Please note your privacy is assured: e-mail addresses are never sold, rented, or shared.
You need Silverlight in order to use the trial version of WhiteSky Studio. Silverlight is a free plug-in from Microsoft that you can download from here.

You can click here to signup for a fully functional WhiteSky Property account here. This is completely free and means you can begin using WhiteSky Property today to design and run a system for your business. If you need more users or data storage you can contact us here to upgrade your account.

There are many property systems providing floor to ceiling functionality and they all have one common flaw, they were not built for your organisation.
Property packages have to please all their Customers at the same time from the same package. This can tie them in knots preventing them from providing you with your exact business process and preventing them from moving forward with new versions and technology. The result, an industry well supplied with systems that no one is enthusiastic about and that are acknowledged as expensive and inefficient.

So how does WhiteSky Property provide a different approach?
WhiteSky Property is a comprehensive template providing industry standard functionality that can be configured to an organisations business process. There need be no compromises in design and reports and dashboards can be easily configured by Customers. Functionality can be added or modified as requirements change and there isn’t the burden of version upgrades with all of the diversion of resources to this thankless task. WhiteSky Property is delivered as a Cloud service to any Internet enabled device for a low monthly subscription cost.

WhiteSky Property includes, among others, the following modules:

1. Funds: Based on the common Asset Management template, the fund administration part of WhiteSky Property includes KYC, Investor Relations and portfolio management.
2. Properties: Floors/Units
3. Leases: (incentives/breaks, operating costs, security, currency),
4. Tenants: Tenancy schedule
5. CRM: Company and Contacts, including linking through for tenants and related reports.

We have a videos section which details how to use the system, along with a getting started guide explaining the core concepts of how to build systems. There is also a walkthrough video illustrating how to create and build a system in under 10 minutes.

Please note your privacy is assured: e-mail addresses are never sold, rented, or shared.
You need Silverlight in order to use the trial version of WhiteSky Studio. Silverlight is a free plug-in from Microsoft that you can download from here.

You can click here to signup for a fully functional WhiteSky Time account here. This is completely free and means you can begin using WhiteSky Time today to design and run a system for your business. If you need more users or data storage you can contact us here to upgrade your account.

The WhiteSky Time product is built apon our WhiteSky CRM template and powered by the WhiteSky Studio solution.
There are plenty of timesheet systems available and it can be quite a task to compare features. WhiteSky Time provides cost effective and comprehensive functionality with peerless reporting. The major differentiating feature of WhiteSky Time is that it can be rapidly configured to reflect your fields, processes and terminology to ensure you get the maximum value.

What do you need from a time-recording system:-

1. Simple & efficient time entry from any internet enabled access.
2. Timesheet completion reminders and escalation procedures.
3. Simple allocation of time to tasks and budgets with immediate alerts if limits exceeded.
4. Efficient billing and invoice production (or file export to 3rd party system).
5. Simple interface to payroll.
6. Time forecasts and resource allocation information.
7. Real-time dashboard configured to show relevant metrics.
8. Flexible reporting by task, project, resource, chargeable and non-chargeable etc.
9. Expense amounts and vouchers captured for project allocation and interface to accounting/payroll.

The key modules are:-

• Contacts: fee earner data and payroll information e.g. billing rates, holiday entitlements.
• Companies: Customer billing details and task budgets, staff allocations and reporting.
• Tasks: assigned fee earners, budgets, variances, billing and notes.
• Timesheets: simple task selection, time entry and forecast.

We have a videos section which details how to use the system, along with a getting started guide explaining the core concepts of how to build systems. There is also a walkthrough video illustrating how to create and build a system in under 10 minutes.

Every night the Automatic Backup System copies all Customer data and files and creates a ‘back-up’ account. WhiteSky keep all backups for the last 10 days and for every Sunday in the year. If a Customer has elected to store their data in a separate database they can specify their back-up options.

You can download the Windows Phone 8 App from here.
You can download the Windows Store App from here.

