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Purpose
The Suppliers tab is where the Suppliers, Plants and Mix Design lists are maintained. A given Supplier can have many Plants along with having many Mix Designs. Both Plants and Mix Designs are "owned" by a Supplier.
Managing Suppliers / Plants / Mix Designs
Adding Records
Click the Add button above the grid to manually add a record. When adding a Mix Design, you will supply a single Material in addition to the Name. You can also supply an optional Strength (psi) for Mix Designs used in concrete / grout / mortar applications. When adding a Plant, you will supply a Name and one or many Materials that that plant produces.
Importing Records
Supplier, Plant and Mix Design records can be imported from a .csv file. Click the Import _____ button to initiate an import. A pop up will display and provide instruction on the data layout of the file. An example follows (for Plants).
Managing Draft Suppliers / Plants / Mix Designs
The following applies to Concrete / Grout / Mortar applications only.
Prohibiting Entry of Draft Values
Users (field technicians) can be prevented from entering Draft values in the Field module. Simply remove the check mark in the respective Allow Draft Values field above the appropriate Supplier, Plant or Mix Design grids.
Since suppliers and plants tend to be more predictable (can be entered ahead of time), a firm may choose to not allow Draft values to be entered for suppliers and plants, but allow Draft mix design values to be entered.
Finding Draft Values
New suppliers, plants and mix designs added in the Field module by field technicians get added into MetaField in Draft status. Administrators need to review and activate any Draft records on a regular basis. You can easily filter all of the supplier, plant and mix design lists to just the entries that are in Draft status. Click the Show only suppliers with a draft Supplier, Plant and / or Mix Design check box next to the Suppliers search button. Selecting this check box will filter the underlying data to just the Draft entries. If you click on a supplier it will show you any draft plants or mix designs that are associated with that supplier. To activate a Draft record, simply click the standard Activate button in the data grid. Doing so will make the record visible in supplier / plant / mix design pick lists going forward.
Administrators need to plan for a regular review of Draft records. The Dashboard can also be used to easily identify any concrete sample or bituminous density test records that exist in the system with Draft supplier, plant or mix design records.
It's critical that somebody own this active review of Draft suppliers / plants / mix designs. By making these Draft entries active, they become values that technicians can select in the Field module versus having to type them. In addition, it ensures better data integrity and avoids situations where "Plant 1" and "Plant #1" are entered and really mean the same thing, but to MetaField are really different values.
Batch Reassignment
Draft values can be reassigned in batch. Click the wrench icon in the respective grid. A pop up will be displayed that allows you to select a new supplier / plant / mix design. The system will batch reassign those sample records to the new value you want to use.
This is batch reassignment utility is valuable when you need to take, for example, all "ABC-123" mix designs and reassign them to the "ABC123".
Use caution when using the batch reassignment utility on suppliers. Because plants and mix designs are associated with suppliers, choosing a new supplier will force you to select a new plant and mix design. Unless all of your underlying plants and mix designs are the same for the supplier you are changing, you should probably not use the batch reassignment utility in this case.
