Windfall NG Grouping

Product: Windfall

Introduction

Grouping is a way to sort and categorize inventory in Windfall. A group can be made up of any number of Windfall prompts and custom prompts. If any inventory items have the exact same data in all of the grouping fields, they will be sorted together as part of the same group.

When viewing inventory by grouping, items are sorted into different groups based on the criteria you have configured for the customer. For example, if ‘Article Number’ and ‘Description’ were the only fields that you have selected to group by, any items with identical information in those two fields will be grouped together. Any other field can have any value in it, but it will not affect whether it is part of the group. However, if you were also to add ‘comments’ to the group, the values in that field would also have to be identical to be part of the same group. Here is an example.

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In the example above, all of these items share information in the ‘Article Number’ and ‘Description’ fields, and would be grouped together if those two categories were the only ones selected. However, since ‘Comments’ is also part of this group, they would be broken into two groups with items ‘A’ and ‘B’ in one group, and item ‘C’ in another group. Even though the data in the ‘Color’ field varies across these items, it is not part of the grouping criteria and does not affect which group the items belong to.

If ‘Color’ was a part of the grouping criteria, then all of these items would be in distinct groups. Likewise, if ‘Comments’ was not part of the grouping criteria, then all of these items would be in the same group as the data in the ‘Article Number’ and ‘Description’ fields match exactly across all three items.

In Windfall NG, these two groups would look like this:

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From this screen, you cannot see the items themselves, only the group. The ‘Quantity On Hand’ column indicates how many items are in this group. The grid on this page will only display columns that are a part of the grouping criteria.

The first group on the screen contains items A and B. The second group contains item C. If ‘Comments’ was not a part of the grouping criteria, then the comments column would not show on this screen, and all three items would be grouped together since the article and description information all matches. Note that ‘Color’ is not visible as it is not part of the grouping criteria.

To view the inventory items that are a part of a group, double-click the group (alternately, highlight the group and click the ‘view’ button at the top of the screen).

The grouped inventory will load in a new page. This page will behave exactly like the customer inventory page. Inventory can be viewed, edited, and added to work orders.

Here is another example:

There are now four groups. Notice the third of the four groups has no article associated with it. Because Article is part of the grouping criteria, all items that have no data in the article field are grouped together (if all other grouping criteria matches). Put another way, two items that have no data in a grouping field match, just the same as if those items had matching data in that field. Below is the table from before, expanded with new information.

In this table, there are now two more rows. The first two items are grouped together because all of the data in the grouping fields matches exactly. The next two items (item C and Item D) are each in their own group, as the data in those fields does not match exactly. Item E and Item F would be grouped together as they both have no data (which is treated as matching data) in ‘Article Number’ and ‘Comments’, and have matching data in ‘Description”.

This is a simplified example, but these rules will apply no matter how much inventory or how many grouping criteria you have. If you had twenty grouping criteria, no two pieces of inventory would be grouped together unless the data (including blank fields) matched exactly in all twenty of those fields for both items.

This works very much like ‘Roll up Values’ in Windfall classic, but in Windfall 5.10 you are not limited to the default fields, and can include or exclude any Windfall or custom prompts except for the defaults of ‘Article Number’ and ‘Description’.

Set Up Grouping Criteria

To set up grouping for a customer, navigate to that customer in Windfall.

1. Select the ‘Configuration’ tab for the customer

2. Select the ‘Grouping’ tab

3. ‘Article Number’ and ‘Description’ will be selected by default. These are required, and cannot be changed. Select the box next to any other fields you want to add to the group.

4. Click ‘save’. The group will be added to the ‘history’ tab on the right side of the page

5. Any of the group histories can be restored from the dropdown menu on the right.

Grouping Work Orders

There are two ways to create a grouping work order.

Method 1 - Add from Work Order Screen

The first way is to navigate to the customer’s work order screen, and click ‘New’, then hover over ‘Outbound’ or ‘Move’. Both types of work order now have ‘Grouping’ as a work order type. Select ‘Grouping’ to create a new outbound or move grouping work order.

Windfall will navigate you to the newly created work order. From here, you can enter shipping details, as well as any comments you desire in the Details and Shipping tabs. Once you have entered all the information you’d like these tabs, hit the “SAVE” button up at the top to save any information that was added.

To add new line items, hover over the “Add” button and choose “By Grouping”.

This will open up a new dialogue box. You can search for your article numbers and update the quantities you need to fill the work order. Once you have updated the quantities, hit the “Add” button to add the inventory to the work order.

From here, you can do two things:

1. Save the work order - this will hold the requested amounts on the work order, but it will not show up on the device for the warehouse to process. You can continue to add items to this work order and submit when you are ready for the warehouse to pull the inventory.

2. Submit the work order - this will push the work order to the device for the warehouse. Items can still be added to the work order at this point from the work order screen, but remember that the warehouse may already be processing it.

Method 2 - Add from Inventory Grid

The second way to navigate to the inventory screen, view the inventory by grouping, check the box next to the group or groups that you want to add to the work order, and then add to a new or existing work order.

From here, you will follow the same process as above. You can add any details and additional line items from the work order screen and submit the work order for processing. Once the work order is saved, it will create a work order number for you.

Processing a Grouping Work Order on Windfall Mobile Pro

Once the warehouse is ready to process the work order and the work order has been submitted, you will log into Windfall Mobile Pro on the iPad.

First, you will want to choose “Inventory Out” and find the work order you want to process.

Next, the device will prompt for the “Location Out”. This is where the item is physically going and what you type will show in the history of the piece. In my example, I chose “Customer Location” and typed out “Delivered to Customer.”

From here, it will load your work order screen. If you have a handheld scanner attached, it will show the page on the left. If you are using the camera to scan your inventory tags, you will see the page on the right. You can toggle the scanner on and off with the “Use Scanner” button.

To process out your line items, you will need to tap on the grouping you are trying to process. In this example, I am trying to scan out my CHA-1003 items. I tapped on CHA-1003 (on the left), and it brought up the page on the right.

The quantity will automatically default to the total amount requested for the grouping. You will need to change this to match the quantity associated to the tag. In my example, each tag I brought in has a quantity of 1, so I need to make sure to update my quantity to match.

If you scan an item that does NOT match the grouping and hit continue, you will get the pop-up below on the left. If you scan the item correctly, it will clear out the inventory item and have you scan the next piece.

Once the full quantity has been met, it will bring you back to the main work order screen. From here, you can toggle between the recently delivered items (to see what has been scanned) and the remaining items (to see what still needs to be processed). The image on the right shows the items that I scanned out for CHA-1003. It will show a line for each tag.

You will repeat this process until you have scanned out all groupings. Once you have scanned the last item on the work order, you will see this screen and nothing will show in the “Remaining” tab of the work order.

Once you are finished, hit “Complete” in the top right corner, and this will submit all of your items to the web. As long as the quantity processed matches the quantity requested for all the inventory on the work order, the work order will automatically set itself to a “Closed” status.