Re: End user guide

Ryan
Here I address what may be some misconceptions in this thread, or bad
memories (me or other people). You also wrote some things, which could be
contributing to misleading you, so I summarize some corrections here.

Terminology & Tools
Some security issues.
More people networking alternatives
More navigation tips

Saying 405 CD is an insult. It is only a teenager.
Don't worry, we all have bias, sometimes say ugly things.

BPCS is an ERP. It has thousands of programs.

AS/400 is an IBM hardware server platform that BPCS runs on.
Users are typically on PCs which have some kind of interface to "talk" to
BPCS on 400. The interface standard is called 5250. There's one which
comes from IBM, and there are some 3rd party alternatives. They users are
probably on some version of Microsoft Windows, like XP or 8.
There may also be 3rd party add-ons.
Each of these things has a version #, all of them use a similar standard, so
it is easy to try to look up what version and get the wrong id.
It is important to know which you are on, because that impacts what you can
do, what manuals you need access to.

IBM manuals for AS/400 are generally available for free to download from
internet, but AS/400 was taken off the market over a decade ago. We have
one of the last ones every made. Thus, some manuals may no longer be
accessible, so people have to get a manual for the box which replaced the
AS/400 which was I Series which has since been replaced by System i. The
Operating System advanced over the new boxes, with a lot in common with what
existed 20 years ago.

There is no such thing as a BPCS manual which can be downloaded free from
the Internet. There is an IBM Redbook on BPCS which can be downloaded for
free, but that is NOT a BPCS user manual. It is kind of an explanation of
the AS/400 world, which is relevant to BPCS, for computer administrators who
come to the AS/400 from other computing worlds.

There are however, BPCS manuals which can be purchased, typically costing
$250 to $350 each. A well stocked company library ought to have a dozen
different ones, at least. Some companies have people who throw away manuals
when THEY do not need them any more. I have even had auditors do this, then
the next year audit have the gall to ask for the manuals that THEY threw
away.

There are also AS/400 and BPCS classes.
If you are an end user, not going to do any programming support, then you do
not need to go to the AS/400 classes.
These classes are typically going to some out-of-town place for a week or
two, with the costs of transportation and motel, in addition to the class.
Smart companies, of which there are damn few, arrange to have a BPCS
professor come to the company, teach class on company facilities, or nearby
meeting room at hotel or restaurant, and have 20-30 employees in the class.
The cost is microscopic compared to sending employees to BPCS University,
because only the instructor needs the transportation and hotel costs.

SSA = name of company which created BPCS. They went bankrupt, and BPCS got
taken over by Infor.

If BPCS was not installed properly at the company, or was later messed up,
all is not lost. BPCS originally came with all the ingredients necessary to
install all the stuff needed, such as BPCSDOC. It is possible that stuff
has not been thrown out, can be found.

Then there is tech support. Many companies have a contract with a tech
support place, which might be Infor, UPI, or some other place. These tech
support places can help reconstruct what was accidentally messed up.
Typically there are several tech support contracts: one for AS/400 hardware;
one for BPCS software, several for all the PC and telecom paraphernalia.

If BPCS was installed properly at the company, which is a big if, and not
messed up like at Colin's company where critical systems got deleted but not
fixed, then you should have on-line:

BPCSDOC which is a poor man's documentation, for companies which are too
cheap to get real documentation. If you were hired as a programmer, and if
you can find BPCSDOC, the first thing there you need to study is SSALOG00
which is the logic manual for BPCS. Expect to spend several weeks studying
it, before it makes much sense. If you have no experience in the IBM
midrange world, then you need to learn IBM AS/400 stuff as a pre-requisite
to studying BPCSDOC.

The Help function with AS/400 and BPCS is extensive, accessed via F1-key,
and by wild card commands, relevant only to computer staff. End users
should not need into most of that stuff.

In one of your communications, it sounded like HELP was not working for you.
It may be that you had pressed the HELP key on some keyboard.
This key is NOT used by BPCS nor AS/400, unless someone has done some
modification to explicitly support it.

Not all BPCS programs and menus have F1 support.
It could be that you lucked onto one of those.

Ask IT staff of your company if F1-help has been disabled, if they know.
When the AS/400 operating system was installed, it came with many optional
features. One of the optional features was a lot of HELP support, which
some companies decide not to install, because of the amount of disk space it
eats.
Similarly when BPCS was installed, it came with many optional features,
including HELP support. For whatever reason, some companies decide not to
install that.

In my opinion, that is a false economy, big time.
But some companies decide to save money on resources.

A more likely explanation is that HELP does exist at your company, but it is
disabled for SOME users. In the Security setup, there's a way to turn it on
or off, so some users have access and some do not. Ask your IT staff for
clarification.