Sharing the same core framework the applications perform the same functionality on either your phone or tablet. The application allows you to:

• View all data on the system through the menus for your role
• Search for data
• Open items and navigate relationships
• Create new, Update and Delete data
• Processes all your configured formulas including those driving configuration options

This now enables you to use WhiteSky on the go, or mobile. As a true cloud based product the WhiteSky Studio Apps have no problem performing on a 3G connection, just like the full desktop PC/Mac version can too.

We are understandably very excited about this release and have big plans to continue improving the applications, including (but not limited to):

• Displaying Queries
• Displaying charts/graphs and management information
• Adding homepage support
• Document Management integration

The ultimate goal being that you’ll have the full ability to use your WhiteSky Studio solution from your phone or tablet just like your PC/Mac (though without the Admin configuration ability).

We are also starting development of an HTML5 version for all other devices – watch this space.

How do you define a Cloud Computing application?

There have been three deployment architectures for client/server applications.

The most common deployment architecture is called ‘On-site deployment’ where application and database servers are maintained by an organisation within their local LAN and client applications are installed on each user PC.

This ‘traditional’ set-up moved to what we call ‘WEB deployment’; with the servers being hosted externally allowing access to the client application from a WEB browser.

The latest architecture is Cloud Computing which is significantly different from On-site or WEB deployment and is differentiated by some clear characteristics described below.

Cloud Computing can respond to demand

Cloud Computing is not limited to a fixed number of physical servers, it immediately scales-up the servers allocated to an application as processing demand increases. In this way system performance for the user is kept constant and there is a cost effective and efficient allocation of resources. 

In contrast WEB deployed applications whilst hosted on the internet have dedicated servers allocated to run the application and cannot scale up to match short term increases in demand; if there is a peak in the number of users or heavy processing tasks, such as running reports, performance can suffer.

Cloud Computing provides 24/7 access.

‘On-site’ and ‘WEB based’ systems are supported by the software vendor and periodically have to be taken offline for server software updates and patches to be applied. In a Cloud Computing environment maintenance is performed in real-time; this means servers are automatically patched with the latest fixes.

Cloud Computing benefits from economies of scale.

‘On-site’ and ‘WEB based’ systems require dedicated servers available 24/7 to meet peak demand, this is a fixed cost. Cloud Computing can have very few servers when the load is low and dynamically increase them when needed and hence provide superior performance at a lower cost.

Cloud Computing has only one version of the software.

‘On-site’ and ‘WEB based’ systems invariably have to operate and maintain several different versions of the application across their installed Customer base: for the software house this is a significant management and cost overhead which can lead to a slow response to maintenance issues and development requests. For the Customer it can mean many months of the application not providing the functionality required and a significant cost to upgrade the system (to say nothing of the cost of running old versions of the application for months if not years!).

Cloud based solutions do not have Customer specific installs: they provide one version of the application which every Customer uses. There are no costly Customer upgrades  just updates to the application that are automatically downloaded to all users. This single version environment reduces the cost of support and maintenance for both the Customer and the software house.

Cloud Computing is secure.
Cloud Computing applications are inherently more secure than ‘on-site’ and ‘WEB based’ applications as they benefit from the economies of scale being housed in dedicated data centres with many levels of security. Unless you’re part of one of the largest global companies you simply could not afford a better IT infrastructure.

See our post about the “Top 3 reasons legacy systems are insecure“, our technical section with white papers and our security resources section for further information.

Cloud Computing provides good performance.
‘On-site’ and ‘WEB based’ applications were built to exploit fast dedicated connections to the local on-site database server.  This is one of the reasons WEB based applications can be slow as they were designed for an environment with much faster connections. Cloud Computing solutions are designed to perform over an internet connection and can often run as quickly from a wireless connection or simply using a 3g mobile phone chip.

