The following paragraphs describe in detail, each of the menus, tables, and forms and how to use them.
But before we start in with the fun stuff, for those of you that skipped Section 1.3 way back at the beginning, and for those of you that didn't skip it, we have section 4.1.
This is a computer program. It runs on a computer. Computers are stupid. Sometimes people aren't much better. And Murphy is ALWAYS hiding in the shadows. The two biggest things to remember are:
Except for the view CSCE or form 610 screen, the bottom 3 lines of the screen are reserved for status information. Figure 4-1 shows a typical status display at the completion of a session. The first line starts off with the session date (Month/Day/Year), a colon (:), and the session ID (usually A). This is followed by column headings, CAN means candidates, E1A means Element 1A (5 WPM code), etc. At the far right of the first line is the current date.
The second line lists the total number of candidates, and the total numbers of each test element that have been, or will be administered at this session. These element totals include all elements listed as Wants, Taking, Grading, Pass, and Fail, and do not include elements that are listed as Credit, Exempt, or contain a CSCE date. At the far right of the second line is the current time (HH:MM:SS).
The third line lists the candidates that are not
done, and how many elements are left to be administered. A
candidate is marked as completed from the Update Candidate Status
form, but that does not mean the job is finished! A CSCE
and/or 610 may need to be printed. If so, they need to be verified
against the candidate's paperwork. And finally, the candidate
needs to be given any paperwork they are supposed to get, and
to be congratulated or encouraged. The "PEND CSCE:"
and "610:" fields indicate the number of CSCE' and
FCC form 610's that are ready to print, and have not been printed.
This can occur when printing is disabled or a particular candidate
has been flagged as having a verification issue. At the far right
of the line is a number in parenthesis that indicates the amount,
in bytes of conventional memory that is still available. If there
is not a currently active session, the only fields shown are the
current date, current time, and free memory count.
2/11/95:A CAN E1A E1B E1C E2- E3A E3B E4A E4B NOV TEC TPL GEN ADV EXT 3/09/95
TOTAL 20 2 2 2 7 9 5 4 4 0 6 1 1 2 0 0:49:49
REMAINING 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PEND CSCE: 0 610: 0 (058696)
Status Line
Figure 4-2 shows the main menu. Before the appearance of the main menu the line "SHARING FILE xxxxx", is displayed at the bottom of the screen, where xxxxx is replaced by the name of each of the database files as they are opened. If you deleted any of the index files (the ones with the K0n extensions), you will also see the line "REBUILDING KEY FILES FOR xxxxx" displayed in reverse video.
ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º Volunteer Exams Well Done º º Version 2.2 (12/20/97) º ÌÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͹ º º º Session Activities º º º º Pre-Session Activities º º º º Post-Session Activities º º º º Maintainence º º º º Import/Export/Sort º º º º Exit º º º ÌÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͹ º Enter to Select Control-ESC to Exit º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ Figure 4-2 Main Menu
The main menu contains the following choices:
Highlight the desired selection and press enter to bring up the next screen. Unlike most other screens, pressing escape does not close the screen, as this would terminate the program. To exit the application, either select the Exit item or press Control-escape.
"Session Activities" brings up another menu of items that are used during an examination session. This includes: register candidate, update candidate status, display element status, Print CSCE's and 610's, list candidates owed refunds, and register attending VE's. Once a session starts, the majority of the time will be spent under this menu choice.
"PreSession Activities" brings up another menu of items that are used before an examination session begins. This includes generating invitations to VE's to attend the session, defining the session, and configuring printers
"PostSession Activities" brings up another menu of items that are used after an examination session is over. This includes printing the candidate roster and test session summary, updating candidate phone numbers, generating VE/Candidate thank you lists, and merging the active session into the history database.
"Maintenance" brings up another menu of items that are useful for examining and changing the history files and VE information.
"Import/Export/Sort" brings up another menu of items that are used to pass session data between multiple VE teams and to Sort/Compress the database files after importing sessions. Generation of FCC electronic filing data for multiple sessions is also found here.
"Exit" does just what you think it does. It terminates the program. Nothing is lost if you accidentally exit during a session, just restart the program. You can also hit Control-Escape to terminate the program (unless you are running under Microsoft Windows).
Each of the choices on the main menu is overlaid on top of each other in main memory. This can cause an extra delay when switching between choices at this level, since the portion of the program that handles all the items under a given selection has to be read in from disk into main memory.