from scratch" in EDITX). No dates
will actually be filled in. Extensive changes to the body of the Plan
must be made in EDITX (by pressing ^E at the menu). Filling in dates,
however, is handled by pressing P if you're using the calendar menu or
by pressing E if you're using the full-screen menu. This "P" (or "E")
option is the one to choose if you want MT-Tracker to fill in dates
SCHEDULING MODULE 21
for related tasks automatically. The "^E" option (EDITX) won't allow
you to fill in dates.
If you want to fill in some Plan dates, press "P" (or "E" if
you're using the full-screen menu), and you'll be shown a listing of
all Plans presently on the hard disk. Then, you'll be asked to choose
one of them. If you wish to create a new one, enter a name for it
(usually, a client number will suffice). MT-Tracker will then remind
you that it doesn't exist and show you a listing of the Templates from
which the new plan can be copied. If an appropriate template exists,
type in it's name, and it'll be copied verbatim into the new Plan
you've chosen to set up. If an appropriate Template does NOT yet ex-
ist, you'll have to press ESC and go to EDITX (by pressing ^E at the
menu) to create a new Template (or the actual plan you want to set up)
"from scratch". New Templates (as well as all Plans not copied dir-
ectly from Templates) must be set up in EDITX. Now, let's quickly
cover how to edit an established Plan.
Once a Plan has been created, filling in the dates is a simple
matter. First, specify which Plan you wish to edit. Then, select a
task for editing by using the arrow keys to highlight that task (or
optionally, just entering the task's abbreviation).
Each time you select a task, you'll be taken through the same
series of prompts (date, time, etc.) that appear when you (M)ake an
event. Anytime you don't need to fill in a particular item, just
press RET to move on to the next.
After MT-Tracker has accepted all the information for a task, it
will search the plan for subsequent tasks whose intervals are related
to the date of the task just entered. As it encounters a subsequent
related task, its date will be automatically assigned, and you'll be
given the opportunity to enter any other information you wish.
When you're finished making changes to the Plan, press the ESC
key to return to the menu.
NOTE:
Note that MT-Tracker moves through the Plan from beginning
to end; it cannot be forced to go backward. But if you ever
need to calculate earlier dates from later ones, MT-Tracker
will still accommodate you. When you're asked to enter a date
for the earlier task, simply highlight the date of the LATER
task on the little pop-up calendar; then type "-XX" (where XX
is the number of days you wish to subtract from the later date).
Frequently Scheduled or Recurring Events
In addition to scheduling events item by item, MT-Tracker
has the ability to automatically log events that take place on a regu-
SCHEDULING MODULE 22
lar basis. For instance, if you have a staff meeting every Tuesday at
1200, you need not go to the trouble of setting each and every such
event.
To tell MT-Tracker the events of which you would like to be re-
minded regularly, select (^E)dit in the menu. You'll be transferred
to EDITX, where you can set up a file containing your regular events.
When EDITX's menu appears, select "(F)requently Scheduled or Recurring
Events". This will take you into the RECUR.DAT file, where you may
enter up to 200 lines, each containing one event. Note that you may
use the tab key to align the cursor at the correct spot on each line
to make an entry.
The first item on each line is the Event's description. Enter up
to 37 characters.
The next item is the Month in which the event regularly occurs.
Enter the month as a number (1=JAN, 2=FEB, etc.). If the event occurs
EVERY month or if this item is not applicable, leave it blank.
Then comes the day of the month. If this item is not applicable,
leave it blank. "32" designates the LAST day of the month, regardless
of how long the month is. The last WORK day will be discussed below.
The time of day items are next. If not applicable, leave these
items blank. Time should be entered without colons. If the time
you're entering is not within the standard working day (7AM-7PM), ap-
pend an "A" or a "P" to the time ("930" and "930A" both mean 9:30AM,
whereas "930P" means 9:30PM). You can avoid possible AM-PM confusion
if you use 24-hour time (9:30PM = 2130), as in the example below.
The time of day is followed by the type of event. Enter "M" for
Miscellaneous, "D" for Deadline, "A" for Appointment, etc. Center
your entry below the "Y" of "TYP".
The department/employee to whom this event applies should be
entered next. Use only the appropriate ID number, NOT initials.
Start the entry under the "M" in "EMP".
The next several items correspond to the days of the week, Sunday
through Saturday. These items are used if the regular event you are
entering occurs on a specific day of the week, rather than on a speci-
fic date in the month. If the event always occurs on a Wednesday, for
example, you would make an entry directly below the "W". The entry
you make should be a number between 0 and 6. If the event always
falls on the first Monday of the month, enter a "1" beneath the "M".
If it falls on the third Friday, enter a "3" below "F". If it occurs
EVERY Wednesday, enter a "0" under the "W". If an event occurs on the
second and fourth Mondays, you should enter two separate lines identi-
cal in every way, except that one should list a "2" below the "M",
while the second should list a "4" below the "M". Remember, a "0"
indicates an occurrence on the SAME day every week. A "6" indicates
SCHEDULING MODULE 23
an occurrence on the LAST specified weekday of the month. A "7" under
any of the specified days indicates the month's very last WORK day.
Take a look at the following example:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
Julie's Birthday 1 17 M
Staff Meeting 0900 1000 M 0
Bowling Club Meeting 1900 2000 M 1 1
Bowling Club Meeting 1900 2000 M 1 3
Rotary Club Meeting 15 1930 2100 M 2
!! MEMORIAL DAY !! 5 M 6
month-end meeting 0730 0800 7
The first line reminds you of Julie's birthday on 17 January.
The second indicates a staff meeting that takes place every Tuesday
from 9:00 to 10:00 AM. The third and fourth lines remind employee 1
that the Bowling Club meets at 7:00PM every first Thursday and third
Tuesday of the month (don't combine these entries, trying to have one
line handle both a Tuesday and a Thursday). The fifth line is a Re-
minder for the Rotary Club meeting scheduled for the 15th of each
month from 7:30 to 9:00 PM, with an alarm set for 7:00. The next-to-
last line notes that Memorial Day falls on the last Monday in the
fifth month (May). That line also demonstrates that the LAST speci-
fied weekday in a month -- which may be either the fourth or fifth
such weekday -- is denoted by a "6" under the appropriate day, not by
a "4" or a "5". The last line specifies the very last WORK day (Mon-
day to Friday) of the month. The "7" placed under the "F" indicates,
not the last FRIDAY, but the last WORK day ("6" would mean the last
Friday, but "7" means the last work day).
Scheduling a month's first Wednesday or fourth Friday is a snap,
as described above. But what if you want to schedule something on the
first Tuesday FOLLOWING the third Thursday of the month? Here, you
need to do something tricky. Fill in the line as if you were sched-
uling the third Thursday:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
First Tues after third Thurs M 3
Now, you need a way to tell to MT-Tracker to find the fifth day after
that third Thurdsay (Tuesday follows Thursday by five days). To do
so, put the 5 beneath the DA item:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
First Tues after third Thurs 5 M 3
Earliest and latest dates of occurrence
If you wish the recurring event to appear no earlier than a
certain date and no later than another, you should begin the event
SCHEDULING MODULE 24
description with a parenthetical sequence containing those dates. The
dates MUST be in this format: "MMDDYY-MMDDYY" (unless you've custom-
ized the program to accept the military/european DDMMYY-DDMMYY for-
mat). Each date must be exactly SIX digits, there must be a dash bet-
ween the two dates, and all this must be placed between an open and a
close parenthesis. For example, to schedule a 2:30-3:30 class every
Monday between 1 Sep 90 and 25 Nov 90, the line would read:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
(090190-112590)Class 230 330 M 0
Events separated by a certain number of days
What if you have an event that happens every 14 or 21 days, not
necessarily every second or third week of the month? The answer is
simple, though not obvious. To enter an event that happens only once
every __ days, place the number of days under the first S (Sunday).
