Many CARS+ clients use non-ascii characters and thus enter and store data using UTF-8 or other non-ascii charsets (this is controlled by the terminal emulation program). However some third-party systems (such as franchisor central reporting systems) require ascii data. CARS+ uses the GVT record described below to convert some data fields to ascii format to meet this requirement.
II. GVT RECORD CONFIGURATION
| OPTION: __ CARS+ GLOBAL VARIABLE TABLE 1 Location 2 Code CHARSET 3 Description 4 Type (A=Alpha,N=Numeric,S=Signed 5 Length 6 Decimals 7 Alpha Value UTF-8 8 Numeric Value 9 Signed Value 10 Format Mask 11 Decimal Value 1SAVE 2NEXT 3ERASE 4DELETE 5 6 7HELP 8 |
III. RESULTING CHANGES TO CARS+
This presence of the GVT causes the following changes in the way CARS+ operates:
A. Customer records are created by the Reservations program for those who are not already set up as customers.
B. The way a customer’s first and last name is entered is changed in the following programs:
Customer File Update(first and last names)
Reservations (renter)
RA Open (renter, bill-to party, additional drivers, third parties)
RA Close (new bill-to parties)
Placing the cursor in a “name” field will cause the pop-up window shown below to display:
Local Last Name
Local First Name
Short Last Name
Short First Name
Title
To exit the pop-up window, press the (ESC) key or press (RET) through all 4 fields.
The Local First and Last Name fields make use of the 60 characters allowed for a name in the extended name logic.
|
LOCAL LAST NAME |
Enter the customer's last name. This field will accept up to 36 alphanumeric characters. The first 18 characters are passed through a conversion program and then stored in the “Short Last Name” field below. |
|
LOCAL FIRST NAME |
Enter the customer's first name. This field will accept up to 24 alphanumeric characters. The first 12 are passed through a conversion program and then stored in the “Short First name” field below. |
|
SHORT LAST NAME |
This field will display the first 18 characters entered in the “Local Last Name” field, and can be edited if desired. This is the data that will appear in the “Last Name” field in the customer record. |
|
SHORT FIRST NAME |
This field will display the first 12 characters entered in the “Local First Name” field, and can be edited if desired. This is the data that will appear in the “First Name” field in the customer record. |
C. Editing Local Name fields
When the “local name” fields of a customer’s record are edited, the following question appears:
UPDATE SHORT NAME FIELDS TOO?Y/N
Enter:
N = the current data in the first and last fields of the customer record are not changed.
Y = the data in the edited local name fields is passed through a conversion program and the data in the first and/or last name fields (as appropriate) of the customer record are updated.