How to Use PubGizmo

While there are specific functions performed by each of PubGizmo's modules, there's a general convention on how to use specific features throughout. This gizmos and gadgets are helpful to know.

Getting Around

Clicking

Buttons

Most of PubGizmo's navigation duplicates what you already do in software and on websites: click an item (only a single click is necessary) to go somewhere else. Click a Contacts button to go to the Contacts module. Easy.

Links

Also like the web, PubGizmo provides "links" that you can click to go to that target info. These links are created automatically as you add data; you don't need to do anything special.

On the web, you can identify a link a couple of ways: it might be in blue, or underlined, or both.

In PubGizmo, links are green: "green means go." So if you are viewing a Contact record for an author, the Titles tab/portal shows all the Title records associated with this author in green. Click one to visit that Title record. In this case, if you click on the first green title:

You will navigate to that Title record.

On the Title record, you'll see that the opposite end of this link will take you back to the author's record:

The Three-dot Menu

At the upper-left of every major module you'll see a green button with three vertical dots. Click it to reveal a number of options:

Searching

You can also go to a specific record or set of records by searching, again much the way you do on the web, where what you type auto-completes as PubGizmo tries to anticipate what you're looking for. PubGizmo uses something called the QuickDex, which accelerates searches and navigation. Its use is more substantially covered on this page.

Portals

Portals are simply lists of data, each item in the list a record unto itself with multiple fields, frequently with green links to other records. You can edit data in portals is a number of ways, usually dependent on how many fields comprised that record:

click and edit directly: click into the field and type

open a popover: a popover provides access to more fields than can be comfortably contained in the portal row, for example the description text for an author bio or book summary – you'll know a popover when you click, and it opens; to exit a popover, just click elsewhere, although a few popovers require you to click a button to close it

Adding and Deleting Data

Adding New Data

Plus Button

In most cases, to create new records you'll find a plus button to click. You'll see plus buttons beside each module on the Home page, plus a green plus button at the upper-right of portals; click to create a new portal record/row.

Click into a Field and Start Typing

On a few portals, you'll see grey text inviting you to click and start typing, e.g., "click to create a new Prize record"; if you do that, a new record will be created with whatever you've typed.