Getting Started with AGR
Logging In
The start screen is shown below. The user logs in with their email address or username and password.
When the AGR system opens, a navigation bar can be seen at the top of the screen.
Navigation Bar
This is the top bar that stretches the length of the screen. It is the directory for the AGR system. The navigation bar changes color based on what module you are using:
- Inventory module - Blue navigation bar
- Planning module - Green navigation bar
- Assortment module - Orange navigation bar
You can switch between the modules by clicking on the Inventory, Planning, or Assortment tabs and choosing from the drop-down menu. You will only see those modules that you have access to within the dropdown. If you only have the Inventory module, you will not able to choose the Planning or Assortment modules from the dropdown.
Clicking on the AGR logo will take you back to the main page of the AGR system and your dashboard.
Each module has different options within the navigation bar and each company’s individual setup. The following tools are visible within the navigation bar, no matter what module you are utilizing:
Notifications
You can access the notifications in the Navigation Bar, the button marked with the three horizontal lines. When clicked, the user will see the Execution List of items that are currently being created or were recently created, like a plan, an order, etc. The items in the Execution List can be clicked, and the user will then be taken to that plan, order, report, etc.
When a new order or plan is finished being created, a red number will show above the Notification button to let the user know that the task is complete.
Gearwheel
The gearwheel tells you information about the current AGR version and offers you a lot of different options within the system. All advanced user settings within the system can be found in the gearwheel. For non-Admin users, the gearwheel will still appear but will only have limited access to various settings.
1. Custom Actions
When choosing the custom actions options from the gearwheel, a new window will appear with a drop-down list of different unique actions that a user can make within the system. These actions will have been installed specifically for each company upon implementation and will differ from company to company. Below is an example of different possible Custom Actions that can be implemented within the AGR system.
2. Settings
The settings option within the gearwheel dropdown shows you all the basic options that you can control within the AGR system.
a. Orders
- Order Logic
- Undelivered Days: How many days back in time should be used when taking into account orders which have been placed but haven’t arrived.
- Exclude Lost Sale: If there is a product demand during a stock out situation, this option deteremines if the demand is considered lost or not. If enabled, all estimated sales during a stock out period according to the forecast will be considered lost.
- Order Methodology
- Standard: This default methodology means that active demand in the system will be based on the statistical forecast, Baseline Plan and Promotion Plan.
- Min/Max: If stock < min then purchase to max. Use this methodology when calculating order quantity.
- Use min/max if exists: This option will use Standard if there is no Min/Max inputted.
- Overwrite qty. on recalculate: If this is selected, when you recalculate an order, it will overwrite all the lines, not just the ones you selected. If you do not select this, then it will not overwrite the lines that are not selected, if perhaps, you have already taken the time to update the other lines just how you want them to be.
- Include undelivered in order calculation: If this is turned on, all undelivered items in the future will be included in order calculations (even though they are outside the order period)
- Split orders for multiple delivery dates: Splits orders where the different products ordered have more than one delivery date.
- Order Grid
- To increase performance within the system, here you can choose how many lines you will see within the order grid. It is suggested to not show more than 5000 for performance reasons.
- When enabled, the cells within the Orders grid will be counted.
b. Forecasts
Here you can adjust the forecast to best suit your company.
- General
- Forecast Type: Monthly or Weekly
- Confidence Factor: The default confidence factor given to an item if it does not have one assigned. This can be changed to suit the customer’s need.
- Number of Days: This is the number of days calculated within the forecast.
- Number of Months: This is the number of months calculated within the forecast.
- Number of no sale months to disable forecast: Simulator property – how many months to omit from the sales history in the simulator.
- Forecast outlier detection: The forecast module has outlier detection. If set to 0, no outlier detection is used. If set to 1, outliers are detected. If set to 2, outliers are detected and corrected. The results from the outlier detection are stored in the table Forecast Outliers.
- Sale on Saturdays: Non-zero forecast on Saturdays. If your store is open on Saturday, then you should check this box. It allows for the demand to incorporate Saturday sales.
- Sale on Sundays: Non-zero forecast on Sundays. If your store is open on Sunday, then you should check this box. It allows for the demand to incorporate Sunday sales.
- Week trend in monthly forecast: If the user wants the forecasts to find trends between weeks when forecasting with monthly data (weekly data required).
- Create forecast for Close SKU: Forecast is created for all items, both open and closed. If you do not need to create a forecast for closed SKUs, it is best to not have this checked, as it will enable your forecast to be calculated faster.
- Keep invalid forecasts: If a forecast is invalidated, it is kept in the database.
- Safety stock SQRT bridging: The day distribution of the safety stock can be bridged linearly or by a sqrt function, if set to true the sqrt function is used. Only applicable in the first month.