Then, you'll have to give MT-Tracker a beginning date from which it
can figure each subsequent event's date. Enter the beginning date's
month and day under the MO and DAY items, and enter the last single
digit of its year JUST BEFORE the MO item. For example, to schedule
something every 14 days, including January 15, 1993, the line should
read:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
meeting every other week 31 15 0730 0800 14
If such a regularly scheduled event is to span two or more days during
each occurrance, you would have aligned the "14" under M, T, W, T, F,
or S (for a 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, or 7-day duration). For example, to
schedule a three-day event every 28 days, including February 1, 1991,
the line should read:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
3-day meeting (each 28 days) 12 1 0730 0800 28
Note that MT-Tracker will accept recurring items of this nature
only if the beginning date you enter is within 5 years of the CURRENT
date.
Events that occur every second or third month
What if you want to skip months? To make a recurring event hap-
pen every second, third, fourth or sixth month, you must make sure
that the month column is filled in with a month of the year during
which the event will take place. Then, you'll need to fill in column
64 (which has no heading) with the number of months to be skipped be-
tween recurrances of the event.
SCHEDULING MODULE 25
-- Attaching a Note to a Recurring Event
If you wish to attach a note to a recurring event, enter it on
the line just following the event to which it refers. The note should
have all the same parameters as the event, except that the type will
be "N" (for "note"). In the following example, the second line will
be considered a note for the first line:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
Bowling Club Meeting 1900 2000 A 1 1
Meet at the Alley at 1815 1900 2000 N 1 1
Wrapping it all up
Once you've entered all the frequent and recurring events
you wish, press F6 to save the file. That's all there is to it. MT-
Tracker will take over from there, referring to this file each day to
check for items that should be included in your schedule. Whenever
you prepare a schedule printout in the (H)unt routine, these items
will appear at the appropriate places (assuming that you don't do a
"Quick Hunt", discussed below in the discussion of (H)unting).
Remember that Frequent and Recurring Events can be changed or
omitted only in EDITX (by selecting ^E in the menu). Any events set
up in this manner will appear on your schedule until the year 2040,
unless you subsequently change them with EDITX.
NOTE: If you want to schedule an event one day each week
for the next several weeks, months, or years only, enter it
in the standard manner (rather than as a Frequent and Recur-
ring Event) as a Miscellaneous event or as an Exercise, spe-
cifying a the same day of the week for both the beginning
and ending dates.
Holidays
Holidays are special types of recurring events. When you enter
one into the RECUR.DAT file, you should begin its description with an
explanation point. Doing so will allow the program to recognize the
event as a holiday. Hence, when you attempt to schedule an Appoint-
ment or Reminder for that day, you will be reminded that it is a holi-
day and asked whether you really wish to proceed with the entry. You
are similarly reminded of Saturdays and Sundays. If you wish to also
be reminded of some other special event (such as your anniversary)
whenever you try scheduling an Appointment for that date, you should
enter it into this Frequent Events file (RECUR.DAT) with a leading
explanation point. See the final two lines of the example in the pre-
ceding section.
SCHEDULING MODULE 26
Associating Recurring Events with Projects
If you wish to associate a recurring event with a project, place
the project name or number between two pound signs in the event
description. For example, to a associate a bowling club meeting with
the project "FUN", the recurring event might be entered as follows:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
Bowling Club Meeting #FUN# 1900 2000 M 1 1
To-Do List
MT-Tracker doesn't keep a "to-do" file, per se. Instead, it
moves all past-due Deadlines to today's schedule. After all, a to-do
list is merely an itemization of things that need to be done (Dead-
lines). You want to continue being reminded of these Deadlines until
you "check them off". In moving past-due Deadlines to the current
date, MT-Tracker keeps reminding you to take care of them. Whenever
you look at today's list of events, you'll see EVERYTHING that needs
to be done, including things originally scheduled for today, as well
as Deadlines from the past that haven't been checked off yet.
ALL DEADLINES THAT APPEAR ON TODAY'S SCHEDULE ARE, IN EFFECT,
YOUR TO-DO LIST. A single report, therefore, contains both your
schedule and the equivalent of a to-do list.
NOTE:
The only past-due Deadlines not automatically moved
forward to the current date are those that may have been set
in the "Frequent & Recurring Events" file. The items in that
file are generally not of a "to-do" nature.
At the beginning of a new day, the program will search for each
past-due Deadline, display it for you, and ask whether you want it to
be marked for omission. If your answer is negative, that Deadline
will be added to today's schedule and will pop up the next day, too.
If, however, you want the past-due deadline to be marked for omission,
MT-Tracker won't bother you with it in the future (in other words,
it'll be dropped from the "to-do" list).
Anytime you want to add something immediately to your "to-do"
list, simply enter a Deadline for TODAY. That Deadline will pop up
tomorrow and the next day, and the next ... until you tell MT-Tracker
to mark it for omission. It couldn't be easier.
ALARMS
If you can afford to devote 35K of memory to a memory-resident
SCHEDULING MODULE 27
alarm program, then you might want to try PC-Beep, which accompanies
MT-Tracker. PC-Beep automatically picks up alarms entered into MT-
Tracker, whether set for today or for any date in the future. Up to
20 alarms may be held in PC-Beep's daily cue.
When the time for each alarm is reached, the computer's speaker
will sound, "beep-beep", and the event set for that time will appear
in window. The window will stay on the screen until you press the ap-
propriate key, at which point you will be returned to whatever you
were doing before the alarm sounded. Pressing any of keys 1 to 9 will
cause the alarm to sound again in 1 to 9 minutes. The A, B, C & D
keys will tell PC-Beep to snooze for 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. E, F,
G, or H are for 2, 3, 4, or 5 hours. If you press the space bar,
you'll be asked to enter a new alarm time manually, while the ESC key
will cause the alarm not to sound again at all.
If PC-Beep is already in memory when you load MT-Tracker at the
beginning of each day, up to twenty alarms for that day will be passed
automatically from MT-Tracker to PC-Beep. These alarms will corres-
pond to the new day's entries that were scheduled days or weeks ago.
Any entry scheduled for this new day at a specific time will be picked
up for an alarm if that entry's "Event" item begins with `@xxxx'
(where xxxx indicates the time (remember, no colons) that you wish the
alarm to sound). For example, an event entered as "@700 meeting with
boss" will result in an alarm going off at 7AM on whatever date was
set for the event.
As suggested above, you can schedule alarms many weeks, months,
or even years in advance. To do so, simply (M)ake an entry for any
date in the future. Be sure to give the entry a beginning Time and,
when you fill in the "Event" item, begin it with a "@", immediately
followed by the time you want the alarm to go off. For instance, if
you are having lunch with Bob at 1:00PM on 12 May 1989, and if you
need thirty minutes to get to Dino's restaurant, your Time entry would
be "100" (or "100P" or "1300"), and your Event entry might be "@1230
Lunch with Bob at Dino's". When 12 May rolls around, an alarm will
automatically be set for you at 12:30PM, reminding you of the 1:00
Appointment. If you need no preparation time at all, begin the Event
item with just "@". For instance, if the Event were entered as "@
Lunch with Bob at Dino's", the alarm would be set for 1:00PM (of
course, "@100 Lunch with..." would accomplish the same thing). Even
Frequent or Recurring Events can have alarms embedded, as shown below:
-FREQUENT OR RECURRING EVENT- MO DA TIME- TIME TYP EMP S M T W T F S
Julie's Birthday 1 17 E
@850 Staff Meeting 0900 1000 E 0
Bowling Club Meeting 1900 2000 E 1 1
Bowling Club Meeting 1900 2000 E 1 3
@1845 Rotary Club Meeting 15 1930 2100 E 2
The second line will cause an alarm to sound every Tuesday at
8:50AM, reminding you of the 9:00 staff meeting. The last line will,
SCHEDULING MODULE 28
on the 15th of every month, give employee 2 a 6:45PM Reminder of the
7:30 club meeting. The 24-hour formats used for time entries in this
example are merely illustrations; you may use whatever format you
like.
