TACTS Card Series Basic Information Form Tab

This form serves many purposes and is core to the operation of TACTS The primary purpose of this form is to maintain the various card series that are to be published on the internet. Not only are the fields associated with each series maintained on this form, but buttons are available for importing and reporting each series. There are several tabs on this form, the first will be described on this help page, the others will be described on subsequent pages. Two fields above the tabs will be described on this user guide page. Described below are the fields associated directly with each card series.

The function of these fields is:

• Series ID - This is the primary id for each card series. This series id must match the SeriesId used in the excel spread sheet SeriesID Column. It is recommended that this be a fairly short id. It should also start with an alphabetic character (I have had problems when I tried to use a number or special character, but I don't actually edit this field in the application). Another good idea is to keep this id the same as the name of the HTML file to which the card series will be published.
• Series Name - This is the complete name for the card series. This name will appear at the top of the published card page, just before the start of the main card quantities, and as the visible name links relating back to this table. For instance if two pages reference each other as related, the name of the related page will be used as the visible portion of the link back to the related page. Also, this title will be used as the page title for each generated web page.
• Manufacturer - The entry in this field indicates the manufacturer for the card table. This data in this field is validated against the manufacture ids entered in the Card Companies Maintenance form. The field will currently default to 'Skybox'. When the card tables are generated, this id will be used to retrieve the HTML used in the display of the manufacturer for this card series.
• Released - This is the year this card series was released by the manufacturer. It is displayed on the published card table in the header section for the card series, just after the card series name, and just before the manufacturer name.
• Type - There are currently two types of published HTML pages in TACTS (I may consolidate this to one in the future, but I need to think harder on this). Standard card series and CCG card series. The general layout of these published tables vary in some subtle ways.
  The valid values for this field are:
• html card tables
• html ccg tables
• Spread Sheet - This field indicates the name of the spread sheet that contains the card quantities. The location of this file is determined by the Excel Location field in the Web Page Constants Form Tab. Each card series is located in a single spread sheet, though there can be several series in that spread sheet.
• Work Sheet - This field indicates the name of the work sheet within the excel spread sheet that actually contains the card series quantities. Each card series is located in a single work sheet, though there can be several series in that work sheet.
• Page Name - This is the name of the file in which the produced HTML file is placed. The location of this file is determined by the Web Path field in the Web Page Constants Form Tab.
• Generated - This is the date published as the last generated date for card series. This field can be changed, but is subject to being updated by the web page generation process. This field is automatically updated when a web page is published if the Update Generated Date check box is checked.
• Update Generated Date Check Box - Indicates if the Last Generated Date for the card series should be updated when the page is published using the Publish Button. This check box can only be cleared with a registered version of the application. The unregistered version will always update the last updated date for a card series each time a card series is generated from the application. This field defaults based on the Update Generated Date Field on the Web Page Constants Form Tab.
• Equalization Qty - The entry in this field is used to adjust the card quantity that is displayed in the published card quantity table. This will help allow trading of common cards with other collectors. If you are planning to complete additional sets of common cards beyond those currently complete, you can place a value in this field, and the quantities displayed as 'on hand' for each card will be reduced by this quantity. Usually you will at least place a '1' in this field, to change your 'on hand' quantities to 'available' quantities. If the spread sheet count shows you have 1 of each card on hand, and you place a 1 in this field, all the quantities will be displayed as zero - that is none available, and none needed.
  You may put larger quantities in this field if you want to complete additional sets. For instance, if you have 2 quantity on hand for almost every card in a series, have none for a couple of cards in a series, 1 for just a few cards, but actually have 3 on hand for 2 cards in the series, this series would be a great candidate for entering a 2 in this field. This will show most cards as having zero available, but zero needed. 2 cards in the sereies would show 1 as available for trade. Some other cards would show negative available quantities (meaning you need those particular cards). The table below should help explain it.

• Spread Qty - This field is similar in function to the Equalization Quantity, but it reduces the available quantity by even more. This is used when you want don't want to show needing more of some cards, but you still want to reduce the availability of cards to help others complete their sets. This feature is only available with the registered version of TACTS. You must enter a zero on the unregistered version.
  We will extend the example above to include a spread quantity

• Description - This field is used to populate the description meta tag for each web page, and will appear as the first text on each web page after the header text. This field can be up to 200 characters on the registered version of TACTS, but is limited to 150 characters in the unregistered version.
• Import Button - This will import the data from the excel spread sheet for this single card series. The entire work sheet's worth of information is imported into a temporary table, then just this card series is imported into the permanent table. If the worksheets data is already located in the temporary table, you will be prompted on whether to repopulate the temporary table from the worksheet, or whether to just use the temporary information to update the permanent table. This is to allow you to import a few card series at one time, without having to go back to the actual excel worksheet between each series updates. The import from excel takes considerably longer than updating directly from the temporary table.
• Publish Button - This will publish the card series information to the html web file. The generated date will be updated if the Update Generated Date check box is checked. The application may fail if the card series data has not been imported (the first time) before attempting to publish the web page.