Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/128820
The AQ App continued time from the three locations. Creating New Projects Rating = 4.8 Creating a project is as easy as tapping the"New"button on the main screen. By default, your first new project will be named "New Project 1." You can change the project name and project default settings by tapping on the "i" button located at the top left-hand side of the screen once in the project. When you're done making your changes, you can simply tap on the "i" button to exit this menu and continue to add products to your project. Saving your new projects settings takes place when you attempt to exit the project,as a box will pop up giving you three options—Save, Exit and Cancel. On the whole, navigating the project menu box and the rest of creating a new project was very easy. But if I could change one thing in this process, the project menu box would open up immediately after tapping the "New" project button and entering a project. Granted, this is more of a feature of convenience. Most users will be naming their projects accordingly and may forget to name their project before exiting. Working with Projects Rating = 4.9 Adding Products Adding products to your project is done by tapping the "Catalog" button located at the bottom right side of the screen. This, along with the rest of the bottom navigation, was one area of the app layout that threw me off a little— as I expected to find the navigation buttons on top like in AQ360. Although, with the smaller screen, it does make sense to move the navigation to the bottom to keep the top from being too cluttered, which allows your focus to remain on the products and product headers. You will also notice that when you add a product to the project, the order of the columns is not the same as the order in AQ360. Hopefully not a big deal for most users, but you will need to pay attention. 1 8 FEDA New s & View s The ability to search from a vast number of fields, display results as you type, and easily narrow your results give the search feature a robust kick I wasn't expecting. Modifying Products To edit, update, copy, cut, select all, or delete an item, simply tap the desired item and leave your finger on it for about a second. Soon after, a box will pop up with a list of options. Any product field can be modified with a quick tap to the desired field. I found these features as easy to use as the point and click features in the AQ360 desktop version. This makes product modifications an easy task. Horizontal/Vertical Bar Buttons You can move items to different rows by touching the button with three horizontal bars (indicating rows) on the top right side of the screen. Make columns wider or narrower as well as make columns visible or hidden by touching the button with three vertical bars (indicating columns) on the top right side of the screen. The iPad screen is not large enough to display all the columns so you will need to swipe the screen to the right in order to view additional columns.The "Status" button (which indicates an item is active, inactive, optional, an alternate, etc.) was a hidden column but the April update to the AutoQuotes iPad app now has this commonly used feature"Visible" by default. Printer Button A tap of the icon simply opens up the project report as a "Quote" by default. Though there are not a large number of report options, I did not find this to be a major issue. However, I would like to see the addition of the "Spreadsheet" report available, which would help you quickly double check your numbers more granularly when in the field. Settings Button If you happened to re-arrange the order of your items, you can easily renumber the entire project by tapping on the "Settings" button located at the top left of the screen.You can also hide net's, markup, discounts, and lock or round sell prices in the project. There are a few other goodies in the "Settings" button that make managing your project easier. Additional buttons such as Accessory, Custom, Comment, Spare, Mfr Summary, Freight, etc. in the project screen also make working with projects an easy process. Search Rating = 5.0 The ability to search from a vast number of fields, display results as you type, and easily narrow your results give the search feature a robust kick I wasn't expecting. (To access the search menu, select the "Catalog" button while in a project.) The added left-hand navigation allows you to quickly narrow your search results by manufacturer, brand, and category.Touching any one of those three options, will expand the menu with narrowed results for the respective option. In the expanded menu, you can further filter and un-filter your results by simply touching the sub-menu. The "Sort" button gives you the ability to sort your results by a number of fields including manufacturer, model and price. Once you find your desired product, you can see details of the item by touching the arrow to the far right. The details include a description, images, pricing information, specs, installation manuals, videos, spec sheets, promotional brochures, and lots of additional information a manufacturer wishes to add to help you sell their product.Touch any documentation available to view it in greater detail and there's even an option to email it once opened. I get the sense that AutoQuotes put a lot into their search feature (rightfully so with so many products), and I applaud them for doing a stellar job in this area. Printing Rating = 4.2 Touching the "Printer" icon from a project will open up a project report, allowing you options to modify your continued on page 30