Loading PC-Beep
To use PC-Beep, make sure that it is located in the same direc-
tory as MT-Tracker (the ManageX directory). To load the program, go
to the MANAGEX directory and enter "pc-beep" at the DOS prompt (make
sure that PC-Beep is loaded BEFORE MT-Tracker). When you do so, the
program will be placed into memory and return you to the DOS prompt.
After that, the only time you'll know it's there is when it sounds an
alarm for you. It may not be accessed with a hotkey, but you can be
assured that whatever alarms you've already set in MT-Tracker for to-
day will be in PC-Beep's cue. And whatever alarms you subsequently
set in either MT-Tracker or RAMdesk (described at the end of this doc-
umentation) will also be picked up by PC-Beep.
If you'd like PC-Beep to be loaded automatically when you load
MT-Tracker, you'll need to modify the MT.BAT file. Find the line that
begins with "mttrack" and insert a line just above it that says "pc-
beep". Then save the file. Thereafter, whenever you enter "MT" at
the DOS prompt, PC-Beep will be loaded just before MT-Tracker.
PC-Beep takes up about 35K of memory, but if you can afford an-
other 7K, you can also place MT-Tracker, itself into memory. Please
see the POP-UP MT-Tracker section for details.
Remember, PC-Beep is memory-resident, and, as is the case with
other such programs, it may sometimes cause your computer to lock up.
PC-Beep cannot be loaded after certain other memory-resident software,
such as Sidekick. Therefore, you may have to modify your autoexec.bat
file, so that it will cause PC-Beep to be executed before some other
programs (if you do so, take the PC-Beep instructions out of MT.BAT).
Customizing PC-Beep
Accompanying MT-Tracker is a file called RAMDESK.CFG. This file
contains several lines, each of which may be used to customize PC-
Beep. If a line is enclosed within curly brackets, it will have no
effect. As shipped, all lines begin with curly brackets, so the file
as a whole will not affect PC-Beep until you alter it.
To designate the primary colors used by PC-Beep, just find the
"FOREGROUND" and "BACKGROUND" lines and add the color codes you
desire:
0 Black 1 Blue 2 Green 3 Cyan
4 Red 5 Magenta 6 Brown 7 Light Gray
Be sure that the curly brackets are removed if you want these lines to
be effective.
SCHEDULING MODULE 29
The pitch of the alarm may be set by the "BEEP-FREQ" line. Fill
in the desired frequency (in hertz) after the equals sign on this
line. Note that some computer's can't reproduce very high or very low
pitches. Therefore, you might want to keep within the 100-5000 range.
The number of beeps emitted by your computer's speaker whenever
an alarm sounds is determined by the "RINGS" line. If you enter "0"
after the equals sign, the alarm won't sound at all; "1" to "8" will
result in a corresponding number of beeps; if enter "9", the alarm
will continue to sound until you press a key.
If you'd like the alarm to go off on the hour, just remove the
brackets from the "CHIME-HOUR" line. No equals sign is needed. To
remind you, instead, of each passing half hour, remove the brackets
from the "CHIME-HOUR-HALF" line.
If you want PC-Beep to display time in 24-hour fashion, remove
the brackets on the "24-HOUR" line.
DO NOT CHANGE ANY OF THE RAMDESK.CFG LINES, EXCEPT THOSE
DISCUSSED ABOVE.
Six-Month View (and calendar calculator to find any day)
This option will allow you to see calendars for any six-month
period within the next half century. Simply press `S' when the menu
is on the screen. The current month will appear at the top-center of
the screen. The preceding month will appear to its left, and the next
four succeeding months will appear to its right and below it. If you
wish another month to be centered at the top, enter at the prompt any
date during that month.
This option is particularly useful if you would like to see the
day of the week on which a particular date falls or if you need to
know the number of days between two dates. Assume, for instance, that
you want to know the day of the week for the date 55 days from now.
Press `C' to select this option. Then enter today's date, followed by
"+55" (eg: "12 DEC 88 +55"). The desired date will be displayed high-
lighted in the small calendar at the top center of the screen. To
find the number of days between two dates, enter the first date, then
a dash, then the second date (eg: "1 Jan 89 - 12 Mar 89").
To return to the main calendar menu, press either ESC or RET. If
you press ESC, you will return to the exact point at which you left
the main calendar menu. If, however, you press RET, the date high-
lighted on the main calendar menu will be the last date you used while
you were in this Six-Month view routine. Another possible use of this
routine, therefore, is to quickly skip several years forward or bac-
kward and press the RET key. Whatever date you last use in this rou-
tine will be the date you will find when you return to the main calen-
SCHEDULING MODULE 30
dar menu (unless you use the ESC key).
Weekly View
Press "W" at the main menu to reach this module. The week that
appears will be the one containing the date that was highlighted at
the monthly calendar view (or the one whose daily detail you had been
viewing). You may change the week being shown by pressing the up or
down arrows, and you may move among individual days by pressing the
left and right arrows. Unless you press the ESC key, whatever date is
highlighted when you leave this module will be the one that is high-
lighted when you return to the monthly calendar view (or the one to
whose daily detail you return at the daily view).
There are actually two weekly views, between which you may toggle
by pressing the TAB key. The first view vertically breaks down each
day into half hour segments for the employee whose monthly or daily
calendar you had just been viewing. If there's time blocked off dur-
ing any given half-hour, the first ten characters in the event's des-
cription will appear in that half-hour's block under the appropriate
date.
The second view gives you a rough idea what time is scheduled for
each employee in the firm for each day of the week. This view might
be useful for quickly seeing how busy your firm's employees are during
a given week or for finding a date on which certain employees are all
free for an hour or two.
To change the displayed employee, use the F3 key, just as you
would at the monthly or daily view. If you wish to return to today's
date, use the HOME key.
Omitting Events and Plans
This mode allows you to omit scheduled/logged events or plans
that are no longer of any use. After pressing ^O (at the monthly-view
calendar, NOT the daily-view schedule), you'll be asked whether you
want to omit (S)cheduled/logged events or (P)lans. Simply press
either "S", or "P", depending upon which you wish to eliminate.
Logged events are discussed in the LOG MODULE section.
If you press "S", you'll receive more instruction on the screen
before you proceed. In order to keep the main MT-Tracker data file
from growing too large, you should periodically (^O)mit old entries.
Each month, for instance, you should select the (^O)mit option. You
will be asked the date before which you wish all entries to be
omitted. All events (other than Deadlines not yet met) falling before
that date will be omitted, WHETHER OR NOT they have been tagged for
omission. All other events tagged for omission and falling after that
date will also be omitted at this time.
SCHEDULING MODULE 31
NOTE:
An individual event may be merely TAGGED for omission
by pressing ^O while examining it in the (E)dit routine, or
while at the daily-view schedule (not the monthly calendar).
Deadlines are a special matter. Because you may occasionally
miss Deadlines whose subjects you do not want to forget, MT-Tracker
will continue to hold all Deadlines not specifically tagged for omis-
sion in the (E)dit routine. Hence, Deadlines will always be preserved
(to continue to remind you to do things) until you make a conscious
effort to omit them. You'll have to be diligent in tagging Deadlines
that have been met; otherwise, they'll just keep piling up.
If you choose to omit Plans, instead of Events, you'll be shown a
list of all the Plans available on your machine. Enter the name of
the one that you want to omit, or press RET to eliminate a general
Template, instead.
Hunting for Entries and Preparing Reports
If you press "H" while in the menu, you will be taken to a Hunt
Gates display. Here, you are to select the gates you want to apply to
the search through the calendar file. The Hunt Gates allow passage of
only those records which contain information consistent with the Hunt
Gate parameters you select. For example, if you wanted to find all
the events that involve a certain department/employee, you would place
the appropriate ID at gate C. To find all events between certain
dates, place the beginning date at gate D and the ending date at gate
E. You may search for specific events by filling in gate B, while
filling in gate A will result in a report listing only those events
that apply to a specific client.