WhiteSky Studio is a platform built from the ground up to take advantage of the latest Cloud technologies. It is not simply a web-based application with all the inherent flaws mentioned above. It responds dynamically to user demand, can grow with your business, has incredible performance and is secure. All of this while being orders of magnitude cheaper than existing applications and bespoke programming.

Download your free trial of WhiteSky Studio today, and see for yourself.

The Layout Design area in WhiteSky Studio is already incredibly flexible allowing you to drag and drop views around to produce any screen you like. For instance you can easily design a typical company screen, like so, in less than a minute:

(Click for larger image)

Tabs can be used to facilitate extra screen real estate, in the above example a tab is used to list all the employees in a grid that users can edit/sort/etc:

(Click for larger image)

We’ve now enhanced the available options by adding the ability to use buttons to create popup screens with any further layouts you like. There are 2 new options:

• OpenListLookupView
  
  (Click for larger image)
  Here we’ve added an OpenListLookup view to a button to facilitate the most common scenario of requiring a button to open up a grid to modify a relationship. Clicking this button will load the employees grid in a popup window just like the one in the Employees tab in the original layout above. You can configure this by selecting the relationship you would like with the “Filtered By Control” box, and the search screen to use with “Lookup Search Screen” option. Finally the options button beside the “Button Actions” permit you to modify the view parameters just like in the layout design area.
• OpenLayout
  
  (Click for larger image)
  Here the options button in the “Button Actions” allows you to select any other relevant layout (you’ve designed in screen layouts) to be in a popup instead.

These two options now allow you to fully customise any button popup behaviour like so:

By clicking the Employees button:

(Click for larger image)

By clicking the Open Twitter button:

(Click for larger image)

Combined with the previous easy drag and drop design of screens this gives unparalleled easy design and control over the full UI experience.

Download your free trial of WhiteSky Studio today, and see for yourself.

Software packages are made up of ‘line of business’ functions and core or facilitating components such as:

• Querying/Reporting
• Word/Excel Integration
• Permissions
• Auditing
• Document Management
• Relationship Management
• Workflow

These core components are key to the usability of a computer system; however in a package selection exercise which focuses on the ‘line of business’ functions they are often assumed to be present and competent and their evaluation is overlooked. This oversight can have a huge impact on the implementation as costly workarounds and configurations are required to use ‘line of business’ functionality.

So why do most software packages have problems with this core set of components?
It’s partly due to the way in which software packages are developed. They start with the building of ‘line of business’ functions for early adopter customers. As the number of customers grows there are requests for different utilities such as “it’s great product, but it would really help us if all changes were audited”, or “in order for us to follow our business process we need a workflow process”.

There are three problems with this pattern of package development:

1. The core components (such as auditing or querying) are not part of the original architecture of the system. They are often a “sticky-plaster” solution with incomplete capability which adds significantly to the implementation work.
2. The initial customer requested core component functionality may be for a sub-set of the features and further development is required to provide ‘enterprise’ capability. This results in layer upon layer of code rising from incomplete foundations with endless compromises and work around’s needed during implementation.
3. The software vendor has good knowledge of the ‘line of business’ the software package was developed for, however they may not have the expertise to design and develop best practice core components such as querying/reporting, auditing, workflow, permissions, etc.

The typical scenario is that over the two to four years of software package development some of these core components are built; however of the seven core components, you’re lucky if all  of them are added to the product, and even luckier again if any of them have been built to best practice standards! The lack of capability of these components is responsible for poor usability and the high implementation costs associated with many software packages.

The development of WhiteSky Studio has followed a completely different approach. Over the last 10 years the WhiteSky team has worked on the design and development of a number of large software packages and has built several versions of the core components. This experience, and considerable research into best practice, has been distilled to enable WhiteSky Studio to provide all of the core components as part of the initial architecture. The core components support the ‘line of business’ functionality providing efficient capability for users and reducing the implementation time and effort.

Download your free trial of WhiteSky Studio today, and see for yourself.