- Day Distribution
Day distribution calculates a weighted average of each weekday sale within a subset of the whole sales history. The averages are then used to calculate the forecast value of each day within a week. The data validation can also be done on the data used in the calculations. If the data is too sparse, the date distribution can be reverted to a flat distribution based on the value of the parameters described below.
- Day Distribution: Forecast calculated on a daily level
- Number of weeks used: The number of weeks used within the weighted average, starting with the most recent weeks
- Sale days for valid week: The minimum amount of sale days within a week for it to be considered in the calculations. If the value is 0, this setting is not used.
- Number of valid weeks for day distribution: The minimum number of valid weeks within the subset for it to be considered in the calculations. If the number of valid weeks is less than the given value, then a flat day distribution will be used instead. If the value is 0, this setting is not used.
- Demand Days Here is a list of all the holidays that the system can consider. If you want the system to recognize these holidays (i.e. do not create a forecast for them), you must check the box next to the holiday name.
3. Scheduler
The scheduler within AGR encapsulates scheduled orders and scheduled counting all in the same place.
The scheduler features an updated calendar that is interactive and flexes a new inferface to schedule order and counting, as well as serving as an overview of upcoming dates. The new and improved scheduling interface is far more flexible than before, including options to add a specific period, the exact time, and intervals. Furthermore, if a schedule is still not perfect, dates may easily be added or removed by simply toggling them in the calendar - without having to alter the schedule itself.
a. Scheduled Orders
Scheduled orders are created manually at defined intervals by the user, e.g. on Mondays, every other Monday, once a month, first day of the month or at specific dates. Once created, the order run automatically. It is a good practice to have as much scheduled as possible, as it creates structure and automates the purchasing calendar. When order has been scheduled it is ready on selected date and the purchaser only has to review the order.
It can be very beneficial to schedule big orders since it can take long time for the system to create such orders. The system can for example use the night, or other times when system load is low, to create the order. This is also good to use for orders that are to be done only few times per year, so they will not be forgotten, as well as for orders that need to be done frequently to save time.
Creating and Viewing Scheduled Orders
Scheduled orders can be found in the Scheduler option under the Settings Gearwheel.
To create a new scheduled order, select the + button on the right side of the toolbar. The following window will open:
- Name: Choose name for the scheduled order.
- Description: Describe what this scheduled order is for.
- Report: This is a drop-down window with all reports. Select report that is to be used for this scheduled order.
- Schedule: This is a drop-down window with three options to choose from; Weekly, Monthly and specific schedules already created. If the user would like a schedule that is not the default monthly or weekly schedule, a customized schedule can be created under Gearwheel » Schedules, see General: 1.1 Getting Started with AGR.
- Order frequency from:
- Schedule – Order frequency will be calculated based on days between order dates in the selected schedule (recommended setting)
- Item – Order frequency from Item Card is used. If order frequency field is not filled in, system will automatically use schedule.
- Settings:
- Auto confirm order – This automatically confirms orders as soon as their created and don’t need to be reviewed by a user.
- Split orders on delivery date – This splits up orders where the products within the order have different delivery dates. The default monthly schedule runs the first Monday of every month, and the default weekly schedule runs every Monday.
Editing Scheduled Orders
To edit each of the schedules, the pencil buttons on the right side of the toolbar can be selected, opening a pop-up window with all the scheduled order details, the same pop up window that appeared when you created a new scheduled order.
For more information about creating a schedule, see General: 1.1 Getting Started with AGR.
b. Counting
In order to make your inventory process quick and simple, we at AGR Dynamics have created a counting workspace to help automate the process and take out all the manual work. Since some businesses need to take inventory often and at different intervals depending on the type of item, this counting module helps you specify what inventory take you need and schedule it according to the item. Examples would be “Count cereals every other Monday” or “Count personal care products every first Monday of the month”.
Using the AGR Dynamics flexible Manage By Exception (MBE) reporting tool, you can schedule over 100 different reports to take inventories at different times. This is a non-standard workspace, and can be added to your AGR Inventory set-up if you so choose. Contact your AGR consultant for more information.
The counting workspace can found under the Scheduler option in the setting gearwheel.
In order to use the counting workspace, you need to first have created a report of the items that you would like to take inventory of, as well as a created schedule for when you want the inventory taken.
Having the counting data in AGR allows our flexible MBE tool to highlight certain patterns that can be present, like which items or item groups and which locations or stores have the biggest deviations.
Within the Counting tab, you must click the + button on the right side of the screen to create a new Scheduled Counting.
You will start by giving this counting a name (for example: End of Year, a description: Count everything once a year, and then choose the previously created Report and Schedule from the AGR system.