The more gates you fill in, the more discriminating the hunt
through the records will be. If you leave the gates in their default
conditions, ALL of today's events involving ALL departments/employees
and ALL clients will be reported.
Hunts for clients and events may be made on the basis of partial
entries. For instance, if you wished to find all events involving
clients "Smith-1" and "Smith-2", you would need to enter only "Smith"
at item A. All events tied to clients whose client numbers contain
the character string, "Smith", would be shown to you. Included among
the events reported might also those involving the clients "J. Smith"
and "Blacksmith".
Following the above example, you could also have chosen to search
for clients containing "ith". If you had done so, in addition to all
the clients mentioned above, you might also have come across "Ithica"
and "Lithe Forms".
SCHEDULING MODULE 32
NOTE:
Suppose you elect to enter "SMITH" at the Client Number
gate. If there were more than one client number containing
that sequence of characters, they would all pass through that
gate. Hence, SMITH, SMITH-J, BLACKSMITHJ, etc., would all be
selected by MT-Tracker for the hunt report. If, however, you
wanted only SMITH to pass through the gates (to the exclusion
of SMITH-J and BLACKSMITH), you would have to tell MT-Tracker.
You would do this by ending your "SMITH" entry with ^E (for
"Exact match"), instead of the usual RET. If the Client Num-
ber gate is set up for an exact match, a note will appear to
the right, saying, "* exact *". If no such note is displayed,
then ALL clients whose client numbers contain matches for the
entered character sequence will pass through the gate. If the
"* exact *" note is shown, then only the client number that
exactly matches that character sequence will be reported.
If you aren't sure which of the fields represented by Gates A
through D (or H through Q) contains the character string for which
you're looking, fill in ANY of those gates and end your entry with
Ctrl-K (for "Keyword"), instead of the usual RET. This "keyword"
function causes MT-Tracker to look at ALL of each record's text fields
for the keyword you've entered. For instance, keyword "MIT" entered
at Gate A, B, C, or D would result in MT-Tracker's finding a client
with the client number "SMITJO", as well as a client with an address
in "Mittlesboro, AK". To turn off the keyword search function, just
go back to the gate into which you entered the keyword and press Ctrl-
K again.
Remember, any gate that is left blank will be considered to be
open, allowing ANY record to pass through. In other words, each
record will be deemed to meet that gate's criterion, and, assuming
that all the other gates' criteria are also met, will be displayed
during the hunt.
To you don't want Deadlines reported to you, make gate F
"NO" by pressing the F key. If you press the F key again, you'll
change it back to "YES". The same principle applies to Appointments,
Reminders, etc. (gates F to L).
To change the report destination from screen to printer, and
back, press P. To send the report to an alternate printer port, press
the number corresponding to that port. To send a report to a disk
file, press ALT-F.
The METHOD by which MT-Tracker conducts its hunt depends upon how
you have set Gate M, which toggles among "Quick Hunt" and "Chronolog-
ical Hunt". Normally, you will want a chronological hunt, so that the
reported events appear in the correct order. However, if you're look-
ing through a large range of dates, you may find that a chronological
hunt is too slow for you. If you want to speed things up, press the M
SCHEDULING MODULE 33
key to select a Quick Hunt. If Quick Hunt is in operation, MT-Tracker
will NOT put things into chronological order, but it will find what
you're looking for quickly. This feature is particularly valuable if
you're looking for a Deadline sometime in the distant future, but you
aren't sure of even the year that it was scheduled. To do so, simply
select a Quick Hunt, and be sure to fill in the other Hunt Gates op-
tions as well as you can (to narrow the search, keeping too many un-
wanted events from appearing on the screen). But remember that Fre-
quent or Recurring dates will not appear during Quick Hunts.
The TYPE OF HUNT produced depends upon how you have set Gate N,
which toggles among several choices. A "Continuous Hunt" quickly goes
through the data base and reports what it finds. It may go so fast
that you can't follow it (unless you press the space bar to pause).
An alternative is the "Day-By-Day" hunt which steps through the data
base on day at a time, automatically pausing after each day's activi-
ties are reported. Pressing the down arrow will cause the next day's
events to print. The up arrow causes the prior day's activities to
print again. The "Day-By-Day and Department-By-Department" hunt is
like the "Day-By-Day" hunt, except that it breaks the hunt down even
further, reporting a single department's events for a day, and then
pausing until you press the up or down arrow. A "Priority Order" re-
port will place each day's events into priority order, lowest number
first (the priority number will be listed on a Standard report at the
left margin, right after the event type). A final report, "Event-by-
Event", and it will be selected automatically by MT-Tracker if you
have chosen either a "Full-Screen Edit" (discussed below) report or a
"Quick Hunt".
The TYPE OF REPORT produced depends upon how you have set Gate O,
which allows you to toggle among "Standard", "Full Screen Edit", "Time
Scheduled", "Event Chart", "Printed Daily Schedule", "Printed Calen-
dar", and "Examine Clients for which Events are Scheduled", each of
which is described below.
Once the Hunting process begins, you will be shown the data for
each record conforming to the Hunt gates you have established. If
you have chosen to display a "Standard" report (gate O), data for
each conforming record will appear on a single line. The program will
then automatically search for the next conforming record, display it,
then look for the next one, and so on. You may make the program
pause in its searching by pressing ^S or the space bar. Pressing ESC
will abort the hunting process.
If you have chosen the "Full-Screen" report (gate O), the
data shown for each conforming record will appear on a screen identi-
cal to that used in the Edit mode. Only one conforming file's data
will be displayed on the screen at one time. Unlike the Standard re-
port routine, this one will not search for the next conforming file
unless you press F6 to indicate that you wish to move on. If you want
to abort the Hunt routine, press ESC instead of F6.
SCHEDULING MODULE 34
If, while in the Hunt mode's Full-Screen summaries display,
you see some information that should be changed, you may edit it as if
you were in the Edit mode. There will be a few limitations on your
ability to edit directly from the Hunt mode, but don't worry about
them; MT-Tracker will call your attention to them only if you attempt
to violate them.
If you have chosen a "Time Scheduled" report (gate O), each line
will contain a date and a series of D's, A's, etc. Each letter cor-
responds to a 15-minute block of time during which an event is sched-
uled. Here's an example:
Date 7...8...9...10..11..12..1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8
FRI 3 FEB 89 ....AA....AA........EEEE..AAAAAAA....................
TUE 7 FEB 89 ........AAAA........AAAA..........EE.................
WED 8 FEB 89 .....................................................
THU 9 FEB 89 ....................AAAA.............................
Here, you can see that there are things scheduled on 3 February in the
8:00-8:14 and the 8:15-8:29 blocks. 9:30 to 9:59 also has something
scheduled, as do 12:00-12:59 and 1:30-3:14. Note that the dates be-
tween 4-6 Feb are not listed. Skipping dates occurs when those dates
contain no scheduled events that meet the parameters specified by Hunt
Gates A-E (filled in before the hunt began). Note also that, though 8
February is listed, nothing appears on its line. A date's line will be
blank if there is SOMETHING scheduled for that date, but nothing that
requires blocking off time. A Deadline that has no beginning or end-
ing times is an example of an event that would not cause a D to appear
on the line.
NOTE:
MT-Tracker assumes that an event with no ending time is
not intended to be "blocked off". Hence, you might have sev-
eral Deadlines scheduled for 11:00 (no ending time), without
MT-Tracker's recognizing that those events should be blocked
off. Only if an ending time is different from a beginning
time will MT-Tracker block off time for that event, and only in
that case will the "Time Scheduled" report display an A, D,
etc., for that event.
