Give a part its pictures and the words a client reads

A part should show what it is and say it in words a client can read. On a part’s page in the Catalog you keep its pictures in order, write the name and description a proposal prints, and see the details its vendors and its maker state. The first picture follows the part everywhere: the catalog, every picker, a vendor’s list and the proposal line.

Before you start

Everyone who can see the catalog sees pictures and details. Changing pictures, answering a waiting picture and writing client text need the right to edit the catalog.
The maker, model and part number stay internal. They never print on a proposal.

Pictures

Open the part from Catalog, All parts. Under Pictures, each picture says where it came from:

Your photo: one a person uploaded, with who added it and when. A picture chosen from the media library or taken on the shoot line says so instead.
A vendor’s list or store: the picture that came with the part’s row on a price list.
A maker’s site: a picture read from the maker’s own page for this exact part number, with the day it was read and the number the page names. Where a maker’s store names its pages by product rather than by number, Florio finds the page through the store’s own list of products, by the part’s exact number.

To change the order, drag a picture. The first one is the picture lists, pickers and proposals show. Add one with Choose from library or Upload: a picture you add goes before any picture Florio found, and a picture you add is never replaced by one Florio finds. Press Save to keep a new order or a removed picture.

A picture waiting for a look

Sometimes a maker’s page shows the product family, or the same part in another finish, rather than this exact part. Florio never puts that picture on the part by itself. It waits on the part’s page with a dashed edge, a Family picture or Another finish label, and the reason in words.

Use it makes it one of the part’s pictures, after the ones already there. From then on it can reach a proposal.
Not this part removes it, and Florio does not offer that picture for the part again.

While it waits, the picture still helps your team recognise the part: it shows in the catalog and the pickers with a small dot and its label. It never reaches a client’s proposal until somebody presses Use it.

Parts that expect no picture

Labor, services, licences and fees have no picture to find. A part expects none when it is taxed as labor, or when its category is one your company lists for this (ask Florio support to change the list). Such a part never waits for a picture and is never listed as missing one.

If your company’s branding has a square logomark, that mark stands in wherever a picture would show: the catalog, the pickers, a vendor’s list and the proposal line. On the part’s page the Pictures section says No picture expected. A picture you add to the part replaces the mark. On a proposal the mark sits in the line’s picture spot, drawn whole on a plain tile; remove it from the line like any picture if you prefer the line without one.

What the client reads

Under What the Client Reads, the Client name and Client description are what a proposal prints for this part. Click either to edit it and press Save: your words are kept as written, and the label beside the field shows who edited it. Leave a field blank and the proposal prints the part’s own name or description, as it always has.

The maker’s own words, where Florio has them, sit beside the fields for reference. They are written for dealers and are never printed on a client document.

A line already on a proposal keeps the words and pictures it had when it was picked. Pick the part again to take the new ones.

Drafted by Florio

Where your company has it switched on, Florio drafts the client name and description of each part from your vendor’s price list, once the maker’s page for it has been read: what the part is, in plain words, with its size, finish and pack where the sources state them, and one or two sentences in your company’s own voice. A draft never names the maker, a model or a part number, and never adds an offer, a price or praise.

Florio checks every figure in a draft against what it was drawn from. A draft whose figures are all there goes on by itself, labelled Drafted by Florio, and is listed under Added by Florio. A draft with a figure its sources do not state waits under the fields, the figure marked and the reason in words. So does a draft whose name calls the part a kind of thing its sources never call it (a bracket, a mount, a kit, a module, an enclosure and the like). Use it puts it on the part, and Write my own puts its words in the fields as yours, to change in place.

A part whose sources say nothing beyond its own number (a list row that is only the number, and no maker’s page) is not drafted: there is nothing to draft from. The check reads a list’s notation as the list means it: 1x2 is one input to two outputs, and an inch mark written as a web code or a curly quote is inches.

Your words always win: Florio never replaces a field a person wrote. Its draft is kept, so Use Florio’s draft beside a field you wrote brings it back word for word.

Details

Details lists what the part’s sources state: the spec sheet, dimensions, weight, UPC, and the maker’s page and category. They are read-only, because they follow the vendor’s list and the maker’s page.

