Introduction · Chapter 0
How to read this book
Who the book is written for, the order to read it in and what the boxes in it mean.
This book describes PORTWARE from start to finish. It is not a list of technical specifications; it is text to sit down and read: what the system is, why the screens behave the way they do, how daily work runs and why things have come to be the way they are in production.
Every chapter can be read on its own, but the order is not random. It explains first what the system is, then the screen, then daily work, then documents, then artificial intelligence, then the commercial processes and finally administration. The ruler on the left shows which chapter you are in.
Who should read what
The whole book is about six hours of reading. Nobody has to read all of it, so there are five separate ways in.
| Who you are | Read in this order | Approximate time |
|---|---|---|
| New user | 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 | 1 hour |
| Heavy daily user | 4 → 5 → 8 → 12 → 14 → the chapter of your own process | 1.5 hours |
| Process owner / manager | 1 → 16 → 17 → 18 → 19 → 20 → 21 | 2 hours |
| Project and team manager | 5 → 24 → 25 → 26 | 1.5 hours |
| System administrator | 1 → 3 → 30 → 31 | 1 hour |
What the boxes in the book mean
You will see five kinds of box in the text. Each has its own job and none of them is decoration.
Besides these there is one more box: a real example of use.
A real example of use
- Situation
- What was wanted.
- What was done
- Which steps were followed in the system.
- Result
- What was achieved, and by what measure.
Versions and accuracy
The book describes PORTWARE 19.0. Figures and module versions are generated from the source tree and the production database — they are not typed in by hand. They are rebuilt on every build, so when a module's version changes the book changes too.
Even so, if you find a place where the text and reality part ways, reality is right. What the screen says overrides what the book says; report the difference when you find it so that the text can be corrected.
Resources outside the book
- Application guides — screen-by-screen use of the core's standard applications (Accounting, Sales, Inventory, HR…).
- Module pages — a page for every significant capability added to PORTWARE: what it does, which screen it appears on and where its limits are.
And inside the system itself: the ? button in the top bar. When you press it on a screen you get two choices — the whole handbook, or the chapter that describes that very screen. Chapter 2 explains this in detail.