The last thing printed on a "Time Scheduled" report will be a
department-by-department breakdown of the total hours hours scheduled.
The only time blocks included in this breakdown will be those that
were included in the preceding report. If you have set your Hunt
Gates to be extremely selective, the breakdown totals will probably be
small. This breakdown may be useful to find how many hours you've
scheduled someone to work over a given span of days or weeks. If you
consistently schedule work (and ONLY work) as an Exercise and you set
the Hunt Gates to include only Exercises, the breakdown summary will
tell you how many hours have been scheduled for only Exercises (which,
in this case, substitute for "work scheduled").
SCHEDULING MODULE 35
Event Chart
This report consists of a chart showing each event on a separate
line. Each line contains a brief event description, followed by a
graphic representation (in the form of a dotted line) of the period
during which that event is to take place. The events included on the
chart depend upon how you've set up your Hunt Gates.
Printed Daily Schedule
Here, MT-Tracker will print one day's summarized schedule per page.
The report will include a blank line for each half-hourly time block
during which nothing is currently scheduled. Additions to the sched-
ule may, thus, be filled in by hand and entered into the computer lat-
er. One of this report's uses is to print pages for inclusion in
loose-leaf schedule books that can be carried "on the road". With
some imagination and the the right combination of printer, paper, and
notebook, this can be a very useful report.
Printed calendars (weekly, monthly, yearly)
Each of these reports consists of a calendar printed on a sheet
of paper. In order for the calendars to be properly prepared, you
must make sure that lines 1 to 6 of the PRNTINIT file have been cus-
tomized for your specific printer. If PRNTINIT hasn't been custom-
ized, these "Printed Calendar" options may not even appear. To edit
the PRNTINIT file, use EDITX (press ^E at the Main Menu). That file,
itself, contains instructions on how it is to be filled in.
The calendar prepared with this option will look like a standard
paper calendar. The minimum period for which a weekly or monthly cal-
endar will be printed is one week. Each day's block will be filled in
with whatever events are stored in the data base for that date.
Just before a monthly calendar begins printing, you'll have to
specify how wide and how long each day's block is to be. It's recom-
mended that you stick with the defaults that appear, but you may
change them if you wish.
In order to conserve space for as many events as possible on a
monthly calendar, you may wish to limit the space devoted to each
event to one line. To do so, you'll be able to tell the program to
truncate each event at the end of one line. If you wish to print the
entire event, even if it takes more than one line to do so, you'll
need to specify either word wrap or character wrap. Character wrap
will split a word falling at the end of a line, while word wrap will
move that entire word down to the next line (and, in the process,
waste a little space).
-- Other Reports
SCHEDULING MODULE 36
If MT-Tracker knows that you're using a printer comptatible with
the Hewlett Packard Laser Jet (see the SETTING UP section near the
beginning of the documentation), you will be offered some other repor-
ting options. Give them a try to see if they will fit your needs.
Examine Clients for which Events are Scheduled
The "Examine Clients for which Events are Scheduled" report will
display events on the screen and then jump to the CLIENT module to
show you the record of each client affected by one or more of the dis-
played events. This report, very handy when you start each day, al-
lows you to see what's scheduled and then take you to each client's
record. There, you may dial the client, make notes, schedule more
events, and edit his record. When you're done with that client, you
may press F6 to be taken automatically to the next one. Pressing ESC
will abort the process of stepping through each affected client's re-
cord.
Custom Reports
There is a seventh report option not discussed above: the Custom
Report. If you select gate O two or three times, you'll cycle through
the Standard, Full-Screen, and Time Scheduled report choices. If,
however, you want a Custom Report, press ^O, instead of just "O".
Pressing ^O tells MT-Tracker that you want a Custom Report prepared.
The screen will clear, you'll be shown a list of all the Custom Re-
ports presently on the disk, and you'll be expected to enter the name
of the particular Custom Report you want to prepare. If you don't
want a Custom Report, just press RET to return to the Hunt Gate
screen.
Custom Reports are useful for such things as preparing training
schedules and work plans. They are available on the in MT-Tracker's
"Schedule" mode, but not its "Log" mode.
When you just start using the program, the only Custom Report
present will be one called "SAMPLE1". Though this report's primary
purpose is to act as an example for others you may develop, it may
also actually be used. To set up other report templates, use EDITX
(by pressing ^E at the menu).
In EDITX, you'll be afforded the opportunity to create as many
Custom Report templates as you like. Each time you create a new one,
the contents of SAMPLE will be initially copied into it, so that
you'll have some guidance. You'll note that a report template con-
sists of many lines, some beginning with "{", and some not. Those
that begin with "{" are comment lines and MAY NOT BE ALTERED. If you
change a comment line in any way, the resulting report may not print
as you expect. The only lines you may alter are the data lines, those
that do NOT begin with "{".
A data line consists of spaces, characters, words, and/or tilde
SCHEDULING MODULE 37
codes. Pressing the F1 key will give you a listing of what each av-
ailable tilde code means. There's one for an event's beginning time,
one for it's ending time, one for the event description, and so, on.
There are also a few that represent the hunt gates you've selected.
For instance, wherever ~s appears in the report template, MT-Tracker
will substitute the beginning date of the hunt in the actual printed
report. ~u will cause MT-Tracker to print the department ALL of whose
events are being sought in the hunt, while ~o will tell the program to
print an INDIVIDUAL event's responsible department.
Let's now look at your data line options. First, you should note
that, SAMPLE is only an example. You need not stick blindly to it's
format (except for those lines that begin with "{"). You may even
erase entire data lines if you don't want their contents to appear on
the report.
The data line for PRINTER INITIALIZATION allows you to enter an
escape character sequence for your printer. This might be useful to
move the margin over, to alter the printer's type style, or to turn on
graphics. If you want to use this line, get the appropriate code from
your printer's manual and enter it as a CHARACTER sequence, not as a
numerical code. If, for instance, the code you want to enter is
"ESCAPE o", you should enter the escape CHARACTER, followed immediate-
ly by an "o". Don't type in "ESC o". To enter any control character
(ESCAPE is a control character), press ^P (that's control-P) and then
press the control character you want to enter. For instance, to enter
the escape character, you actually press ^P, and then press the escape
key. After you do so, a funny character (such as a left arrow) will
appear on the screen. Just pressing the escape key won't work. Don't
despair -- this sounds more complicated than it is.
NOTE:
If you utilize the PRINTER INITIALIZATION data line,
your printer will maintain that setting until it's reset or
turned off. If you want MT-Tracker to reset your printer to
some state other than that established with the PRINTER IN-
ITIALIZATION line, you should enter the reset escape charac-
ter sequence into line 1 of the PRNTINIT file (supplied with
MT-Tracker).
The data line for LENGTH OF PAGE allows you to print your reports
on paper of a length different from the standard 66 lines. For ins-
tance, you might want to print a report with the paper turned side-
ways. Just measure in inches of the paper you'll use and multiply by
6. 8-inch paper, for instance, would be entered as 48. 11-inch paper
is 66 lines long.
WIDTH OF PAGE tells MT-Tracker how many characters it can expect
to print on each line. The default is a page width of 80 characters,
but you may modify this if you're using an appropriate printer. If
the PRINTER INITIALIZATION you entered, for instance, turns on your
printer's 132-column capability, you should enter 132 here.
SCHEDULING MODULE 38
NOTE:
EDITX cannot handle lines wider than 79 columns. If
you want to create a report with more columns than that,
you'll have to "double up". Use two lines in EDITX for each
single report line that will be more than 79 columns wide.
In order to tell MT-Tracker that these two lines are to be com-
bined, make the last character on the first line a "+". For
example, two lines entered as
Mary had a little lamb, it+
s fleece was white as snow.
would be printed by MT-Tracker as a single line, "Mary had a
little lamb, its fleece was white as snow." Note that MT-
Tracker allows combining only two lines at a time into one.
