There is nothing worse for me as an IT professional than to see people who use computers to service customers struggling to do their job properly because the information that the customer is inquiring on is not readily available.

Case in point: while consulting at an Open Skies site a couple of accounting users expressed their frustration in discovering whether a commission check had been made for a travel agency.

A Travel Agency would call in and would want to know if a commission check had been cut for a particular customer's flight. Typically the only information that the Travel Agency had was the "PNR number". This is also known as the Record Locator which corresponds to the Rec-loc field in the Open Skies database.

The current inquiry screen was not set up to provide that type of search, so they had to scroll through pages and pages of entries to find out if the commission was paid. This process would take them up to five minutes and became increasingly frustrating.

Enter Suprtool and its List command. I wrote a simple command file that would run Suprtool with a Use file to list the information that the Travel Agency needed. The command file prompts the user with the Record Locator number and then uses Suprtool to list the information to the screen.

The Command file:

Input myinput;prompt="Please enter the Pnr #: "
setvar rec_loc ups("!myinput")
setjcw cierror 0
continue
showvar rec_loc >$null
if !cierror <> 0 then
   echo "Pnr Number is not set"
   return
endif
if "!rec_loc" = ""
   echo "Pnr Number is not active"
else
   purge stoutput,temp
   file x=stoutput,new;temp
   run suprtool.pub.robelle;parm=32;stdin=commpaid.use;stdlist=x
   if !suprtooloutcount = 0 then
      echo "Pnr number is not found"
   endif
endif
Input x;prompt="Press return to return to your menu"

The Suprtool Use File

The use file of Suprtool commands requires that the Variable Substitution option be enabled.

SET VARSUB ON
base batdb.base,5,password
chain batch-detail,rec-loc="!REC_LOC"
def date,batch-key[18],8,byte
ext rec-loc
ext batch-no
ext payment-amount
item payment-amount,dec,2
ext payment-text
ext date
sort rec-loc
:file suprlist;dev=!hpldevlist
LIST STAN title "Commission Paid Inquiry" time 0&
heading &
"Pnr No     Batch No      Amount          Text             Date"
EXIT

The writing of the command file took a total of 10 minutes and I had the users test it, with me looking over their shoulder. They immediately asked for it to be added to their menus.

It is very satisfying to help a user this quickly, easily, and thus helping them to serve their customers.

Neil@robelle.com
January 3, 2001