Specifications

Where the maker’s page carries a specification table (a store’s product page usually does), the read keeps all of it, and Specifications shows it under Details: every row in the maker’s own sections and words, a yes as a check, a note under its value. A long table opens on its first two sections; Show all N rows opens the rest and Show fewer folds it back. Like Details it is read-only, follows the source on the next read, and never prints on a client document. A part whose source keeps no table has no Specifications.

Pictures in lists and pickers

In Catalog, All parts, every part leads with its picture. Type two characters or more in the search and a second table lists the matching rows that are on a vendor’s price list and not in your catalog yet, each with its picture, the vendor and the list’s date. Add to catalog makes the part.
In every picker (the proposal builder’s + From catalog, a change order, a service call’s parts): each row carries a small picture, so two parts are easy to tell apart.
On a vendor’s price list, each row leads with its picture.

The words load first and the pictures follow, so a slow connection still shows every row at once.

Pictures and text

In Catalog, Pictures and text gathers what Florio found and drafted:

Waiting for a look: family and other-finish pictures, and drafts held back for a figure or a word, each with Use it. Choose several (click a card) and press Use selected, or Select all.
Added by Florio: what went on a part by itself: pictures from a maker’s page, and client names and descriptions. Remove takes it off the part; a picture you remove does not come back.
Nothing found: parts with no picture after a read, each with the reason; Read again reads it on the next night.

How Florio reads a maker’s page

For a vendor’s price list, Florio can read each maker’s public page for every row on the list, ahead of time, so a part has its picture, the maker’s words and its details before anybody picks it. It reads overnight only, slowly (one page every few seconds), as a named reader that never signs in to anything. Pictures are copied into your company’s own storage; nothing links back to the maker’s site.

What a page gives goes where you would expect:

A page that names the row’s exact number gives the picture, the maker’s words and the details. On a part, the picture goes after every picture a person added.
A page that shows the product family or another finish gives one picture that waits for a look (see A picture waiting for a look).
A page that names a different product gives nothing.
Labor, services, licences and fees are never read.

Nothing a person wrote or chose is ever changed by a read: not a picture, not the order, not the client name or description. A picture you remove from a part does not come back.

A maker’s own store read as its price list (a store feed) keeps the same things from the pages it reads each week: each product’s pictures, the maker’s words, its measurements and its documents, by the same rules, while reading is on for your company. The cost it reads is what the store charges, its surcharges included, and a pack the store sells (a 5-pack, say) is priced per pack.

Reading is off for every company until Florio support switches it on for yours, and then each list has its own switch.

The Pictures and Details card

Open a vendor’s price list from Catalog, Price lists. The Pictures and Details card says:

Read from: where the list’s pictures come from (the maker’s public site, or the maker’s own store, by part number), or that no reader covers its makers yet.
Reads, for a list read for its parts only: the parts on the list, and a row the night after it becomes a part. The count is then in parts.
Makers on this list and the Pace.
Reading: whether reading is on for this list. Turn on switches it on; Pause stops tonight’s read and keeps everything found so far; Turn on again picks up where it stopped.
How many rows have been read, and what was found: pictures, pictures waiting for a look, rows with nothing found, and rows with details.

Turning reading on, pausing it and trying again need the right to bring in price lists.

Once reading is on, a row that has not been read yet says Not read yet. The first night reads the whole list (or, read for its parts only, its parts); after that, a newer list from the same vendor costs only its new rows. A row that is already a part in your catalog is read first.

If the maker’s site refuses the reader, the list rests until the next night. If it refuses three nights running, the card says Stopped. Nothing is lost: Try again reads on from where it stopped, the next night, and counts the nights afresh. A picture that does not load (a missing file) is skipped: the row is still read, with the pictures that did.

When a maker’s page gave a part nothing

On the part’s page, under Pictures, a part with no picture says why: the maker’s site has no page for its number, or the page found shows another product. Read again asks Florio to read it again, first thing the next night, for example after the maker has published the page. Until then you can always add a picture by hand with Choose from library or Upload.

Good to know

A part with no picture shows an empty frame.
A picture you remove is gone from the part; a picture from a vendor’s list can come back with the next list.