Three consecutive lines can't be combined into one, but three
consecutive two-line sets can can be combined into three
lines.
The HEADER data lines are used to prepare the beginning of the
report. You might, for instance, want to include your name and the
title of the report in the HEADER. Up to 10 lines may be included.
The 2D HEADER data lines (up to 5) are those that will print at
the top of each page following the first (which contains the HEADER).
The FORMAT data line tells MT-Tracker what specific schedule in-
formation you want printed on each line, as well as the spacing bet-
ween each item. Note that each item requires a minimum amount of
space. The spacing information is obtained by pressing F1 if you're
using EDITX. If you're using your word processor, you'll want to re-
fer to the tilde code table below:
Event items:
~j=event type (1) (eg: appnt,deadline)
~k=beginning date (9) ~l=ending date (9)
~m=beginning time (5) ~n=ending time (5)
~o=department/employee (3) ~p=client number (12)
~q=event description (37) ~r=remarks (56)
~R=carriage return
Hunt items:
~s=beginning date of hunt (9) ~t=ending date of hunt (9)
~u=specific department being hunted (3) ~v=specific date being hunted (9)
~w=day of week for hunted date (3)
The FOOTER data lines (up to 5) consist of any footnotes, etc.,
that you want to be printed at the bottom of the report.
The DATE CHANGE data lines (up to 3) are, of course, optional.
If present, they will be printed whenever MT-Tracker reaches a point
SCHEDULING MODULE 39
in the report when a date change occurs.
The DEPARTMENT CHANGE data lines (up to 2), if present, will be
printed whenever the department being hunted changes. If you have
anything filled in here, the report will be organized by both date and
department. As MT-Tracker comes to each date, it will break it's hunt
into a sub-hunt for the first department's events, then a sub-hunt for
the second department's, and so on.
If you're unable to design a template for the exact report you
want, do as well as you can with either EDITX or your word processor.
Just before you begin a hunt using this template, press ALT-F (to tog-
gle the report to a disk file, instead of to the printer). After the
report has been written to disk (into a file called TEXT.MX), exit
MT-Tracker. Edit TEXT.MX with your word processor, so that the report
looks EXACTLY as you want it to. Then print it with your word proces-
sor.
Moving several events to a new date
If you want to move several events currently scheduled for a par-
ticular date to a new date, you should press "R" at the MT-Tracker
Schedule menu to enter the "re-scheduling". When you do, you'll be
asked to select the date FROM which you wish to move the events and
the date TO which they're to be moved. Then, a listing of all the
events currently scheduled for the "FROM" date will be shown, and
you'll be expected to identify the first event to be moved. Simply
use the cursor control keys to move to that event and press RET. The
selected event will be quickly rescheduled for the "TO" date. Then,
you'll be expected to identify the next event to be moved. Repeat
this identification process until you've moved all the desired events.
To abort the process and return to the MT-Tracker Schedule menu, press
ESC.
Finding Free Time
If you need to schedule something that requires a certain amount
of time, but you don't know when your busy schedule will allow it,
press "F" at the Menu. You'll be asked to specify how many contiguous
hours (eg: 2, .5, 5.25) you need to accomplish the task. Then, tell
MT-Tracker who's schedule you want it to search, and give the program
the earliest and latest dates you want to consider for the accomplish-
ment of the task. MT-Tracker will then search through those dates for
the amount of free time you've specified. When it finds it, you'll be
shown that day's schedule and told which time frame meets your needs.
If that time block isn't satisfactory, press RETurn to find the next
available period. When you find a period that you want to use, press
the "M" key to Make a new event record.
If you wish to find the time that several people/facilities are
SCHEDULING MODULE 40
free at once, specify them all when asked to enter an employee/depart-
ment. Be sure to separate each by a comma and/or a space (eg:
"ABC,DEF, GHI JKL" will tell MT-Tracker that you wish to the time
blocks that ABC, DEF, GHI, and JKL are all available at once.
By default, this routine will search each day between 8:30 AM and
5:30 PM. If your working hours are significantly different, you can
customize the program to use them instead. Find the line in the
MT.BAT file that says, "mttrack", and add a 15th parameter (if you
don't use the first 14, some of which are discussed in the SETTING UP
section, you may make each an "X"). The fifteenth parameter must be
exactly 9 characters long and must contain the time you begin work, a
dash, and the time you end work each day. Times must be in military
notation (eg: 7:00AM to 6:00PM should be entered as "0700-1800");
By the way, the Weekly Views offer another, more visual means of
quickly finding free time. See the "Weekly View" section.
Stopwatch
If you would like to user MT-Tracker's stopwatch to time an
activity, press the "\" key at the Main Menu. When you do, the
stopwatch will begin displaying elapsed time near the top right corner
of the screen. Pressing "\" again will cause the timer to stop. At
this point, you may press: 1) ESC to cease timing the activity; 2) "C"
to cause the timing to continue as if it had never been interrupted;
or 3) "S" to temporarily suspend the timing until you press the "\"
key again to resume the timing.
When you invoke it by pressing "\", the stopwatch will continue
timing, no matter what you do within MT-Tracker, until you press "\" a
second time at the Main Menu. In fact, if you have MT-Tracker loaded
as a memory-resident program, the timing will continue while you're
working within other software.
SCHEDULING MODULE 41
SECTION 5 LOG MODULE
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
LOG MODULE 42
SECTION 6 CLIENT MODULE
This module is designed to hold data on each of your clients,
projects, jobs, etc. Though these instructions will refer to it as
the Client module, you may rename it (see the UTILITIES section of
these instructions).
You may access the Client Module by pressing ^C (Ctrl-C) at any
other module's menu.
User-Customizable Fields
The first time you visit the module, you'll have the opportunity
to customize its record layout to meet your specific needs. Don't
worry about making a mistake, since you may also subsequently re-cus-
tomize the record layout by selecting the ^Utilities choice at the
Client menu.
When you're in the customizing mode, you'll notice that there are
nine user-customizable fields, in addition to the expected ones for
name, address, phone, etc. Three of the nine are short fields that
can contain data up to ten characters long. The remaining ones are
long fields that may be up to forty-seven characters long.
You'll be expected to give each field a name (eg: "SS Number",
"Spouse", or "Salary"). If you wish to "get rid" of a field, just
give it no name whatsoever.
The fields also need to be categorized as Alphamumeric-type,
Date-type, Number-type, or Money-type:
Alphanumeric fields may contain ANY characters.
Examples of alphamumeric sequences are "123", "Sue
Mitchel", "(203) 980-9876", and "Apt W-2, 75 South
Road". If the data to go into a field might contain
either letters OR numbers, you should designate the
field as alphanumeric.
Date fields may contain only dates (eg: "21 JUN
91"). You should classify a field as date-type if you
contemplate that it will be used for nothing but dates.
If it's classified as such, you'll find that MT-Tracker
will check your subsequent entries into that field to
make sure that you enter correct dates. And whenever
you perform hunts through the Client database, MT-Trac-
ker will allow you to specify a range of dates by which
this this field will be analyzed.
Number fields may contain only integers (eg: 1, 2,
2300). If, after having set up a field as a number
CLIENT MODULE 45
field, you subsequently enter letters into it, MT-Trac-
ker will give the field a value of zero. If you enter a
decimal number (eg: 2.99, 55.008), MT-Tracker will con-
vert it to an integer. And whenever you perform hunts
through the Client database, MT-Tracker will allow you
to specify a range of numbers by which this this field
will be analyzed.
Money fields may contain only monetary values (eg:
1.00, 2.35, 23.48). If, after having set up a field as
a money field, you subsequently enter anything but num-
bers into it, MT-Tracker will give the field a value of
0.00. And whenever you perform hunts through the Client
database, MT-Tracker will allow you to specify a range
of values by which this this field will be analyzed.
You may also change wording in the headings on some of the non-
customizable fields, but that's done with EDITX.EXE (^E at the Menu).
