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X3 Workshop Webinar - 13 Tips to become more productive with X3 (Subscriber Only Content)

Mon, 03/01/2010 - 6:14pm — AlexAllen

Helpful Tips to become more productive and get the most out of eMaint X3
This session, provided by Product Specialist Alex Allen, reviews 13 tips and tricks to become more productive while using eMaint X3. These tips include internet browser settings, useful default values for data entry forms, little known functions within X3, and tricks to help get the most out of automated reports and dashboard reporting.

Using a browser that supports tabs.

  • By upgrading to a browser such as Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox, Safari, or Chrome you will be able to take advantage of having multiple areas of the application open at once.
  • Although each of the different browser options have their own keyboard
    shortcuts to open a new tab it is quite common to right click the area
    that you would like to open in an additional tab and select "Open Link
    in new Tab."

Pop Up Blockers - Shut them off. (browser and installed add ons)

Denote required fields in red.

  • When creating a required field in the application by default it displays exactly the same as a non required field. To alert your users that certain fields on a form are required you can adjust the field properties to display the field description in another color such as red. To do this you must have administrative privileges.
    • Select Options - Customize form
    • Select the "Tools" (properties) icon to the right of the field in question.
    • On the General Properties Tab it will display the "Required:" attribute.
    • Select the "Text&Formatting" tab. 
    • Click on the Field description.
    • Here you can make adjustments to size, color, or other font attributes.

Increasing field lengths? Run verify structures routine yourself.

Filters on the list view, know how to use them to quickly locate a group of records.

  • Understanding all the capabilities of the list views will allow you to locate records and navigate around the X3 application more quickly and precisely. Below is a link to the page within eMaint University that will display all different options associated with these views.http://www.emaintuniversity.com/node/377

Site activity report - checking on usage of your team.

  • The "Site Activity Report" is a tool that is designed to allow the administrator on an account to review average usage of all individual users or with the assistance of the support team investigate a claim of activity that may or may not have occurred in the application. This option is accessable under "Administration" on the "Navigation" tab.
    • First select a date range (must be 7 days or less)
    • The screen you see next shows the USER ID, Unique Session ID, First and last transaction in EST and then GMT, the IP address of the computer that made these transactions, and the total # of transactions.
    • This first screen is useful for seeing adoption by your user base.
    • Next you can select the User ID of the session you would like to further investigate.
    • On this next screen you can now see the individual transactions this user made during this session and what time they occurred. It will show the address of the page the user was viewing also.

Add simple dropdowns to fields that have standard values.

  • Any field in the system can have lookups added to help keep all data entry uniform throughout the database. The simplest type of lookup to create is a values based lookup.
    • To create the lookup first select "Options" then "Customize Form".
    • Select the "Tools" icon to the right of the field you are working on.
    • Select the "Lookup Properties" tab in the "Properties" panel, then select the radio button next to "Values Lookup".
    • In the area labeled "Lookup Definition" you can type the values you would like to appear in the drop down on this field with a carriage return (Enter Key) after each entry.

Labor Charges - autofills if your contact ID matches your user id.

  • When a user creates a labor charge in the standard configuration they will need to select their name from the lookup in the "Full Name" field. If the User ID matches a contact record, based on a direct relationship between the User ID and the "X3 Username" field, the "Full Name" value will automatically be populated every time the user creates a new labor charge.

Default values - pull from contact records&logged User ID.

  • Values can automatically be populated on a new request for a requestor user based on a direct relation between the requestor's User ID and a Contact ID. This is driven by values that are contained in the "Default Value" for a field. This configuration should be in place by default on all request forms. Below are the values and the fields they correspond to.
    • Email - $Request.Querystring([EM])$
    • Requestor - $Request.Querystring("FN")$
    • Requestor Phone - $Request.Querystring([PH])$
  • Also, anywhere in the system the User ID that is currently logged in can be pulled into a field by inserting the Default value $LCLOGGED$

Reports - copy an existing to save time.

  • In the report listing users with edit rights have access to 5 icons on the right hand side of each record. The center icon which appears as 2 leafs of paper is an option to copy the report. This will allow you to find a similar report to the desired output and create an exact duplicate. This should speed report creation significantly and keep the standard reports intact for reference in the future.

Reports - use the Date() function.

  • When working within a report and filtering a date field it is a common request to have the report show records from "the last 30 days" or "Last 7 days" or "Today". This can be performed using the function option on your filter criteria and entering in a simple system code.
    • First make sure you are working with a "Date" field.
    • Select the funnel icon from the main report page to add a filter.
    • To the right of the calendar icon on the field an "Fx" icon should be displayed, click this icon to allow for custom code to be entered into the critera value.
    • Now you can use the Date() function in the field. Date() represents todays date, DATE()-30 represents todays date minus thirty. This can be used in conjunction with the correct operator to setup reports with a standard date range that no longer needs to be adjusted every time the report is run.


Reports - show all information for previous or current month using calculated fields.

  • Calculated fields can be created that will allow you to filter for the current month or previous month as a whole within a report. Please review the reporting manuals for assistance in creating calculated fields. The values for the fields reviewed in the video are:
    • Table: WORK (current table reporting on, must be in all capital letters)
    • Field: MONTH (User definable, must be 10 characters or less and all capital letters)
    • Description: WO Month (User definable)
    • Expression: MONTH(WORK.DATE_WO)
    • TABLE: WORK (current table reporting on, must be in all capital letters)
    • FIELD: YEAR (User definable, must be 10 characters or less and all capital letters)
    • Description: WO Year (User definable)
    • Expression: YEAR(WORK.DATE_WO)
  • Once these fields are added to the report you can then filter the values by selecting the "FX" (function) icon to right of the critera field and enter one of the values below, dependent on the field and expected filter results.
    • MONTH(DATE()) - Current Month
    • YEAR(Date()) - Current Year
  • or
    • MONTH(GOMONTH(DATE(),-1)) - Previous Month
    • YEAR(GOMONTH(DATE(),-1)) - Year of the Previous Month

eMaint University!

  • eMaint University contains a wealth of information about the eMaint X3 application which is being updated constantly.