Ed’s SHIMS Blog Issue 1

Ed’s SHIMS Blog Issue 1

In this edition we have News, New Stuff, Really New Stuff and Tech Corner sections.
There are a lot of changes happening in the SHIMS world these days and I thought you might find some of them interesting.

So here goes.

SHIMS MEETING 2021

Good afternoon friends,

We are writing today to provide you with updated information regarding the SHIMS Meeting. Warren and I have decided to move the SHIMS Meeting to October 18-19, 2021.We hope that by moving the conference to October 2021, everyone will have ample opportunity to plan and budget for it and more importantly, stay healthy!  We would like to see everyone attend the meeting and want you to feel comfortable with traveling and gathering together in a group environment.

The event will still take place at The Guest House at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee. The hotel rate will remain the same discounted rate of $129 per night. guesthousegraceland.com

If you registered for the 2020 event: We are holding your registration spot for the Oct. 2021 event and will reach out to you separately to confirm your registration.

If you need to register for the 2021 event: SHIMS Meeting 2021 registration will reopen on May 3, 2021 (*). A new registration email will be sent out on that date.

We appreciate your patience and are happy to answer any additional questions you may have regarding this update. We will be in touch very soon and look forward to seeing everyone in person!

Be well!

– Warren + Terrie

RESTFUL SERVICES 101

#HASHTAG Lookup for Products

Dave Helsel of Helsel-Jepperson Electrical, reminded me of an enhancement to the product lookup logic that I did for him, which he guaranteed me all of you would want. If you don’t find this interesting, please let me know so I can collect on that guarantee.

Essentially what we do is to allow entry of a large number of tag fields that apply to products (just like a webpage lookup.)

Here is how Dave describes this:

This is the alt code for a led retro fit light bulb from Sylvania:

LED17T8/L48/FG/841/BF

My counter people and inside sales need some help knowing how to find this product.

I put in tags on this product that people would ask for:

SYLVANIA

LED

T8
4FT

4FOOT
BYPASS
4100K

17WATT

When someone comes up to the counter they would may ask for a LED 4ft florescent lamp and they want it to be a bypass ballast and also 4100k

The counterman enters:

LED T8 BYPASS 4100K 4FT

And SHIMS shows you the items that have these tags.

I could do this with Bath Lights for my showroom:

PROGRESS

36IN

36INCH

4LIGHT

BRUSHED

NICKEL

BN

PEWTER

 

If someone enters:

36IN 4LIGHT BN

That would bring up all the brushed nickel 4 light bath strips.

SHIMS Integration with Showroom Application

Bravo Media Systems.

Bravo has developed a tablet based system to be used in a showroom. The salesperson uses this to develop a quotation for a homeowner with photos, spec sheets and every other option they might want.

Emil Neufeld at Crescent Supply in Pennsylvania asked me to develop a program that allows him to import bids from a Bravo quotation and turn it into a SHIMS bid. This worked very well for him.

Several customers had me take this to the next level. Someone preparing a Bravo bid can now request pricing/costing info from SHIMS and get real-time updates. Then when they are ready to create a SHIMS bid, this is a real-time, hands-free update.

You may have heard about REST web interfaces. This is an example and I relied in many ways on the experts at Zumasys to develop this.

Please let me know if you are interested.

What happens when you login to SHIMS?

When you login you run SHIMS.ACCESS which displays this screen:

The login and password are validated against the SHIMS.LOGIN file which is maintained by SHIMS.ACCESS.MAINT

The Valid Login Accounts/Menus to Run fields are important. What the above screen says is that if you use the SHIMS User ID to login to XYZ you begin by executing M, which is an MD that runs MENU-PROKS MENU.

Another thing you might see as a “Menus to Run” is Z.SLS.MAIN.MENU. The MD for that is:

This will then run this:

We see here that there are 2 types of menus: MENU-PROKS menus and SHIMS.MENUS menus. I will talk about that next time.

If you have some tech questions you would like answered, please let me know and I will discuss your question.

Thanks,

Ed

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