Saving Time with the Administrator Control Screen
One of the ways the control screen features can save a dramatic amount of time is in the case of updating product prices, particularly if your store has a large number of products. The following example shows how to review and update a large group of products all at once. It uses the products from the demo store to demonstrate what to do.
Example 4.1. Updating Prices for a Group of Products at Once
- Navigate to the Products -> Products control screen.
- For convenience, use the Display form to limit the columns being displayed to just display the Products' code, name, and price. Click the "Update" button next to the box of field names to update.
- Let's say you want to review all the products containing the word "Jupiter" in the name, code, or short description. Type "Jupiter" into the Filter form, and click the "Filter" button. You should get about 30 results matching the filter.
- To make things easier, let's update the number of items displayed per page to fit everything on the first page. If you had 30 matches for the filter, change the Per Page form to "30", and click the "Update" button next to it. All the matching products should now appear on one page.
- Now, click the "On" button in the Edit Mode form to make everything on the screen editable.
At this point, the control screen should look like this:
As you can see, it's very easy to scan through the list of products and review their prices, changing them when necessary. If you need to, use the sorting arrows next to the column names to organize the products further.
- When you've finished updating the prices, simply hit the big "Update/Delete" button to have all your changes take effect.
You can use this same technique in the Administrator to make many other sorts of updates or to generate ad hoc reports. For example, it can help you:
- Update the statuses of all the recent orders you've received at once.
- Produce an Excel spreadsheet of all the customers in the store, along with their emails and mailing addresses.
- Produce various reports on the orders you've received, sorted by date, status, billing location, etc.
- Much more.
