Commander

Overview

The Ratchet-X Commander is the primary user-facing component in the Ratchet-X platform. Once installed on your computer and configured, Commander is the platform component responsible for performing the following tasks:

registering and managing appspaces (the collections of screens and underlying fields you want to extract data from and paste data to)
registering and managing plug-ins (the programs that act on data extracted from your application screens and acquires data that is pasted into your application screens)
facilitating and securing all communications and data transfers between application screens and plug-ins
providing a structured, multi-data element task list that can be used to move data between multiple applications, applications and forms, etc.
housing identification and payment credentials for accessing and paying for plug-ins and the underlying services to which the plug-ins provide access

Loading Commander

Loading Commander is easy. Just click on the web link provided by the organization that is licensing Ratchet-X to you and you’re good to go. Upon load, Commander will check to see if there are any updates available. If an update is available, Commander will automatically refresh itself ensuring you’re always working with the latest version of the software. Depending upon how Commander is configured, it will either load minimized in your Windows’ System Tray or it will load fully maximized. Either way, once you see the Commander icon displayed in the Windows’ System Tray (Figure 1), you’re ready to start using Ratchet-X.

Figure 1

Commander Modes

Commander presents itself to the user in the following two modes:

Administrative Mode
Alert Mode

Figure 2

Administrative Mode

Alert Mode

Administrative Mode is the mode from which you can do the following:

register appspaces
register plug-ins
copy and paste data to and from the Ratchet-X task list
set Commander configuration options and preferences
load other platform tools such as the: Appspace Editor, RXDL Editor, XModel Editor, Repository Editor and the MyCRM sample application
access system help

Alert mode is the mode from you which you can do the following:

execute specific integrations with other systems and services (via alerts)
manage document and user-defined field attachments
copy and paste data to and from the Ratchet-X task list
load the Commander in administrative mode

Generic Platform Commander Help

Ratchet-X is first and foremost a desktop application integration platform. Some people use Ratchet-X purely as an integration platform to build integrations into their own applications. Others use the platform to build commercial applications. Organizations that use Ratchet-X to create third party commercial products are called OEMs. OEMs have the ability to customize Commander to give it a look, feel and feature-set consistent with their brand. Because of this, some of the topics and screen shots featured in this Help system will either look different or not appear at all in your version of Commander. However, OEMs are strongly encouraged to create alternative help systems to assist you when working with their customized version of Commander. So all the information contained within the Commander section of this Help system assumes you are working with the “Generic Platform” version of Commander. If you are working with a customized version that ships to support a third party application, please note that some of the content contained within this Help system may not be applicable or different from what you see on your computer.