When at the EDITX menu, press "O" and then enter "HEADINGS.LBF" as the
name of the file to edit. When that file appears, you'll notice sev-
eral lines that begin with a curly bracket. To make that line "ac-
tive", just remove the curley bracket. Whatever is to the right of
that line's equals sign will be substituted for the wording at the
beginning of the line. You may change the wording to the RIGHT of the
equals sign on each line, but DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING to the left
(other than deleting/reinstating the curly bracket). The maximum num-
ber of characters allowed is contained within each line's parentheses.
Making/Editing/Viewing a Client Record
When you press "M" to make a new client record, you'll be asked
to assign it a "Client Number" by which MT-Tracker can index the
record. Though a "Client Number" may consist of any alphanumeric se-
quence up to twelve characters long, it's recommended that you keep it
as short as possible. You should also use a numbering scheme that is
so predictable that you will know what any client's number is without
having to look it up somewhere. You might consider using the first
several letters of the client's last name (if there is one) and the
first several letters of his first name. For instance, John Smith's
client number might be "SMIT JOHN", "SMIJO", or "SMITJO1". Prudential
Insurance Company might be "PRUD INSU", "PRUIN", or "PRUDIN1". What-
ever scheme you use, think it through first, and then stick to it!
When you press "E" to edit a client record, you'll be asked for
the Client Number. If you've been assigning Client Numbers in a sim-
ple, consistent manner, you'll be able to type it in almost without
thinking. If you can't remember it, however, you may press the F1
key to see a list of all the clients and their numbers. And if you
precede the F1 key with the first initial of the Client Name, you'll
be shown an abbreviated list of only those clients whose names begin
with that letter.
CLIENT MODULE 46
Pressing "V" will allow you to view, but not edit, the client
record. This function is useful when you're on a network, in which
case only one workstation at a time can be using the Edit function.
As many workstations as desired, however, can use the View function.
Filling in a Client's Record
Most of the items on the client record screen are self-explana-
tory. The few that aren't will be discussed below.
At the "RespPerson" field, you should enter the initials of the
person responsible for dealing with this client. MT-Tracker will
compare your entry against the list of employee numbers and initials
that are maintained in the Customization routine of Schedule module's
^Utilities.
The "Priority" should be a single character (eg: 1, 2, A, B) that
will let you know how important this client is to you.
"Cat" is the category into which this client falls (eg: debtor,
manufacturer, retail outlet). You may enter only a one- to three-
letter abbreviation here. If you press the F1 key, you'll be shown
the contents of the M-LBCAT.DAT file which is supplied with sample
categories. You may, of course, customize this file to suit your own
needs. To do so, use EDITX.EXE (^E from any menu).
What you fill in for the "Client Name" may or may not be differ-
ent from what you fill in for the "Contact Name". If the client is a
company, the Client Name would probably be the firm's name, while the
Contact Name would be the name of the individual person with whom you
deal. If the client is a person, the Client and Contact names would
probably be identical.
The "Title" is the position of your contact (eg: President,
Analyst, Mr.).
The "Assistant" is simply the name of the contact's secretary or
other helper, if appropriate.
The "Salutation" is manner in which you wish to address the
client in letters (eg: "Dear Mr. Smith:").
The "Phone" field has enough space for two phone numbers. If you
enter a second phone number, place it between curly brackets, "{" and
"}". Doing so will prevent the auto-dial function from trying to dial
both numbers.
The "MISCELLANEOUS" section consists of up to six lines of free-
form text. It's contemplated that you'll use this section for per-
manent notes of a general nature or for information that doesn't
CLIENT MODULE 47
conveniently fit into any of the pre-defined fields. Just type in
whatever you wish. If, when you're finished making an entry, you end
up with lines of greatly varying lengths, you may press ^B (Ctrl-B) to
re-format (combine everything into as few lines as possible).
Using Abbreviations
To enter an abbreviation, just type it in and then hit the
backslash ("\") key. If you forget an abbreviation, you may hit the
F2 key to see a listing of those that are available.
MT-Tracker keeps your list of your abbreviations in a file called
INCEXPNS.DAT. This file, which also contains income and expense cate-
gories, is provided in sample form with the MT-Tracker program, and
you can modify it with EDITX.EXE (^E at the menu) to suit your own
needs. The file may hold up to 200 lines, each line containing a 1-to
3-character abbreviation and a 1-to 25-character description. As you
modify the file, make sure that the abbreviations and descriptions you
enter line up exactly with the headings at the top of the screen.
Note that there may be no blank lines in the file, and every line must
contain both an abbreviation and a description. Failure to follow
these simple rules will have undesirable effects.
Dialing
When you press ^D (Ctrl-D) to auto-dial a client, MT-Tracker will
pick the phone number from the "Phone" field. The characters sent to
the modem will be everything in the "Phone" field, up to the point
where the field contains a "{", which tells the program not to read
further.
After your party has answered, you may want to remove the modem
from the line if it creates any annoying background noise. To cause
the modem to hang up, just press ^H (Ctrl-H).
If MT-Tracker doesn't dial, your modem may not be Hayes-compat-
ible. If it IS Hayes-compatible, make sure that all its switches are
set just as they were when the modem left the factory. If they've
been changed, you may have difficulty. Also make sure that MT-Tracker
knows the communications port to which your modem is connected, as
discussed below.
By default, MT-Tracker assumes that your modem is attached to the
COM1 port, that you have a touch tone phone, and that you need no
dialing prefix. But you can alter these assumptions by using the
^Utilities at the Client menu (refer to the UTILITIES section below).
Hunting for Data and Preparing Reports
CLIENT MODULE 48
If you press "H" while at the Client menu, you will be taken to a
Hunt Gates, which are similar to those you'll find in the Schedule and
Log modules.
A hunt for any item whose entry is alphanumeric (as opposed to
strictly numeric) may be made on the basis of partial entries. For
instance, if you wished to find all clients whose names were either
"Smith Enterprises" or "Smith, Inc", you would need to enter only
"Smith" at item B. All clients whose names contained "Smith" would be
shown to you. Included among these clients might be "Jones and Smith,
Ltd" and "The John Smith Company".
Following the above example, you could also have chosen to search
for Client Names containing "ith". If you had done so, in addition to
all the clients mentioned above, you might also have come across
"Ithica Fabricators" and "Lithe Forms, Inc".
NOTE:
Suppose you elect to enter "SMITJO" at the Client Number
gate. If there were several clients whose numbers contained
that sequence of characters, they would all pass through that
gate. Hence, SMITJO, SMITJO1, SMITJO2, etc., would all be
selected by MT-Tracker for the hunt report. If, however, you
wanted only SMITJO to pass through the gates (to the exclusion
of SMITJO1 and SMITJO2), you would have to tell MT-Tracker.
You would do this by ending your "SMITJO" entry by pressing ^E
(Ctrl-E), instead of the usual RET. If a Client Number gate is
set up for an exact match, a note will appear to the right,
saying, "* exact *". If no such note is displayed, then ALL
clients whose numbers contain matches for the entered char-
acter sequence will pass through the gate. If the "* exact *"
note is shown, then only the client whose number exactly
matches that character sequence will be reported.
Any gate that is left blank will be considered to be open, allow-
ing ANY record to pass through. In other words, each record will be
deemed to meet that gate's criterion, and, assuming that all the other
gates' criteria are also met, will be displayed during the hunt. A
"0" entered for some of the numeric items will accomplish the same
purpose that a blank entry does for alphanumeric items.
Before you begin the hunt, make sure that you select the type of
report you want at gate R. Each will be discussed below.
If you have chosen a "Standard" report, data for each conforming
record will appear on one line. The program will then automatically
search for the next conforming record, display it, then look for the
next one, and so on. You may make the program pause in its searching
by pressing the space bar.
