Original publication date: July, 2005

Let Softshare's Merlins Work Their Magic

Merlins are Softshare's versions of Wizard screens. All of Softshare's products, including WinCATS and WebCATS, feature Merlins. The purpose of a Merlin is to walk you through a process, step by step.

Softshare 'CATS features three Merlins:

Client Merlin
The Client Merlin walks you through the creation of a brand new client record, along with its associated company and contact records.
Session Merlin
The Session Merlin walks you through the creation of multiple client activity records for a single client. For example, if you counsel a client in regards to a milestone that has occurred, you can use this feature to create both a counseling session record and a milestone record.
Inquiry Merlin
Available in WebCATS only, the Inquiry Merlin walks you through the creation of a brand new inquiry record, along with its associated contact record.

Merlins are quick, convenient methods for simultaneously creating multiple new records. They incorporate logic that reduces your data entry work. For example, when using the Client Merlin, the date you enter (or don't enter) into the Date Company Established field auto-determines the value of the Company Status field. When using the Sessions Merlin, you only have to provide the client, date, funding source, and counselor information once and it is automatically applied to all the activity records you are creating.

It's important to note, however, that not all record fields are accounted for in the Merlins. Merlins are designed to be shortcuts and only the most commonly used fields are present. The fields that are not present will default to the settings in your global configurations in the resulting record. For example, when creating a counseling session record from the Session Merlin, the Language Used field is not available in the Merlin and instead, Softshare 'CATS will automatically complete this field for you in the resulting counseling session record based on the default value—most likely English—that is specified in the global configuration settings.

If you are using the Merlin to create records that fall outside the norm, you may want to consider opening the resulting records to make sure that the defaults are accurate for those particular records and to add any additional details that you may have.