The Active Filter

This help file applies to an out-of-date version of MainBoss.
The most recent version of MainBoss is MainBoss 4.2.4.
For the latest version of this help file can be found here.

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The active filter determines what counts as Active in the request, work order and purchase order tables. In other words, it determines what a table will display when the word Active appears in the table's bottom right-hand corner.

Requests, work orders, and purchase orders are always considered active until they are closed or voided. For example, if a work order is open, its age doesn't matter—it will be active until you close it.

To set your active filter, go to the View menu and click Change Active Filter. This opens a window that contains the following:

Show only records less than this many days old: You can set this field's value to a number. If you do, requests, work orders and purchase orders will only be considered Active if their most recent history record is less than the given number of days old. For example, if you set the value to 400, the only active requests, work orders and purchase orders will be ones whose histories have changed in the past 400 days. Typically, this means you won't see any requests, work orders and purchase orders that were closed more than 400 days ago.

Show only records since: You can set this field's value to a date. If you do, requests, work orders and purchase orders will only be considered Active if their most recent history record was created after the specified date. For example, if you set the value to January 1, 2009, the only active requests, work orders and purchase orders will be ones which have had some activity since that date.

Save: Saves the given information. The window stays open in case you want to make more changes.

Save & Close: Saves the information and closes the editor window.

Cancel: Closes the window without saving any changes you've made since the last time you saved. When you Save the record, the Cancel button changes to Close, indicating that you can safely close the window without losing any changes.

Close: Closes the window. This button only appears after you've saved changes with Save or before you've entered any data at all. Otherwise, the button is labeled Cancel.

The options you set through the View menu only affect your own MainBoss sessions. For example, if you only want to see very recent records, you might set "Show only records less than this many days old" to 30. MainBoss would only show you requests, work orders and purchase orders less than 30 days old. You can change this number at any time.

The more information that your active filter excludes, the faster MainBoss can operate—it takes less time to obtain records from the database and to format that information. Furthermore, your windows will contain less old information and therefore less "clutter". On the other hand, you don't want to exclude too much or you might miss out on important requests/work orders/purchase orders that are older than you expect.

Your MainBoss administrator can use Administration | Company Information to set active filter defaults for everyone who uses the MainBoss database. For more, see Company Information.

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