Once you have created your Counting, it will appear as a line within the workspace.
Running the Counting Tool
Below you can see a list of multiple Scheduled Counting that have been created within the AGR system.
Once you have created your Scheduled Counting, now your NAV system takes over. Next, go into your NAV system and type in the search bar: Phys. Inventory Journal. Then click on the ACTIONS tab and you will then see a button called AGR Scheduled Counting.
You can either make this automated, so that the counting runs on the scheduled date shown within the AGR system, or you can run it manually yourself on the scheduled day.
On the scheduled day you will receive the following inventory report within your NAV system.
After you have clicked on the AGR Scheduled Counting button within your NAV system, the date for the next scheduled counting will update to the next scheduled counting day as per your schedule within the AGR system.
Now, you have a complete list of the inventory for this specific report with minimal manual work and can now focus on more important tasks in your business operations.
Technical Information
The following image shows how the Counting module is integrated with the AGR API and the NAV ERP system.
The blue boxes are standard NAV and AGR components, and the yellow boxes are components from AGR Dynamics that are customized per customer with a specific code. For example, the standard NAV code unit for the counting module is for NAV 2016, but can be changed to match the version of NAV that the AGR customer has. These modifications to the code unit to match the version of NAV are done by the NAV partner and not by AGR Dynamics.
Please note: you need to use your AGR username and password when logging into the AGR API.
This chapter details the integration for the Microsoft NAV ERP system, but can be integrated for other ERP systems as well.
4. Schedules
To create a scheduled order within the system, you must create schedules for the system to use. This is created here by clicking on the + on the right side of the screen, after selecting Schedules in the Gearwheel drop down menu. The user can choose how to set up this customized schedule with the following:
- Specific dates: for orders that are to be created on specific dates the user must select the dates. When the Specific Dates field is pressed, a calendar opens and the user can select appropriate date and then press Add button. More than one date can be chosen.
- Weekly: for weekly orders, the user must select the week day that an order should be created on. More than one day can be chosen.
- Monthly: for monthly orders, the user must select on which day of the month the order is to be created (1st of the month, 3rd of the month, etc.). This is done by writing the days’ number in the Day of month field.
To learn more about Scheduled Orders, see General: 1.1 Getting Started with AGR.
5. User Management
The user option allows you to see all the users that are currently in the AGR system, as well as create new users. Below is all the information that you can see about each individual user:
To create a new user, click on the + button on the right side of the tool bar. The following window will open, and you will need to fill in the necessary information:
It is here that you can make a user an admin user, as well as change their email and password. Each user is assigned a role and that role will determine what parts of the AGR system they can see. For example, perhaps you have a purchaser that needs to be able to view the Dashboard, but you don’t want them to be able to modify the dashboard in any way. Below you can see the Role window. To adjust a user’s access, just tick the box next to the feature.
In this view, you can also edit and/or delete current users by selecting the pencil button.
6. Workspaces
For information on workspaces, General: 1.3 Workspaces
7. Clear Browser Data
AGR is a browser-based system, which utilizes the browser to cache certain data and requests. There are instances where the user would like to clear the cached queries from the planner and start fresh. Those instances could include: an application update has been made or the user settings stored have in some way been corrupted.
The last option under the gearwheel settings allows you to clear your browser data. When you click on that option within the dropdown, you will see the following:
When this window opens, you will see two options:
- Clear Local Storage: Settings such as grid states, sidebar widths, and visibility and active plan view are stored in local storage. These settings are unique to your browser and will not affect others.
- Clear IndexedDB: Some data loaded from the database is stored in your browsers IndexedDB to increase performance. Clearing the IndexedDB is harmless.
Information
Under the ‘i’ button on the blue navigation, the user can see three different options:
- About AGR
- User Manual
- Service Desk
About AGR will show you all the information that you might need to know about your current version of the AGR system. An example of this window can be seen below:
By clicking on the User Manual option, you will be automatically taken to the User Manual for your specific version of AGR. Here you can search for anything that you’d like to know.
The service desk option will take you straight to the AGR Dynamics Service Desk, making it easy to send in a ticket and reach one of our consultants.
User Name
The picture below shows your user name, profile, and allows you to log out of the sytem. Your profile will show you different options specific to your user name.
1. My Profile
This is open for all users to see. Here, a user can change their language and password. They cannot, however, change their username and email. This can only be done in the User Management view within the Admin Settings (under the gearwheel).
Tool Bar
The grey bar located directly below the Navigation Bar is called the Tool Bar. This bar will keep track of where you are within the AGR system, as well as showing many options for the different Reports, Plans, and Orders tabs on the right side. As you can see in the image below, the Tool Bar changes depending on which part of the system you are viewing.
