What does the PDA look like?

The PDA is a small flat gray device and is designed to be held in one hand. A scanner is attached to the back of the device so that you will be able to scan barcodes. An optional printer which can be useful with the POS and Buyback Line Busters can be purchased and attached to the PDA.

On the front and sides of the device are several buttons (not pictured in the screen below). Some of these buttons are used for functions such as powering the PDA on and off and scanning barcodes.

The data screen is located in the middle of the PDA. The lower third of the screen contains an area where navigations buttons and the Graffiti or keyboard information is entered. The upper two thirds of the screen is where the applications appear. When the PDA is powered off, only the upper two thirds of the screen clears.

In the sample screen, icons for eight of Nebraska Book Company applications are displayed. The icons displayed on your PDA will be dependent upon which suite(s) you have purchased and installed. Additional icons for address book, calculator, date book, etc, are provided by Palm.

Open

Only one application can be accessed at any given time. The operating system does not function like Windows, in which you can have multiple sessions open at the same time. With the PDA, you must exit one application to access another. For example, if you are working in Lookup and decide that you wish to enter an order quantity, touch the Application icon. That will exit Lookup, return you to the main screen and allow you to touch Purchase.

The Radio Beacon Symbol

A radio beacon symbol will appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen as the PDA communicates with PrismCore.   The radio beacon looks like a small tower or a capital  letter  I.     This  symbol  will  appear  periodically  while  working  within  an  NBC application,  functioning  much  like  the  hourglass  symbol  on  a  Windows  PC.    Until  the beacon disappears, no further action can be taken on the PDA.

Auto Shut Off

To extend battery life, PDA’s are set to shut themselves down after a period of inactivity. Provided that the battery is sufficiently charged, all data is saved on the PDA during auto shut off. Press the power button to return to the last screen in which you were working.

The length of the period of inactivity before the PDA shuts itself off automatically is set in the General Preferences screen. To set the time for automatic shut-off, touch the Preferences icon (Pref) on the PDA home screen. If the word General doesn’t appear in the upper right-hand corner, touch the down arrow and select the word General. Then you can establish the Auto-off After setting. The setting can range from thirty seconds up

to three minutes. For further information and troubleshooting, consult the PDA’s Product Reference Guide.

Please note: If an item ID has been scanned or hand-entered in the XREF field but not accepted or cleared, the automatic shut-off does not occur.

Time and Date

To set the time and date, touch the Preferences icon (Pref) on the PDA home screen. If the word General doesn’t appear in the upper right-hand corner, touch the down arrow and select the word General. Then you can establish the time and date. For further information and troubleshooting, consult the PDA’s Product Reference Guide.

Battery

Consult the PDA’s Product Reference Guide for information and troubleshooting for the battery. Support recommends that while using the PDA during the workday, place it back in the cradle overnight to charge the battery.

At the top of the PDA, there is a battery icon that will show how much power is left in the battery. If you see that power is running low, place the PDA in the cradle to re- charge it.

Important         If you allow the battery to discharge completely, the PDA will lose the configuration settings in the NBC Applications.

Power Button

The power button is the red button located in the lower left corner of the PDA. Press this button to power on or off the PDA.

Hand Strap

The PDA has a strap attached to its back that can be used to secure it to your hand as you scan. To use the strap, loop it through the metal clip and press the Velcro fastener in place.

Navigation

For detailed information on how to navigate the PDA, we recommend that you work

through the Welcome application that is found on your PDA. You may need to scroll down using the scroll bar on the right side of the screen to see the Welcome icon. You can also use the gray buttons at the top of the PDA to scroll through the applications.

Yellow Scan Buttons

Your PDA has three yellow buttons that can be used when scanning barcodes. One is located at the center of the top of the PDA. The other two are located on either side of the PDA. Note that the buttons will activate the scanner only when the screen is ready to accept an item ID, that is, the field XRef is displayed. For safety reasons, do not look directly into the scanner when scanning.

Scroll Bar and Buttons

When more information is available than will display on the screen, you can touch the scroll bar on the right side of the screen with the stylus to view the additional data. Or, you can press one of the two scroll buttons at the top pf the PDA to move through the data.

Home

There will be two icons that look like houses that you can use to navigate. When logged into an application, a house icon, Home, will appear in the upper right corner of the screen. If you wish to return to the screen where you can select the configuration option, touch Home .

The other house icon will be referred to as Home/Applications and is located in the lower left portion of the screen next to the Graffiti area. In the emulation software used to create this documentation, it appears as an arrow in a circle. However, on your PDA, is may appear as a house in a circle.

Entering Information

You can enter information into the PDA by using the stylus to select numbers and letters on the keyboard or by using Graffiti, a set of marks that the PDA will interpret as letters and numbers. 

Using the Keyboard

To access the keyboard, touch the kb icon at the end of a field or on a screen with the stylus or touch the curved abcde  or 12345  found in the lower portion of the screen.

Open

As you touch letters on the keyboard, they will appear in the area above the keyboard. You can change between letters and numbers by touching abc and 123.  When you are finished typing, touch Done.

Further information on using the keyboard can be found under the Welcome application on the PDA.

Stylus

The stylus is the pen-like writing device that you can use to touch a button or field on the PDA screen and/or to write in the Graffiti section of the screen. In this documentation, we will use the commands “touch” and “select” to indicate what you should touch with the stylus for data entry.

Graffiti

Graffiti is a set of marks that the PDA interprets into letters and numbers. To use Graffiti, trace patterns with the stylus in the lower shaded portion of the screen.

Alpha characters are traced on the left side. Numeric characters are traced on the right. Note that the alpha portion of the screen in slightly larger than the numeric portion.

If you chose to use Graffiti, become familiar with the accepted marks so that you will be able to quickly enter error-free data. As you can see in the samples below, some of the traces for letters and numbers are different than the actual character. Additional information on Graffiti can be found in the Welcome and the Graffiti applications on the PDA.