Part 7: Resources & Items (5:12)
https://vimeo.com/671265095
Transcript
Let’s look at the the Resources screen. The Resources screen is one of our setup screens and acts similarly to the contacts screen. But instead of housing people, organizations and locations, it houses Items. Items are any physical objects that you want to track and utilize in your projects. They can include things that you own, as well as things that you frequently rent, purchase, or borrow. Some examples of Items might be: Ladders, Projectors, Lighting and Sound Equipment, Tables and Chairs, Props or Costumes. The Items are not Project specific, but act more like a cache of available objects you can use in your projects. Once we have some items setup we will be able to add them to our projects through the Requirements screen.
SO, let’s make our first Item. We’ll click on the New Item button and select Item. The only requirement for an Item is that you give it a name. I’m going to make an item for my venues 10’ Ladders. My department is Scenic, I can add a photo of my ladder if I want, or any notes ( like…it’s orange).
Next we need to indicate how many ladders we have and where they live or come from. We are going to do this in the section called Sources. A Source is a Person, Organization or Location from our contacts that the item can come from. So, say we have 2 ladders. One lives on the Main Stage, and the other lives in the Production Office. So, let’s select Main Stage as our first source, and update the quantity from infinity to 1. Now let’s add the second ladder by adding a new source. This one lives in the Production Office, and we also have 1. Now you can see we have a total inventory of 2 ladders. Now, if I needed more than those 2 ladders, I might rent them from a local rental shop. So let’s add another source, and create the organization Rental shop. Now, I don’t keep track of how many ladders they have in their inventory, so I’m just going to leave the inventory on the infinity symbol. You’ll see that our total inventory is still only 2. I also know that they generally charge me 20$ a day, so I can add that in. The default cost gives starting place for building out some initial costing once I start adding Items to my Projects and can be updated later.
So, i’m going to create a few more items.
Lets add our Projectors (I have 2 and the source is my Main Stage)
So, whenever I spec a Projector, I usually also need the lens to go with it. So I’m going to create the Projector Lens Item as well.
Now, when I’m ready to use a projector on a project I usually need a number of items such as the lens, a power cable, a stand and a screen that I also need. I don’t necessarily want to have to remember all of those items individually, so I am going to create something called a Collection for my Projector. A Collection is a group of items that I want to save so I can more easily add them together into my project. This is great for groups of items I use together regularly such a everything I need for the tech table setup, materials to build a scenic item like a flat or all of the elements I include in a specific lighting package.
So, let’s select New Item and create a new Collection. I’m going to call this Projector Package and I’m going to add the items Projector and Projector Lens and select the source for each.
I also want to include a Projector Power Cable in this collection so I can create one on the fly by using the Create a new item quick create. (create new item) For this collection I’m going to add 1 of each of these items because if I need 2 Projectors for my project I can always just add 2 collections.
So, now i have my first collection. You can see that we’re now in the collections tab at the top where you can see all of your collections.
The third tab, called Usage we’ll go over in the next video, but this is where we can track how our Items are being used once we start adding them to our projects.
You can also import Items into the items screen by going to the More menu and selecting import option. We have a template you can use to ensure a smooth import available on our support site. You can also export your items to a csv from this menu as well.
Now that we have some initial items created let’s start adding them to our Projects.
