Setting Up Communications Controls

The following menu option is used to set up the parameters necessary to interface with the O.I.L. Central Office:

1. On the Main Menu, select Outside Communications Menu.
2. Select Set Up Communications Controls (2) to receive the following screen.

3. Each time the store closes, O.I.L. looks at this table to determine what information should be generated for the central office. Fill in the following fields:

Directory Path for output

Specify the name of the directory containing information the site creates for the central office. (Defaults to ./oil/)

Code and Description

The Code and Description columns display the available types of information you can transfer to the central office. (Display only)

Codes:
A Vehicle	If you will be sharing vehicle histories or want to make a site’s vehicle information available to the central office, enable vehicle transfers by typing D, W, or M in the How often field. If you will be transferring vehicle files with a large amount of history, you should decrease the maximum number of vehicles to transfer. This will cut down on the nightly transfer time and ensure all files are transferred before stores open the next day. Note: Each store number must be unique for vehicle sharing to work properly. To review the store numbers, go to screen 8 of the Center Control File at each site. If there are any duplicate store numbers, call ISI Customer Support for help. A store number conversion must be performed before vehicle sharing is turned on. Vehicle information requires a large amount of hard disk drive space!  If you enable vehicle sharing at your sites, your central office hard disk drive must be able to store the combined vehicle information from the sites.  If you share vehicle information between sites, each site’s hard disk drive must be large enough to hold the combined vehicle information of those sites.
I Mail	During the store closing, you can type a message to send to the central office that night. This message is treated like a standard report and is available at the central office through the Read Incoming Reports option. If you enter D in the How often field for mail, you will be prompted for mail during every closing process.
J Statistics	When this option is turned on, the store will send statistical information to the central office to be merged with information from other stores into the central office statistics database. The central office accesses this information through the Statistics Reports Menu (1-2) on the O.I.L. system.

How often

Type a 1-character code used to determine when information is created. During a daily closing, any line item with D in the How often column is created. On a weekly closing, any item with D or W is created and on a monthly closing, any item with D or M is created. If you leave the How often field blank, this option is turned off and no information will be created. When a 1-character code is entered, this field becomes active and it will generate data from the date it was turned off until the date it was turned on again.

Last Date

Fill in the date (MM/DD/YYYY) that specifies the last time information was generated for the central office at closing. For vehicles and mail, the information created at the time of closing is for the period of time since the date in the Last Date column to the current date. Normally this spans one day if D, seven days if W, or one month if M.

Sometimes ISI Customer Support sets the date back in order to retransmit lost information. For example, setting the last date to blank in the vehicle row causes the vehicle transfer to start from the oldest vehicle history record on the system and work back up to the present date. If you leave the Last Date for the vehicle option empty, a vehicle file is created the next time the site closes. This file contains vehicle information beginning with the earliest histories on the system and continues to be added to until the number of records in the file reaches the maximum number of records to transfer at one time. Depending on how many records are set up in the Maximum number of vehicle history records to transfer at one time field, this file can take several hours to generate and transfer during the closing process. If this occurs at several sites in one night, the central office can spend much of the night on the phone, if using a modem. The next connection may take more time because the central office then tries to send each file received during the previous connection to other sites that share vehicle information with that site.

Changing the settings in the Last Date column is not advised and should be done with caution. Call ISI Customer Support for help.

Maximum number of vehicle history records to transfer at one time

Enter the 1- to 5-digit number used to limit the number of vehicles that will transfer during one closing. (Suggestion: 1000, if you have fewer than 10 stores.)

Print Vehicle Merge Summary

Type Y to print a brief summary of the vehicle processing, which prints after every connection when vehicles are transferred. You can also set this up to print at the central office. Type N to indicate you do not want to print the report.

Report Removal Parameters

For each of these fields (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly), type the number of days you want to keep these reports on your system. Deleted reports print out on the Clearing Report.

4. To save your communications control information and return to the Outside Communications Menu, press [F4].