The "Full-Screen Edit" report isn't really a report; rather, it
CLIENT MODULE 49
allows you to view each conforming record's full summary screen. As
each client's record is displayed you can actually edit it as if you
were in the (E)dit mode, instead of this (H)unt mode. Of course, only
one client's data will be displayed on the screen at a time. Unlike
the Standard summaries routine, this one will not search for the next
conforming file unless you press F6 to indicate that you wish to move
on. If you want to abort the Hunt routine, press ESC instead of F6.
The "Client Addresses & Phones" report will give you a listing of
each client, his address, phone, and miscellaneous information.
Labels and Envelopes
This "report" allows you to make mailing labels with clients' names
and addresses on them. The labels used must be of the 1" X 4" (or
15/16" X 3-1/2") variety and should be pin-fed into your printer on a
continuous sheet.
This option will also allow you to print client names and ad-
dresses onto envelopes, one at a time.
When you enter this option, you will first be asked to designate
the left indentation for your label or envelope printing. The default
is column 0, but you may enter any column between 0 and 45. The left
edge of each printed address will line up at this column on your prin-
ter. If you are happy with the current indent setting, just press the
RET key.
Next, you will be asked whether you want a test pattern printed.
If you answer, "Y", you will see a demonstration of how the printing
will line up on your labels or envelopes. If you need to reset the
indent and print another test pattern, you will be be afforded the
opportunity.
Then, you will be asked whether you want MT-Tracker to pause be-
tween addresses. If you answer "Y", MT-Tracker will stop after each
address is printed and will not proceed until you press the RET key.
If you are just printing labels, you will probably not want to pause.
But if you are printing envelopes, a pause will necessary, so that you
will be able to put each succeeding envelope into the printer.
Letters to Clients
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
CLIENT MODULE 50
Custom Reports
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
Omit Clients Tagged for Omission
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation.
CLIENT MODULE 51
SECTION 7 NOTE MODULE
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
NOTE MODULE 52
SECTION 8 UTILITIES (BACKUP, RESTORE, PRINTER DRIVERS, ETC.)
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
UTILITIES 53
SECTION 9 MESSAGES
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
MESSAGES 55
SECTION 10 CAUTION
Some of the events you schedule in MT-Tracker will be of
such importance that you may suffer grave consequences (including
pecuniary liability) if you miss them. You should not place full
faith in this computer program or any other to remind you of these
events. ALWAYS BE SURE TO USE A DEPENDABLE MANUAL TICKLER SYSTEM
FOR CRITICAL EVENTS. NEVER, NEVER ABANDON A MANUAL SYSTEM.
The reason for this caution is two-fold. First, MT-Tracker may
contain flaws that could result in the loss of important event data.
Second, computer memories are volatile. An unusual chain of events
may cause the destruction of your computer's magnetic media, in-
cluding some or all of MT-Tracker's data base. Generally, nothing is
more secure than a tickler card file. And don't forget that some
insurance companies require you to maintain a second tickler system,
anyway.
CAUTION 60
SECTION 11 POP-UP MT-TRACKER
You may find it convenient to have MT-Tracker available at all
times. Let's say that you're using your word processor and suddenly
need to look at your calendar or schedule an appointment. Normally,
you'd have to save your document, exit the word processor, and then
load MT-Tracker. Then, when you're done with MT-Tracker, you have to
exit it, load your word processor, find your document and continue
with what you were doing before accessing MT-Tracker.
Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just press a couple of
keys to call up MT-Tracker, even when you're in the middle of using
your word processor? Well, you can, as long as you follow the ins-
tructions contained in this section.
MT-Tracker must first be loaded into memory, where it will linger
in the background until you press a "hot-key" combination to call it
to the screen. When you do so, whatever the computer was just doing
will be suspended and placed into the background, while MT-Tracker is
brought to the screen. When you've taken care of your MT-Tracker bus-
iness, press the ESC key. Doing so will force MT-Tracker back into
the background (where it will lurk until you press the hot-key again),
while your prior work will pop back into the foreground (onto the
screen).
To prime MT-Tracker for pop-up (memory-resident) service, simply
enter "mt mr", instead of just "mt", at the DOS prompt. If that
doesn't work, you'll need to copy the MT.BAT to a file called MTMR.BAT
and modify the new file. MT.BAT should be used for standard use,
while MTMR.BAT will be used for invoking MT-Tracker as a pop-up. Now,
find the line in MTMR.BAT that starts with "mttrack". The tenth par-
ameter following "mttrack" should be "mr". If you need to "pad" the
line with any other parameters, make each of them an "x". Example:
mttrack x x x x x x x x x mr
This example shows the use of dummy "x" parameters.
If MT-Tracker is loaded in this fashion, it will automatically
abort and display a message that informs you of the hot-key combina-
tion needed to call it to the foreground. By default, the hot-key is
ALT-T. But you may change the hot-key by adding to the 10th parameter
a different combination, using the "MR-X-$YYZZ" format. The "X" in
this format is the key you wish to use in combination with the ALT or
CTRL key. "YY" sould be "08" if you plan to use the ALT-key, or "04"
if you prefer a CTRL-key combination. "ZZ" is the scan code for the
letter you've designated with "X". Selected scan codes follow:
KEY SCAN KEY SCAN KEY SCAN KEY SCAN KEY SCAN
Q 10 W 11 E 12 R 13 T 14
Y 15 U 16 I 17 O 18 P 19
A 1E S 1F D 20 F 21 G 22
POP-UP MT-TRACKER 61
H 23 J 24 K 25 L 26 Z 2C
X 2D C 2E V 2F B 30 N 31
For example, to designate ALT-S as the hot-key combination, the tenth
parameter would be "MR-S-$081F", while CTRL-V would be selected by
using "MR-V-$042F".
If you'd like MT-Tracker's pop-up alarm (PC-Beep) to be loaded
into memory also, you should add a line to the MTMR.BAT file just be-
fore the "mttrack" line. This new line should say simply, "pc-beep".
If PC-Beep is loaded, whatever alarms you've set with MT-Tracker will
beep at you at the appointed times. Without PC-Beep, alarms aren't
possible.
Normally, MT-Tracker requires about 520 Kilobytes of RAM. When
it's just waiting in the background, however, all it consumes is about
45 Kilobytes, leaving most of your computer's memory for use by other
programs. And if you don't need MT-Tracker's alarm feature, you can
reduce the RAM requirements to 7 Kilobytes by eliminating all ref-
erences to PC-Beep in the MTMR.BAT file and ensuring that it isn't
loaded at any time while you use the computer.
TUNING UP PERFORMANCE
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
IMPORTANT
As mentioned above, if you don't have sufficient EMS memory and
haven't designated a RAM disk, MT-Tracker will swap to the hard disk.
When swapping to the hard disk, the program creates and uses two hid-
den files, "MTSWP.___" and "MTAPPSWP.___". Normally, you won't have
any problems with disk swapping. But if, after having loaded MT-Trac-
ker, you use other programs that cause your available hard disk space
to drop below 800 kilobytes, you may get a "FATAL SWAP ERROR" when you
try to pop into MT-Tracker. If that happens, you'll have to re-boot
your machine, probably losing whatever you'd been working on when you
pressed the hot key. The lesson here is that you should not try using
the program as a pop-up unless you're sure that you'll never come
close to running out of space on whatever drive the program will be
using for swapping.
POP-UP MT-TRACKER 63
APPENDIX A: DEPARTMENT/EMPLOYEE GROUPS
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
APPENDIX A 64
APPENDIX B: AUTOMATED EXECUTION (MACROS)
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
APPENDIX B 65
APPENDIX C: SHARING DATA AMONG SEVERAL COMPUTERS
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
APPENDIX C 67
APPENDIX D MT-TRACKER ON A LOCAL AREA NETWORK
In order to save disk space, this section has been deleted from
this copy of the documentation. The full documentation that ac-
companies the REGISTERED version of MT-Tracker contins this section.
APPENDIX D 68