User Interface

MS Enterprise UI walkthrough

Overview

MS Enterprise™ is a B2B solution that assists brands/retailers to optimize their inventory by providing end-to-end merchandising solutions.

MS Enterprise Capabilities

Following are the capabilities of Iris X that can be leveraged

Open

Access, Navigation & Roles

Logging in

Link to UI           -   https://mse.increff.com/#/home

Organization ID -  will be provided to you through Increff

• The Organization ID is unique to every client and used as the key to connecting the data we store in our database. It gives all the users connecting to his organization access to the data. Each organization ID is called an ‘instance’

• An instance may contain different ‘

projects’ which can be used for separate operations for client needs. For example, the instance may contain two projects named ‘<Brand name> Buying’ and ‘<Brand name> Allocation’.

Login type        -  Username and Password as shared

Home Page

Open

The instance name is visible on the top left corner. Projects can be selected from the dropdown.

You can log out of the instance by using the logout functionality at the top right corner under your profile name.

Navigation

The UI is designed for easy navigation of repeat users using this tool on a regular basis for doing buying, allocations, etc.

In the Home page once, selecting on the module the user wants to work on, The Menu/Navigation bar is revealed enabling easier navgation then on. This is present on every page for easy navigation.

If the user hasn't selected the project and tried to navigate to any other page, then the ‘Project Not Selected’ alert will be prompted. The user can select a project from any page and this prompt will disappear.

The menu has different sections and hovering over the section will display more subsections which are called modules in our nomenclature. For ex., NOOS, Ideal Size Set, Optimum Width, etc. are all called modules.

Module Structure

Each module in the UI has a standard structure for easy familiarization and understanding

User roles

Different types of user roles enable and restrict users to perform different operations in the tool:

App Admin

IrisX Admin

Non-Admin Users

An App Admin or Iris X admin can see all the projects in Project Drop Down. Non-Admin will see those projects which are assigned by Admin (App or Iris X) User. 

While all types of users have access to general sections like set up, history, and analysis, depending on the type of role, different users have permissions to read-only or read and modify the data available in the UI. 

Note that a user who has been given a user role will have the same role within all projects to which access has been granted.

• IRIS X Admin: Access to all sections. Modify all the data available in the UI across all projects. Additionally, this user is able to add other users in any project

• App Admin: Access to all sections. Modify all the data available in the UI across all projects. This user is able to add other users in any project and modify user role access

• Buyer: Access to general sections, planning & buying section. Modify all the data in these sections and read all the data in other sections in any project

• Discounting User: Access to general sections, planning & dynamic markdown section. Modify all the data in these sections and read all the data in other sections in any project

• Distributor: Access to general sections, planning & distribution section. Modify all the data in these sections and read all the data in other sections in any project

• Planner: Access to general sections & planning. Modify all the data in these sections and read all the data in other sections in any project

• BI User: Access to general sections & business intelligence section. Modify all the data in these sections and read all the data in other sections in any project

• Read-only: Access to all sections. Only able to read all the data available in UI in any project but cannot modify

• Additional Tools: Access to limited selection of modules with the ability to modify configuration settings

• Integration: Access to modify data and configurations for automation purposes

Handling Inputs

There are two kinds of inputs a user can give to the tool from the UI - by uploading data via excel files or by changing the values by entering them directly in the UI, these are often called ‘configurations’.

All the fields in Transactional Data, Master Data, Master Config Data, and Upload Inputs (in each module) are inputs that can be modified by the user by uploading data via excel files.

Some inputs are common across Projects while the rest are project-specific i.e even if you change something in one project, it won’t change in other projects. The following inputs are common across projects and can be modified only by an admin user role

‘Master Config Data’ section under ‘Setup’ is for filtering which subset of the overall ‘instance’ data needs to be used for that project. The data is filtered based on the files that are uploaded in these fields.

File type

All the files consumed by the tool are of .tsv type. These are files that have tab-separated values. They can be uploaded in excel and worked on like normal .xlsx files

Users can follow the two simple setting changes in the video to avoid the most common issues faced in handling .tsv file types 

Uploading

When a file is uploaded from the UI using the upload functionality, this modifies the data in the backend tables stored in the database.

Two types of actions are followed for the inputs that are uploaded:

1. Truncate Insert - Entire existing data in the database table will be deleted and the newly uploaded data will be stored.
   Can be identified by the note while uploading files

2. Update Insert - Existing data in the database table is not deleted but it is modified*.

• Modification is based on a unique key (column or combination of columns) set for each table. The data in these tables are updated according to this key.

For example, in the style master table which is an update insert type, style code is the key and on every upload, whatever changes are made against an existing style code like subcategory, attribute, etc., are updated in the system and if new style codes are added, they are appended to the existing rows in the table. Changing the key value (style code in this case) itself is not allowed and it leads to the creation of a new style code in the system along with the previous style code as the system thinks this is a new style code.

Truncate insert and Update insert input types can be identified by the note that is present on the pop window which appears after clicking on the upload button next to the input.

A note is present in the popup window

Note is missing in the popup window

The following processing icon appears after the input is uploaded into the UI. In some cases, the processing icon might appear late due to internet connectivity issues or if there is some other upload in process in the same instance. Until then a ‘new’ icon is shown instead of the processing icon.

