Table of Contents
Mystic Help
Lookup Manager
The [Lookup Manager] is a dialog intended to perform two specific functions, and is accessible only to suitably authorised staff users:
- Manage system level, application wide configuration settings which affect all dialogs and all users
- Manage the various drop-down lists and foundation information which is used within other manager dialogs around the application
In a quick overview, the Layout Manager sometimes fills users with trepidation, but in reality it follows the standard Mystic Manager Dialog process of:
- Select an entry to edit from the left hand list
- Edit the details when displayed on the right hand side
- Update the details
So why does the Lookup Manager seem so complicated? The reason for this resides primarily in the type of data that the Lookup Manager is intended to maintain.
Types (or purposes) of Data
There are really three different types, or purposes, of data being used by a normal user of Mystic, as shown in the following diagram:
A good example of how this data is used is in the combination of an Item record with a Reader record to perform a function, in this case a Circulation which generates its own record in the database recording that the circulation occurred.
Feeding information into these three higher level records however, is the Mystic Expanse - essentially, a potentially vast amount of small foundation data records. These foundation data records provide everything from Keywords to Contributor names, Class names to reader circulation limits (Circulations Profile), to the very configuration of how Mystic should perform.
When you use the higher data records, such as the Circulations function, Catalogue Items or Reader Records, you do so using a dedicated Mystic Manager Dialog which is intended just for that purpose. To provide a dedicated editor for every type of foundation data in the Expanse however, would mean that you would need to keep track of of tens of different dialogs (possibly hundreds in the case of some Mystic licenses, where you are allowed to create your own data categories in the Expanse).
For this reason, we do it all through a single Lookup Manager dialog which is flexible enough to cope with many different types of data but using the same basic principles that you know from using other Managers.
It is usually the sheer number of different types of data which therefore worries users - but there is no real need to worry. Once you learn how to use on Mystic Manager Dialog, the others are almost identical with only the need to adapt to the few additional functions that you can use only in that area.
Lookup Manager help articles:
