When people first start using The Business Edge, they sometimes have trouble understanding the various uses for the [Escape] Key. Once you have used The Business Edge for a while it becomes completely intuitive. You don’t have to think about it, you just know when to use it. I always say, When in doubt, hit [Escape].
Some of the philosophy behind the way the [Escape] key works in the system might be of interest to you.
Many systems have a special key that is used to save records in the files. This often results in inexperienced operators forgetting to save important records. Then they have to re-do their work.
We feel that if you are entering information, you must be doing it for a reason and we make the assumption that you want the information saved. It is automatically saved when you simply hit [Escape]. Alternatively, if you Arrow Down through all the fields in a screen, click on the OK button, or press [Enter] through each of the fields, the record is also saved as soon as you finish with the last field on the screen.
The [Escape] Key is a shortcut through the screens. We have built a tremendous amount of flexibility into the system so that each screen has many options to choose. These options will affect the transaction or inquiry or process that you are in. We wanted to make it easy for you to see the choices, change any choices that you would like, and still be able to quickly go on to the next step. Using the [Escape] Key as a shortcut was the perfect answer.
But, sometimes the [Escape] Key means go on with the transaction and sometimes it means to get out. How can you tell the difference?
The answer is that it depends on what you are doing. If you are entering an Order and you hit [Enter] to get the next Order Number, but then you don’t enter a Customer, hitting [Escape] will take you back to the Order Entry Menu. The system knows that you didn’t do any meaningful work.
On the other hand, if you have entered a Customer for the Order and you hit [Escape], the system will go to the detail lines of the order. The system knows that you are in the process of doing something that has enough information to go on with the details.
You might say that the [Escape] Key has common sense built into it.
If you are in a Menu and you hit [Escape], you will exit that Menu and go to the previous one. If you hit [Escape] in the Main Menu, you will be asked if you really want to exit the system. We did that because a lot of people found out that it is handy to go back up several Menus by just leaning on the [Escape] Key. It keeps repeating so if we didn’t put that question in, you would find yourself all the way out to the UNIX Menu.
Note that when you are in an Inquiry, there is a question. Another Inquiry? The default answer to this question is Yes so that if you hit [Escape], you will be brought to the top of the Inquiry, not back out to the Menu. If you are at the top of the Inquiry and you have made no selection, hitting [Escape], will bring you back to the previous Menu.
If you answer the Question No, and you hit [Escape], you will go back to the Menu that you came from. That’s the common sense thing working again.
If you are in the habit of pressing [Enter] through each field of every screen to go on to the next step, try the [Escape] Key instead. It will save you time. You simply review the screen and if you are satisfied with the answers that have been entered, [Escape] can save you many keystrokes.