Tracker

A tracker is one screen for going through a section's records together. Think of the Friday meeting: everyone round a screen, running down the open jobs, saying what's happening and who's doing it. Each record is a row, the fields you care about are edited right there in the row, and the week's plan from the calendar sits underneath.

It is a module. The ORCA team switches it on for your account, and then an admin sets it up for each section that needs one. A section with no tracker set up has no Tracker button.

Setting one up

You need Settings access. Open the tracker for a section by going to its address, /tracker/ followed by the section's address name. With nothing set up yet, ORCA takes you straight to the setup page, headed with the section's name and tracker. Later you can get there from the Set up button on the tracker.

Nothing on this page changes a record. It only chooses what the tracker shows.

• Which records. Either All of them, or Those whose a picklist field is... and then tick the options you want. For a jobs section that might be every stage from Enquiry to Planned.
• Date to work to. A date field. Rows are sorted by it, soonest first, and turn red once it has passed. Rows with no date go to the bottom.
• Changed in the row. The fields people edit in the tracker. You must pick at least one. Text, long text, date, number, currency, person and picklist fields can be edited this way (a field that allows several values can't).
• Shown alongside. Fields shown for reference, read only. Leave them all clear and ORCA shows the stage and the first three fields from the section's list.
• Filter by person. A person field. The tracker then gets an Everyone dropdown listing the people named in it.
• When a row is changed, set. A date field that is set to today whenever someone edits a row. This is your Last Updated stamp.

Click Save tracker. Remove the tracker takes it off the section again and, as it says, doesn't touch any records.

Once it is set up, a Tracker button appears on the section's list.

Using it

The page is headed with the section's name and the number of records, and says which date they are sorted by. The first column is the record's main field, and clicking it opens the record.

• Edit in the row. Click a highlighted cell, type or pick, and it saves when you click away or press Enter. Press Escape to throw the change away. In a long text cell, Ctrl or Cmd with Enter saves. An empty cell says Add. If a value isn't allowed (text in a number cell, say), the cell tells you and doesn't save.
• It's a proper edit. A change in the row goes through the same save as the record's own form, so field history, automations and webhooks all see it.
• Last updated. If you chose a stamp date, it moves to today every time any cell in that row is edited. It is the answer to "when did anyone last touch this?"
• Overdue. A row whose date has passed turns pale red and its date goes red.
• Filter by person. Pick someone from the dropdown to see only the rows they're named on. Everyone clears it.
• Frozen rows. A record that has been frozen (a closed job, say) is shown with Frozen at and its stage, and can't be edited here.

You only see the records you'd see in the section anyway, and you need edit access to change them. Without it the cells are plain text.

The week's planner beneath

Under the list sits Week of a date, showing who is on what for that week, taken from the calendar. It opens on next week, because the meeting is planning the week ahead. Use Week before and Week after to move. Planner (when your account has the Planner) and Calendar take you to the full pictures.

This one is for looking. To move someone, use the Planner.

Related

• Planner - move bookings about and book people onto jobs
• Calendar - where the week's plan comes from
• Working with Records - what a row is