There is a vast number of legacy applications from CRM and HR to manufacturing, billing and timesheet systems; however with few exceptions they have several weaknesses in common. Here are 3 of the key problems:

The ‘trust environment’ has changed.

Most legacy applications were built before the ‘internet’ prompted connectivity from anywhere to anywhere and the architecture was designed for a client-server model accessible within a single organisation. This applies even for applications with a WEB-based front-end and in-house servers. This was a ‘full-trust environment’ – the requests made of the server were presumed to come from trusted sources – not from people who could be trying to hack the system. Since then the computing environment has changed to accommodate far greater connectivity. If the legacy application server is located outside of the organisation, or accessible via the WEB, then it is a different ball-game. The application should now securely verify every server request before executing it; yet most legacy systems do not do this and still operate as if the environment is trust worthy!

UI permissions and system permissions

Most systems had some sort of permission system built into the core modules. Obviously those that don’t are highly insecure, but for those that do they often went with both a UI and system permissions approach, they did not have the ability to create dynamic query based permissions.
Systems permission allowed you to set what permissions users/roles had to items / areas in the application. However, this required manually changing the permissions for each item whenever it was required, (a problem many are familiar with). To get around this most systems also included an easy ability to configure the UI, such as hiding panels/screens, locking fields, etc.
The problem with this UI method is it was applied by the client application – it does not represent the true permissions the user actually had to the data. The true permissions were still set by the system permissions. This meant most users had full access, but were prevented from doing/seeing things through the UI. This was fine when the application was local; however as with ‘trusted environments’ as soon as the application was placed on a WEB server accessible to multiple offices anyone can call that web server without using the installed application. Thus most of these systems are heavily susceptible to a simple attack by someone writing code to login to the WEB server and downloading or modifying data. Of course they still required a login (hopefully), but that user would normally have full access to everything as there would be no UI permissions in place to prevent them.

Data is held locally.

We are all familiar with hearing of security risks or data protection issues when laptops are mislaid or stolen. This is because legacy applications keep their data locally on the laptop – a problem Cloud based systems are simply not susceptible to, all the data is safe in the Cloud and not on the missing laptop.

WhiteSky Studio addresses these security concerns as it is a Cloud based platform built from the ground up with security in mind. All server calls in WhiteSky Studio (whether through the API or regular calls) are verified and logged. Within the application you can create full system permissions, and queries that dynamically define the permissions for users/groups – this removes the need for creating UI workarounds as there is no longer an administrative overhead associated with maintaining permissions.

Download you free trial of WhiteSky Studio today, and see for yourself.

This article is written assuming you are starting from a blank system, that you have full administrator privileges to all required design functionality, and that the toolbar menu you have follows the same design as the default administrator toolbar.

In order to build a system there are 5 simple steps to follow, more advanced functionality can always be added on around that. For the purposes of this demonstration we will design and build Contacts and Companies related to each other via an Employees relationship. These are the steps we will follow:

1. Create, and configure the options, for a Contact object.
2. Design the groups of controls we would like against our Contact object.
3. Create a Search Grid for a collection of Contacts.
4. Configure the default screen for viewing/editing a Contact.
5. Add access to Contacts onto the toolbar for our role.
6. Repeat steps 1 – 5 for a Company object.
7. Create controls on both a Company and Contacts to relate them both via an Employees relationship.

There is also a short video that demonstrates these concepts in our videos section. If you are already familiar with how to configure this in WhiteSky Studio, then there is also an Intermediate and Advanced section providing examples on queries, dashboards, advanced formulas, etc.

Step 1 – Create, and configure the options, for a Contact.

First, you’ll need to open the Object Types of the system. You should find this on Design -> Object Types on the menu, just click the Object Types  menu button to open it as a new tab.

