The New Sage 300 Home Page

Introduction

In this article I’m going into a bit more detail on the features in the Home Page for our new Sage 300 Web UIs. This is basically the launching point for our web accounting screens as well as provides a number of KPIs and user assistance.

We are calling this a Home Page rather than a Portal to avoid confusion with the 6.0A Portal, the Partner Portal and all sorts of other Portals. This isn’t meant to be an all-in-one entry point to everything you do on the Web, its very specific to making your use of Sage 300 easier and avoids cluttering it up with all sorts of other things.

Home Page of the Home Page

The main entry point to the Home Page is shown below. You can get to this view at any point by hitting the Home link next to the Sage 300 logo at the top left. This screenshot also shows the “Add Widgets” menu where you select which KPIs you want to see.

Feature Tour

When you first start the Home Page or at any time from the Help menu you can run the feature tour that steps you through the main features in the Home Page to get you familiarized.

Mega Menu

We refer to the menu where you select the accounting screen to run as the “Mega Menu” due to its size. As you can see it’s arranged in a very similar manner to the current Sage 300 Desktop, so it should be easy for users to find what they need to do. Of course if you are running with security configured (as you should be), then you will only see the items you have access to which greatly reduces the choices to sift through.

Menu Customization

Besides using security you can also customize which menu items you don’t want to display in the Home Page. This might be because you want your users to run the VB screen due to existing screen customizations or perhaps to just reduce clutter.

Window Manager and Related Links

The Home Page lets you run up to ten accounting screens at once. There is a Window Manager widget on the right hand side that you use to switch between screens and to close screens you don’t need open anymore. You can slide the Window Manager widget up and down if it’s in the way of something.

Notice on the screen shot below that each screen always displays the group the screen is in along with the screen (a breadcrumb) and some related links along the top, so in this case you can see links for Tax Classes, Tax Groups and Tax Rates. This way usually you can get to where you need to go quickly without using the menu.

Crystal Reports

We still use the same Sage 300 Crystal Reports that we’ve always used. Only now they are displayed in the Home Page, just like the accounting screens. These will show up in the Window Manager Widget just like any other screen.

Help

Of course there is always help available. Below is a screenshot of the frequently asked questions. There is help for all the accounting screens as well as the Home Page.

Summary

This was a quick tour of our new Home Page. There are quite a few usability innovations here, and you can expect quite a few more as we move forwards.