ABSENT INTRODUCTION ABSENT is intended for businesses/offices with a staff which can be divided in to main groups/branches/divisions of up to about 30 staff members. It is used to keep track of staff absences, for duty travel, annual leave, sick leave and miscellaneous absences. For duty travel it also keeps a condensed record of where and its purpose. Public holidays or periods when the office is closed altogether can also be marked on the schedule. It is often convenient to sub-divide the main groups into sub-groups with inter-related duties in order to better allow organization of the work when one or several members of a sub-group are absent. For the purpose of viewing and/or printing the absence schedule, the year is divided into three four-month periods. The program accepts 30 lines of inputs, including empty lines headings and names of staff members. However, by keeping separate data files for different sub-groups, branches or divisions, the actual size of organization becomes limitless. The various features of the program are accessed through a central menu and the user is prompted for further choices and inputs as required. In addition to inputs of data, loading and saving data into a file and viewing and printing of outputs, data can also be edited or deleted and new inputs inserted in a specific place in the schedule. NOTE: The program uses the international convention for dates, dd/mm/yyyy, so that 5 january 1992 is written as 05/01/92. All inputs must be made in the same way, with leading zeros, if the number for the day and/or the month is less than 10. INSTALLATION The installation of the program is very simple. Create a directory on your hard disk, for instance, at the C:\ prompt, type MD ABSENT [Enter]. Then, copy the three files ABSENT.EXE, ABSENT.LGO and ABSENT.TXT to that directory by typing COPY A:ABSENT.* C:\ABSENT [Enter] This assumes that the diskette with the ABSENT files are in drive A:. START-UP Access the directory to which you have copied the ABSENT.EXE file by typing CD\ABSENT (Enter) and then type ABSENT (Enter) This will display the opening screen, followed by the main menu. Unregistered copies will briefly show a message 'COPY FOR DEMO AND EVALUATION ONLY' before the menu is displayed. MAIN MENU The main menu provides the following options: 1. Input schedule data 2. Edit schedule data 3. Input name of division 4. Input official holidays 5. Store data to disk 6. Load data from disk 7. Display schedule on screen 8. Print over-allschedule 9. Print travel details Q. Quit Press the numberof your choice or 'Q' to quit. INPUT SCHEDULE DATA The inputting of data is simple and should not give rise to any problems. Just repond to the prompts on the screen, bearing in mind that the date inputs should be in the format dd/mm/yy, as mentioned in the prompt, and that date and month number below 10 must be entered with leading zeros. For instance 03/08/92 for 3 August 1992. EDIT SCHEDULE DATA This choice displays the Edit Menu with the following options: (I)nsert a line (D)elete a line (E)dit a line (C)hange a holiday (R)eturn to main menu Press the letter shown between brackets to select your choice for instance, press 'D' if you want to delete the name of a staff member, 'I' if you want to add a new name in a certain order in the listing, 'E' to make changes or additions in the inputs for a staff member, and so on. Together with the listing of menu choices, there is a listing of the existing names of staff members, with numbers in front of the names. These numbers are the 'lines' referred to in the menu. The (I)nsert and (D)elete options lead to simple prompts that are easy to follow. (E)dit a line, on the other hand, leads to a new menu, the Change Menu, with the same options as in the edit menu. This time, however, the listing consists of the absences of the staff member selected for editiing of data inputs. Again, the choices lead to simple, easy to follow, prompts. INPUT NAME OF DIVISION Enter the name of the division ans prompted. It will be dis- played in the schedule on screen and in print-outs. INPUT OFFICIAL HOLIDAYS The program automatically displays Saturdays and Sundays as holidays. However, any additional official holidays must be entered. Again, follow the instructions given on the screen in the prompts. STORE DATA TO DISK To store the data, enter the name of the file as prompted, with the drive and directory if different from the drive and di- rectory in which you have your ABSENT program files. Do not en- ter the extension of the file, since that will be automatically added by the program as '.SCH', for instance 'ADMIN.SCH'. LOAD DATA FROM DISK Respond to the prompts on the screen and enter the name of the file you want to read. Include the drive and the directory if different from the drive and directory in which you have your ABSENT program files. Do not enter the extension of the file. It will be assumed to be '.SCH'. DISPLAY SCHEDULE ON SCREEN For the display, the year is divided into three four-month periods; January-April, May-August and September-December. The program first prompts for the year to be displayed and then for the period (1, 2 or 3). Only part of the months in the selected series can be seen at the same time,but the months can be scrolled by pressing the left or right arrow keys. To stop scrolling, press the down arrow key. If there are more staff members in the 'division' or more input lines than 17, they can be accessed by pressing the PgDn key. To return to the first screen after that, press PgUp. The Enter or Return key, returns the display to the main menu. PRINT OVER-ALL SCHEDULE It is assumed that page formating, choice of font and font size are controlled by using the built-in controls of the printer. In general it is recommended that 'condensed' is used, and for laser printers, 'landscape'. The print-out will be very much similar to the display on the screen. PRINT TRAVEL DETAILS The additional information on duty travel can only be viewed as a print-out, such as countries or places to be visited and the purpose for the travel, together with the dates of absense for this. As regards page formating, fonts and size of fonts, see 'PRINT OVER-ALL SCHEDULE'. SHAREWARE This is not a free program. It is distributed under a shareware scheme, which expects you to register within a trial period of 30 days with B. Kyrklund Via dei Radiotelegrafisti 28 B 3 00143 Rome Italy Fax: ++ 39-6-592-0773 Compuserve ID 100013,375 The registration fee is US$ 40 or Italian Lire 50 000. On receipt of your registration, you will be sent a copy which does not include the initial demo/evaluation screen. The program with the demo/evaluation display can be freely copied and distributed, provided that a) No fee is charged, except to cover direct expenses of copying and distribution; b) All the files of the program are included in the copy, that is - ABSENT.EXE - ABSENT.LGO - ABSENT.TXT ABSENT (c) Copyright 1992 by B. Kyrklund. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.