You should find the menu option here, though it may differ if you are not using the default Admin role, and are using a modified one.
This will open up the list of Object Types in the system (See Object Types Design for further information). If you already have designed objects they will be listed here, if not this grid will be blank. Click the New  icon to create a new Object Type. Fill in the following details:

• Object Type Name: Contact
• Object Collection Name: Contacts
• Icon: Select any existing Icon or a custom one.
• Label Formula: ContactFirstName + ” ” + ContactLastName

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. See Object Type Design for further information on creating a new object, and the Formulas section for explanation on the creating formulas.

You can now click Save to save your changes to the new Contact Object.

Step 2 – Design the groups of controls we would like against our Contact object.

First we’ll need to open the Object Types of the system. Repeat the initial steps in Step 1 above, then select the Contact object from the list of Object Types and click the Design  button (See Object Types Design for further information) to begin designing the controls we would like against our Contact object.

This will open a list of Object Groups against our Contact object. If you have already designed groups then they will be listed here, if not this grid will be blank.

Click the New  icon to create a new Object Group.
Click the Details tab and fill in the following information:

• Group Name: Main
• Icon: Select any existing Icon or a custom one.

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. See Object Group Design for further information.

Next, click the Controls Design tab and click the New  button to create a new control. You should see the control appear and change in the preview window on the left hand side. Select a type of Textbox for the ControlType, and fill in the following details:

• Control Type: Textbox
• Label: First Name
• Mnemonic: ContactFirstName
• Description: The first name of the contact.

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. The mnemonic must be ContactFirstName, as this is the value we used in the formula for the label of a Contact object (See Step 1 above). If you need to use the value of a control in a formula then you must give that control a unique mnemonic and use the mnemonic in formulas – See Formulas for more details. See Controls Design for further information on designing controls.

Next we can add another Textbox control, give it a label of Middle Initials and change its width to 150. Finally we can create another Textbox control with a label of Last Name, as so:

• Control Type: Textbox
• Label: Last Name
• Mnemonic: ContactLastName
• Description: The last name of the contact.

Again, we can leave the rest of the controls blank. The mnemonic must be ContactLastName, as we also referred to such a control in the formula for the label of a Contact object (See Step 1 above).

You can now click Save to save your changes to the new Object Group named Main against a Contact. If you wish to you can start adding more groups against the contact object to record things such as contact information, address, notes, etc.

Step 3 – Create a Search Grid for a collection of Contacts.

First, you’ll need to open the Grids Design of the system. You should find this on Design -> Grids Design on the menu, just click the Grids Design  menu button to open it as a new tab.

You should find the menu option here, though it may differ if you are not using the default Admin role, and are using a modified one. This will open up the list of Object Search Designs in the system (See Grid Designs for futher information). If you already have designed search grids they will be listed here, if not this grid will be blank. Click the New  icon to create a new Grid Design.

Enter a name of “Main Contacts”, as you can have as many different search grids for contacts as you like – this name will uniquely identify the one we want to use.

In the lower half of the pane, select a Object Type of “Contacts” and select the First Name, Middle Name and Last Name as columns. You can do this by clicking the New  button in the lower pane to create new columns, as so:

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. See Object Search Designs for further information on creating search grids.

You can now click Save to save your changes to the new Search Grid.

Step 4 – Configure the default screen for viewing/editing a Contact.

First, you’ll need to open the Screen Layouts area of the system. You should find this on Design -> Screen Layouts on the menu, just click the Screen Layouts  menu button to open it as a new tab.

You should find the menu option here, though it may differ if you are not using the default Admin role, and are using a modified one.
This will open up the list of Screen Layouts for all the screens in the system (See Screen Layouts Design for further information).
We want to design the screen a user will see when they open a Contact. So you should see Contact listed in the possible screen layouts with the Icon you chose (See Step 1 above) next to it. Simply select the Contact in the treeview and click the New  button:

This will load a new empty tab that we can use to design the screen for the Contact. On the left hand side in your Tool Window (See General UI Overview) you will find the Layout Designer. We will use this to design our screen for a Contact. First click the New  button to add a new tab:

Then rename the layout to Contact, check the tick box for IS Default, change the Tab Name to Main, and in the list of Available Views you will see all the Object Groups that we created in Step 1. Next select the Main group from Available Views and click the Add View  button at the bottom. This will add the view from to the screen preview area in the tab on the right.

