Find your way around
Lesson 2 of 15 7 min read
A guided tour of the Supply Lens app, from the left-hand menu to the top bar, search and live notifications.
You will use Supply Lens most days, often to answer a quick question: did that order come through, what did we send the warehouse, why has this one failed? Knowing where things live makes those answers take seconds rather than minutes.
By the end of this lesson you will know what each part of the menu is for, what the top bar does, and a few shortcuts that experienced users rely on.
The left-hand menu
Once you have opened your Organisation, the left-hand menu is your map of the app. Click the
menu icon in the top-left to show or hide it, or press the full stop key (.) from anywhere.
| Menu section | What you will find there |
|---|---|
| Home | Your dashboard, with a chart of your Documents at a glance and a date range you can change. |
| Sales | Sales Documents such as Orders, Shipments, Invoices and Credits. |
| Warehouse | Warehouse Documents such as Warehouse Orders, Warehouse Shipments, Picks and Goods Inbound. |
| Purchases | Purchase Orders and other supplier-side Documents. |
| Products | Your product catalogue. |
| All documents | Every Document in one list, whatever its type. |
| External data | Tools for bringing data in from and sending data out to other systems. |
| Settings | How your Organisation is set up (see below). |
Sections expand and collapse, and the section you are working in opens automatically.
The Settings menu
Settings is split into three shorter sections:
- Organisation: your organisation's details, billing and members.
- Integration setup: Integrations, Mappings, plugins and sequence numbers. This is where you connect systems and decide how data flows.
- Reference data: countries, currencies, products and the other lookup tables that Documents refer to, such as Units of Measure, Parties and Locations.
So when a lesson in this course says Settings → Integration setup → Integrations, open Settings, then the Integration setup section, then Integrations.
Integration setup is where the plumbing lives
Most of your setup work in this course happens under Integration setup. Most of your day-to-day checking happens in the Document lists under Sales, Warehouse, Purchases and All documents.
The top bar
Along the top of the screen you will find:
- Search. Press
/or select the search button. Type at least three characters of a name or code (a SKU, GLN or tax number, for example) to find Parties, Locations and Products. Paste a reference, such as an order number, to find the Documents, source data and target data that carry it. - The settings menu. This holds your connection status, the keyboard shortcuts and the theme (Light, Dark or System). You can also reread the release notes here.
- Notes. A notes panel for keeping notes and tasks on your Organisation or a record.
Press the comma key (
,) to open it. - Your profile picture. Click it to manage your account: your name, email address, password and sign-in methods.
Live updates and notifications
Supply Lens updates in real time. As data arrives you will see lists refresh and short notifications appear in the bottom-left corner of the screen. When lots arrive at once, related notifications are grouped into one message.
If the live connection drops, a warning badge appears on the settings button. Open the settings menu to check your connection status. Live updates normally reconnect by themselves.
Good to know
When a new version of Supply Lens is released, you will be asked to reload the page, and a What's New window shows what has changed the next time you sign in.
Shortcuts worth learning early
- Pinned tabs. Pin a Document, a piece of source or target data, or a whole filtered list, and it appears as a tab below the top bar so you can jump straight back to it.
- Keyboard shortcuts. On Document and data lists you can move with the arrow keys and
tick rows with Space. Hold
?or click the ? button in the top bar to see every shortcut for the page you are on. - Shareable addresses. Document lists keep their filters and page in the address bar, so you can bookmark a filtered view or send it to a colleague.
Priya's first morning
Priya at Hilltop Coffee wants to check that last night's web orders reached Unleashed. She
opens Sales → Orders and sees the overnight orders at the top. One customer has
emailed about order #1042, so she presses /, pastes 1042 and goes straight to it. She
pins the Orders list as a tab so tomorrow's check is one click away.
Recap
- The left-hand menu groups Documents by area (Sales, Warehouse, Purchases, All documents) and keeps setup under Settings.
- Settings has three sections: Organisation, Integration setup and Reference data.
- Press
/to search by name, code or reference; press,for notes and.to toggle the menu. - Notifications appear bottom-left, and the settings button shows a warning if the live connection drops.
- Pin Documents and lists you check often.
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