Downloading

Inputs can be downloaded using the download functionality and these files have all the data that is present in the backend tables. To understand what input is currently present in an instance, you can get to know by simply downloading the file from the UI.

However, there are some files that cannot be downloaded like store inventory, sales, etc. in transactional data. These files are very heavy in size due to the enormous number of rows.

Reports

Reports are available in transactional data and master data sub-sections under the setup section. These reports provide a summary of the available data in the system as the user cannot download transactional data owing to its huge size.

Templates

To help the user understand which columns to include in the input file, order of columns, acceptable values, etc. templates are in place for each input. These templates can be downloaded by clicking on the link that comes up in the pop-up after clicking on the upload icon next to the input name.

Errors in upload

The system is intelligent enough to catch any discrepancies in the files uploaded and alert the users prompting them to correct the errors and re-upload the files. In case of any error in the uploaded file, a notification will be shown below and the user can download the error message by clicking on the notification.

Information

To get more information about the input and understand it better, users can hover over the input name or go to the help section by clicking on the help icon on the right side.

Configuration

Most of the modules barring very few have a configuration page that lets the user change the settings according to the business needs of the client. These include, how many days of data need to be analyzed, which season’s stock should be allocated, what is the threshold for discount, etc.

The configuration page appears as shown below and the description in the info icon against each parameter can help the user understand more about the parameter. 

The description also has details of the user who last modified it along with the timestamp.

Restrictions

Any kind of input cannot be modified when a run is in progress and the user will be notified with an error message as shown below.

Running the tool

Starting the run

After checking if all the inputs and configuration are in place and configuration, navigate to the Run Algo page on the module that you want to run. Set the date (stock is considered as on this date and sales till this date) on which the run has to happen and click on the Start button. The run will start in a few seconds and the modules that are relevant for this run will be displayed below.

• The system will consider the stock & GIT corresponding to this date. Any recent period defined in the input configurations (for ex., ROS duration, etc.) will be counted backward from this date.

• The last run column gives an estimate as to how much time the entire run or a particular step takes

• The tool can be run only on Monday dates and the recent 7 calendar days. The calendar shown after clicking the day will have only these dates highlighted and the user cannot select any other dates.

The system decides which dependent modules are to be run and even whether they should be run or not to generate an output of a particular module.

Inventory computation is done during every module run. We compute inventory even though we capture the client’s daily inventory. The captured inventory in the tool is only for Mondays and the tool during the run computes the inventory automatically based on sales data between two Mondays. This is done to avoid storing huge amounts of inventory data (especially in the case of big brands having lots of stores and SKUs) in the database and loading the same.

The tool also stores rolling 30 days inventory so that the most recent inventory is captured directly from the client instead of computing it as part of inventory computation step and avoid in accuracies

Also, the user cannot initiate a run when a file upload is in progress and will be notified via an error message if they try to run.

Stopping the run

If the user has a necessity to stop the ongoing run for revising any of the inputs, they can click on the stop button shown on the run page while the run is in progress. After clicking on the stop button, it will take a few moments before the run actually stops.

Handling failures

In case of run failure, as displayed below, the user can download the reasons for failure from the logs column against the validation step and take corrective action.

• Run failures mostly happen due to missing inputs not tallying with each other. If the user is unable to understand the failure reason, they can always reach out to the Iris X support team to debug the failure and restart the run.

Successful run

The run is considered successful only if there is a success icon (‘green tick’) against all the modules displayed on the run page. If the run fails at any module post the validation, please reach out to the Iris tech team for support.

The final module of ‘Tables backup’ present during every run is to backup all the download outputs that get generated during the run along with some backend tables that are relevant for the tech team to de bug previous runs

The backed up downloadable outputs are available in the Iris X - UI Walkthrough for Clients

page.

Reading outputs

Reports

The reports section also called output reports is aimed at helping the user to get a summary of the module output. It highlights the major areas which a merchandiser/buyer/planner looks at while doing any exercise like distribution, buying, etc.

These output reports are hosted on the Tableau platform and are embedded in the UI. In order for the reports to reflect the latest output, the user should always click on the refresh button at the top of the report in the tableau interface.

The user will be prompted to enter the credentials for tableau for viewing the reports. The credentials for this are different from the earlier login credentials and will be shared by the Increff team.

Sample distribution output report

Sample NOOS output report

Download output

This section allows the users to download all the tool-generated outputs on their laptops in excel format and work on them.

Users can click on the ‘create downloadable report’ button, choose the output they want to download, apply the filters like channel/category for reducing the size of the output (no of rows), and then click on ‘Create’.

Post that, the output will be in process for a download, and once processed, the icon to download will appear under the link column.

Users can also access the outputs of the previous run that were downloaded for comparison purposes. The creation time mentions the time at which the output was created by the user and the last run time corresponds to when the module run was completed (this will be the same for all outputs downloaded of a single run).

Usage history

The usage history of the tool by multiple users is captured completely and available mainly for audit. This will help in finding out how many runs were made when a particular input was uploaded or which configuration was changed by whom.

Snapshots

Users can look at the number of runs made in a particular date range and also filter by module/algorithm. All the outputs & inputs used for a run are backed up as a last step of the run process and they can be accessed as a downloadable zip file.

Note: This page shows only the list of successful runs. The user logs page shows both successful, failed, and stopped runs as well.

User logs

This page has the list of complete activity done on this instance by any user in the given date range.

Data flow