CHAPTER 7
Routing and Communications
Routing Outgoing Items 7-19
To the left of the Close box is a text button labeled with the name of the
routing action.Tapping this text button, which is known as the Send button,
closes the routing slip, but with different animation than the Close box. First
the lower panel slides up, as if it were going into the envelope part of the
routing slip. Then the envelope slides off the screen to the right.
In addition to the routing slip closing, one of three things happens when a
user taps a Send button. The outgoing item may be placed in the Out Box
and sent immediately. The item may be placed in the Out Box and held there
until a user sends it. Or a picker may pop up, giving the user the choice of
sending now or later. Customarily a transport allows users to control which
of those three alternatives happens by setting preferences in the In/Out Box
application, as described in “Transport Preferences” on page 7-32.
A transport can also force the button to send now or later without displaying
a picker. This overrides any preferences setting a user may have made for
the transport.
When saving items in the Out Box for later transmission, a transport has to
determine when it should get information from the sender’s owner and
worksite cards. Although this issue doesn’t affect the user interface visibly,
the issue does affect stability and consistency as they appear to users. In
general, the transport should get information from the sender’s owner card
at the time the item is sent to the Out Box. Such information might include
the sender’s name, return address (such as fax number or e-mail address),
credit card information, and so on.
However, if the transport uses worksite information to make a connection
(for example, to determine how to dial the recipient’s fax number), the
transport should wait to obtain the most current information—based on the
user’s current worksite setting—until the item is actually transmitted from
the Out Box, and make necessary adjustments at that time. For example, if a
user queued several fax items at home but didn’t send them until at work,
the transport might need to change the area code information for dialing the
recipient’s fax number.