They should know if the HELP is available, and what internal company
permission is needed to grant you access.

Someone questioned version 5 of BPCS.
Before Y2K there were in fact versions out 3. 4. 5. 6.
When SSA fixed Y2K, they came out with two versions allegedly Y2K-compliant,
but really needed hundreds of patches to get there.
405 CD was one
There was also a 6. something.
Everyone on other versions had 3 choices:
1. Go back to 4.0.5.CD which at the time was the most stable
2. Advance to 6. whatever
3. Go with some 3rd party solution.

Colin is on 3.1 so his company must have gone with choice 3.

DOC menu is only accessible by someone who has SYS security access.
SYS is system stuff, which should only be accessible by computer technician
dept ... programmers, security, administration, backup, etc.
On our system I have made selected SYS options available to most users, so
they can use BPCS pop-up menu options available from other places.

We will need to show you how to get to the different kinds of menus:
BPCS Vanilla menus
BPCS User menus
BPCS Pop up menus
BPCS other
AS/400 menus and tools

You may want to get a copy of an Excel I started years ago, and add to
occasionally. It is called GL REVERSE ENGINEERING
The premise is that we have a new manager in accounting, or maybe an
auditor. They see something in the General Ledger and ask "Where the heck
did this come from?" They may want an answer super-fast. Well my GL
Reverse Engineering Excel walks a 405 CD user, who may not be a BPCS/400
professional, thru what all the codes mean, and where everything comes from.

It is like a BPCS Red Book navigation synopsis guide for dummies.
In IBM parlance, there are Red Books and White Books.
White Books are manuals drafted by the people who developed some product.
It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the product, other
than how to use it effectively.
The documentation from SSA/Infor is like that.
Red Books are manuals written by people in the real world, for people in the
real world. The manuals from UPI and their competitors are like that.

Sometimes I forget where I put it. I just found it in:
WORK / KE Top / Doc KE / BPCS Rules Analysis
KE = Kauffman Engineering, location of my day job

Here is copy-paste from one of the sheets of that Excel ... I do not expect
the stuff to line up as nice in this e-mail. Hopefully it lines up good
enough, to give you some BPCS navigation hints. This is our reality. Your
company's may be a bit different.
Also, the stuff I put in here was originally aimed at accounting novices, so
there is some computer system support stuff absent.

BPCS applications See below ... significance of #
system following 3 letter prefix
what the 3 letter prefixes signify


Accounts Payable ACP Y
Accounts Receivable ACR Y
Advanced Process Industries API N

BPCS Business Modeling BBM N
Billing & Sales Analysis BIL Y SAL

BPCS Information Retrieval BIR N

Mfg Data Management BOM Y
Capacity Planning CAP Y
Cash Management CSH N
Cost Accounting CST Y
Currency Translation CTR N
CIMPath CIM Test
Dist Resources Planning DRP Disputed

Financial Assistant FIN N
Forecasting FOR N
Formulation Assistant FRM N
Fixed Assets FXA N
General Ledger GLD Y
Inventory INV Y
JIT Repetitive JIT Y
Laboratory Management LMS N
Multi-Currency MLT N
Master Production Schedule MPS Y

Multi-Facility System MFS N
Material Requirements MRP Y
Order Processing ORD Y
Payroll PAY N
Planners Assistant PLN N
Performance Measurement PRF N
Promotions & Deals PRO test
Purchasing PUR Y
Quality Management QMS N
Shop Floor Control SFC Y
System functions SYS Free
Warehouse Management WHM N

Each program that came with BPCS

is named using prefix from above

followed by a 3 digit number

Here is the significance of that

number system:

001-099 File builds, conversion and interface programs;

temporary or one-time programs

100-199 Master file maintenance and lists

200-299 Detail and compound listings and reports

300-399 Inquiries and bar graphs

400-499 Special reports and processing

500-699 Transaction posting, updates, and special forms rep

and special forms reports
700-799 Special transactions
800-899 File reorganizations and parameter generation

900-999 Period and file closes

If people desire me to send them copies of this, BPCS-L does not need a
bunch of ME TOO posts. Contact me at macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxx off-line to
request a copy.
Continue to post Q+A to BPCS-L since the list is much more knowledgeable
than individual members like myself.

Al Mac (WOW) = Alister William Macintyre
via WOW WAY.com ISP
2012 April I had a serious PC melt down, from which I am still recovering

-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bpcs-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Fellingham, Ryan
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2012 3:51 AM
To: bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [BPCS-L] End user guide

Hi all

I am trying to get my hands on and end user guide to the basics of BPCS
version 5.9 for Windows (Iseries)

Appreciate any help
Thanks

Ryan