Require user confirmation for critical jobs (Was: Mandatory Job Log)

Turned out (after a bit of brow-beating) that the Treasurer/Owner had
"accidentally" run the close before December was even over!  Even though
there's a "Do You really want to do this?" panel, he gets distracted and
just turns around and presses the Enter key.  I have long been of the
opinion that a confirmation should require a more positive response than
just pressing the Enter key, such as pressing a command/function key.  I'll
probably get around to implementing that for this application since it
caused so much turmoil last week.

What I did some years back on jobs like that (like day close or run
the entire daily batch of orders to invoicing, etc) was make them
enter " *YES " and have to confirm it.

Here's a sample command definition:

CMD PROMPT('Run All Billing')

PARM KWD(RUN) +
TYPE(*CHAR) +
LEN(1) +
RSTD(*YES) +
DFT(*NO) +
SPCVAL((*YES Y) (*NO N)) +
PROMPT('Run all billing?')

PARM KWD(CONFIRM) +
TYPE(*CHAR) +
LEN(1) +
RSTD(*YES) +
DFT(*NO) +
SPCVAL((*YES Y) (*NO N)) +
PMTCTL(CNFDSP) +
PROMPT('Are you sure?')

CNFDSP: PMTCTL CTL(RUN) +
COND((*EQ Y))


First they have to change the *NO to *YES on the RUN parm. Then, and
only then the CONFIRM parm is shown, which they also have to change to
*YES for things to proceed. If either one is something other than a Y
in the CPP, they get a message that whatever job was not run because
it was not confirmed. They HAVE to answer C to THAT message so they
can't claim later they never knew they didn't run it.

--
Jeff Crosby
VP Information Systems
UniPro FoodService/Dilgard
P.O. Box 13369
Ft. Wayne, IN 46868-3369
260-422-7531
www.dilgardfoods.com

The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the opinion of
my company.  Unless I say so.