The Business Insights module in version 4.20 of Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 has added a new Explorer section. Instead of the “canned” views available in the Dashboard section, you get a data-grid of the data-view that you have selected. There are 11 views available with data from the AR, Sales Order and RMA modules. The grid view allows you to add, remove, sort or condition each field on the screen. You can export this data to a report, text-file, Excel, HTML, Access or XML format. The lower screen displays whatever “preview” option you have selected, which further detail of the data-line you have selected.

A task menu is also available to allow you to link to tasks related to the view you have selected. For example, displaying the Customer View you can select a preview of “contacts” that will display all of the selected customer’s contacts, with their phone #’s, etc. at the bottom of the screen. The task options displayed for the Customer View relate to customer data and include: Customer Maintenance, AR Invoice Entry, SO Invoice Entry, Cash Receipts, etc. If you select Customer Maintenance, then the customer you have selected in the data-grid is called up in Customer Maintenance for you to view or modify the information.

The Explorer allows you to select groups of related data and then do tasks for each member of the group. For example: Condition the credit-hold column to only select customers on credit hold in the Customer View. Then access each customer’s record and perform a task like adding a pop-up memo for Sales Order order and invoice entry. Then you can click on the next customer in the grid of credit-hold customers and add a pop-up memo to their account.