Vernon Activities
- Featuring some of our clients and few of the artifacts from their collections
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Client
River and Rowing Museum
Henley-on-Thames, England
Description
The largest trout ever caught in the Thames
Procedural Control in Action
Procedural Control is 'hooked in' to each Activity via its Status field, which records where the Activity is presently at in its life cycle.
When you start by creating a new record in an Activity you will only be able to use any of the defined starting statuses. Thereafter you will be only able to progress to any status which is next available from the last status (subject to its condition rules being met).
After assigning a new status, on filing the record the
system checks to see whether the rules applicable to this
new status have been complied with. The rules can include
checking for completion of tasks, such as 'Photograph
the Object', 'Label the Object', 'Obtain Insurance Cover
Note', as well as for completeness and accuracy of data
(e.g. the Loan must be approved by the Director).
If the rules are not satisfied the system displays the error messages telling you what needs to be done to rectify the situation.
Once all the rules have been complied with the system can prompt you to sign off this new status with the person responsible, enter any notes and specify the date it was achieved. This feature can be turned off if you prefer not to use it. However, these details can usually be deduced by the system and filled in automatically. The details of the achievement of this status form part of the Activity's Diary history.
The system will then display any information relevant to this status (e.g. 'Please Phone Mary Smith on Extension 1234 to advise her the loan is approved'). Reports will then be automatically generated if any have been set up for this status. These reports are also available for printing on request at any time.
Next, automatic actions will be performed, such as the generation of a Bulk Move when the Loan has reached the 'Dispatched' status. Other actions include the generation of a Treatment Request from a Condition Report or the generation of a Loan Renewal.
Finally the system can present you with Tasks and future steps in the Procedure, to allow you to schedule these and assign them to the appropriate person (which can default) with a due date. These are written to the Diary for the Activity and, like all Diary entries, can be automatically brought to that user's attention when they next log on to the system.
The Activity thus progresses from step to step through its life cycle until it reaches a termination status. If it is prematurely cancelled all outstanding Tasks/Steps are automatically cancelled as well.