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. If you have more than one group you can add any remaining groups too this tab (or any new tabs you create), and rearrange the views exactly as you would like it to appear for the end user. For further information on how to design screens see Screen Layouts Design.
You can now click the Save  button in the Layout Designer Tool Window, to save your changes to the new Screen Layout.

Step 5 – Add access to Contacts onto the toolbar for our role.

First, you’ll need to open the Roles of the system. You should find this on Admin -> Roles on the menu, just click the Roles  menu button to open it as a new tab.

You should find the menu option here, though it may differ if you are not using the default Admin role, and are using a modified one.
This will open up the list of Roles in the system. We want to make changes to the role we are currently logged in as, which in this demonstration we are assuming is the Admin role. Select the Admin role (If you are logged in under a different role, then select that one instead) and click the Open  Role button. This should open the design for the Admin role and should default to the Menu tab, (if not then select the Menu tab). Here we can make changes to the menu options available for the role (See Role Menu Design for further information).

From this screen we can modify our menu. The bottom half of the screen shows a preview window of what the toolbar will look like, which currently should show the same toolbar as the one you actively have at the top of WhiteSky Studio. Simply Click on the Main menu group at the bottom and click the middle Add button to create a new group of menu buttons.

Rename the group to CRM. Then we want the button to open up our list of Contacts, we can select Contacts from the Item drop down list but that will just open a default grid for the user which just shows one column named Label. What would be much more useful is using our grid we created in Step 3, to do this select Custom Search: Main Contacts from the Items drop down. This will change the button Icon to your Contact Icon that you chose in Step 1, you can then rename the button to just say Contacts.
We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. See Role Menu Design for further information on creating menus for roles.

You can now click Save to save your changes to the toolbar for the role you’re logged in as.

If you now click Refresh All  button on the top right of WhiteSky Studio, the application will refresh and reload your current role and new menu. You can now click your new Contacts button to load an empty (as we haven’t created any Contacts yet) grid, that you designed in Step 3, like so:

From here, you can click the New  button to create a new Contact. It will open as a new tab, loading the screen you designed in Step 4, and once you’ve filled in the required details you can hit Save to save your new Contact. This contact will now appear in your Contacts grid. From here you can filter, sort, query, export, import, search and edit all your contacts. For further information see Using Search Grids.

Step 6 – Repeat steps 1 – 5 for a Company object.  

Step 6.1 – Create, and configure the options, for a Company object.
Repeat Step 1 from above, but this time enter the following different details for our new Company Object:

• Object Type Name: Company
• Object Collection Name: Companies
• Icon: Select any existing Icon or a custom one.
• Label Formula: CompanyName
• Label Is Unique: True

Step 6.2 – Design the groups of controls we would like against our Company object.
Repeat Step 2 from above, but this time only create one Textbox control for our new Main Group against our Company Object. The properties of the Textbox are as follows:

• Control Type: Textbox
• Label: Name
• Mnemonic: CompanyName
• Description: The unique name of this company.
• Must contain unique value: True

Step 6.3 – Create a Search Grid for a collection of Companies.
Repeat Step 3 from above, but this time name the search grid Main Companies, select the Company Object Type and only have one column in the grid – the Name control we created in Step 6.2.

Step 6.4 – Configure the default screen for viewing/editing a Company.
Repeat Step 4 from above, but this time create a new Company layout, and just add one main tab, and add your Main Object Group you created against the Company Object in Step 6.2 into the preview area.

Step 6.5 – Add access to Companies onto the toolbar for our role.
Repeat Step 5 from above, but this time just use the bottom Add button, not the middle one, to just add a new button next to Contacts. Select Custom Search: Main Companies as the object to use for that button and rename it to Companies.   You should now be able to open companies, from your new Companies button on the toolbar, and create/edit new companies.

