VACATION

Vacation Tracker In the dim, distant, past - in the days before the Psion Series 3 was available - I used a wall chart to keep track of the comings and goings of people in my department. Drawing bars between specific dates, scribbling the name of the person who was on leave / business travel onto the bar (and, if the bar was long enough, scribbling a contact telephone number). Needless to say, by the end of the year, the wall chart was fairly cluttered and in dire need of replacement. The other problem with this was that it was impossible to refer to the wall chart in meetings, if the meeting was held in someone else's office. Then, with the coming of the Series 3, I thought all of this was behind me - I could enter all of the details into the Agenda application, throw away the cluttered wall charts, and have all of the information available in my pocket. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that Agenda doesn't cater for events which span a number of days, or which impact on a number of people. So, I wrote the Vacation program - it performs all of the functions of the wall chart by maintaining a database of personnel / leave, gives a graphical interface driven by a Gantt chart of people / locations, and some search facilities by name and date. When the Series 3a was introduced, my wonderful wife bought me one as a gift. Even though the Agenda application was vastly improved, it still didn't handle events spanning a number of days / weeks - so, I rewrote Vacation to take advantage of the 3a's improved screen, put in zoom facilities, used the diamond key, implemented Psion's file handling routines to allow multiple instances of the program, and introduced some code to make the program usable as a simple Gantt chart drawer for first cut project planning. The program can now display between 3 weeks details for 5 people at the lowest resolution, up to 9 weeks details for 13 names at the highest. I made it a type 4 application which means that starting up a fresh instance of the program will not close down instances which are currently running - this is because I like to keep the Vacation aspect running even when I draw up charts for projects. The program takes about 15k per instance, which doesn't put any strain at all onto the Series 3a 512K model. To start using the program, install it on the system screen as for other applications. Place the cursor on the program name and press ENTER. You will be told that, since you are creating a new file, you should enter some names - make sure that you enter at least 1 name at this stage. You also have the option of entering an item of leave for each name at this stage - if you don't want to do this, change the 'Enter vacation' prompt to 'No'. If you do enter items of leave, give the start date, either the thru date or the number of days (the 'End point' prompt at the foot of the screen determines which of these will be used - the default is 'thru date'), a reason (if left blank, this will default to the name of the person), and a contact point. When you've entered as many names as you would like to give initially, press ESC (remember to give at least 1 name before ESC is pressed). You will be shown the main screen, with a line per name entered, bars on each line for items of leave entered, and cross hairs highlighting the current active person and date. From this point onwards, the MENU button will show you the options available and the hot key shortcuts for them. To show details of a leave item, put the horizontal and vertical cross hairs on the item and press ENTER. To toggle between the current highlighted date and today's date, press the spacebar. I use Psion/a from the system screen to assign the program to the CTRL-Agenda button so that it is instantly available. This program is shareware. You may try it for a trial period of two weeks. If you find it useful, and continue to use it after two weeks, you should register it. Registration (£15 or $20) includes :- a registered copy of Vacation a user manual in glorious, thrilling, MONOCHROME! Unlimited product support (no expiration date) Notification of any upgrades (if enough people show an interest, I'm thinking of trying to put in hard copy facilities, extending the Gantt project planning by introducing dependencies, and some other stuff). To register this program, send a cheque / money order to :- Francis P. McCormack AmsterdamerStrasse 3 / 308 80805 Munich Germany Thanks in advance, and I hope using the program organises your personnel tracking activities as much as it did mine!