Step 7 – Create controls on both a Company and Contacts to relate them both via an Employees relationship.  

First we need to create a new group of controls against a contact for holding employer information. Like in Step 2 above, you need to create a new Object Group. On the Detail tab name it Employer, and then in the Controls Design tab create a new control of type SingleLookup with the following properties:

• Control Type: SingleLookup
• Label: Employer
• Description: Company this contact is currently employed by.
• Lookup Type: Company
• Lookup Search Screen: Main Companies
• Lookup Reverse Label: Employees

If you like you can also create a Textbox control for the contacts position within the company, and a Date control to hold the date they started working there.

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. See Controls Design for further information on designing controls.

You can now click Save to save your changes to the Object Group named Employer against a Contact.

This has created one end of the relationship, and sometimes that is enough, however we would also like to edit this relationship from the Company as well.

Now we need to create a new group of controls against a company for holding a list of employees. Like in Step 2 above, you need to create a new Object Group. On the Detail tab name it Employees, and then in the Controls Design tab create a new control of type ListLookup with the following properties:

• Group Style: Dock
• Control Type: ListLookup
• Label: Employees
• Auto Height: True
• Auto Width: True
• Lookup Type: Contact
• Lookup Search Screen: Main Contacts
• Lookup Reverse Label: Employer

We can leave the rest of the options untouched for now. See Controls Design for further information on designing controls.

You can now click Save to save your changes to the Object Group named Employees against a Company.

This has created the other end of the relationship, however we need to tell the system that the Employees relationship on a Company is the same thing as the Employer relationship on a Contact – they are two sides of the same relationship. We can only do this after we have saved both controls, but if we go back to the Employees control we will find there is a new option:

• Lookup Relationship Control: Employer

Once we have selected the opposite control on the Contact as the same as this control, then the system has now linked the two. Whenever we add an Employer on a Contact, the system will automatically show that as an Employee against the Company. You can now click Save to save your changes to the Object Group named Employees against a Company for the last time.

Now we need to add our 2 new views to the Contact and Company screen.

To begin with the Contact. Go back to Screen Layouts Design, as in Step 2, but instead of creating a new one just open up the Contact and open your existing Contact Layout that you designed earlier in Step 2.

You will now find in the list of available views, that there is a new view name Employer. Add this view to the Contact screen (see Screen Layout Design on how to move and position views), and then click the Save  button on the Layout Designer.

Next open the existing Company Layout. In the list of available views you will see 2 new views, not just the one you created. The one you created, “Employees”, is there; as is “Employees: Main Contacts”. This is because the system allows you to add contacts to the Employees control using the list control, or you can use a search grid to add/remove/edit employees from. The search grid is the one we’ll use so first click Add Tab and name it Employees, then select the “Employees: Main Contacts” view and add it to your new tab. You can then rename it to just say Employees. Finally click the Save  button on the Layout Designer.

If you now click Refresh All  button on the top right of WhiteSky Studio, when you open (or create a new) Company you can go to the Contacts tab and select existing (or add new) Contacts to the list of employees. As we selected a Search Grid, this means we can also edit the Contacts live within the Employees grid too.

Provided you’ve followed this article correctly, you have now very easily designed Contacts & Companies, created a UI for them, created search grids, configured access to them for a role and setup a relationship between both objects. This should give you a very high level overview of the powerful capabilities of WhiteSky Studio. Naturally there are a far greater set of functions and controls that permit an almost endless variety of configuration. To learn more please follow the Intermediate and Advanced articles.

This walkthrough is based on our “Apollo” training material, and in under 10 minutes shows how easy it is to build an entire system from scratch, covering:

• Objects
  • Design
  • Controls
  • Relationships
• Screen Layouts
• Grids
• Roles

Please see our video channel (http://www.youtube.com/whiteskysoftware) for other videos in this series.