This document gives a quick overview about the most important configuration settings and steps to get started with efa.
Table of Contents
All administrative tasks in efa are done inside the Admin Mode. In efa-Boathouse, press button Admin Mode to login as an admin. efa-Base always runs in Admin Mode - there you will find all options in the respective menus. Only administrators with sufficient privileges have access to these functions.
The Admin Interface provides the following functionality:
You chose your language and may select some regional settings upon the first start of efa. Later you may change these settings in the tab Language & Region in the configuration dialog.
Upon the first start of efa you chose a folder where efa will store all user data.
Later you can change this folder in the configuration under Common - Common.
Note: If you change this at a later time, efa will not copy any data into the new
folger. This you have to do yourself.
In the configuration under Common - Appearance you can select a Look & Feel. Usually you will get the best results from MetalLookAndFeel.
Under efa-Boathouse- Appearance you can select some options to influence the appearance of
efa-Boathouse.
A larger Font Size can improve readability, but too large a fond size may - depending on
your screen resolution - cut off some dialogs and introduce scroll bars. For a screen resolution
of 1024x768 a maximum font size of 16 is recommended.
You can also select a club logo here to be displayed in efa's main window.
If your efa windows hide some GUI elements of your operating systems like a menu bar, you can switch into Expert Mode and under Common - Appearance configure the maximum screen resolution to be used by efa, as well as its Offset (upper left corner).
The display of weather conditions, sunrise and sunset, and the clock can be configured under efa-Boathouse- Widgets. For your location, please enter correct coordinates and locations under Meteo-Astro-Widget. Updating current weather data requires an internet connection.
Only administrators may perform administrative tasks in efa. Administrators identify themselves through a name and a password, and may have individual rights. The main administrator's name is always admin. He has absolute rights and is created upon first start of efa.
In the admin mode, the main administrator admin may create further administrators and grant them individual rights.
All data of a club is held within a project. Normally, you should create exactly one project for one club.
As storage type for a project, you may chose between one of the following:
Please refer to the Installation Guide for instructions on how to import data from efa 1.x.
In a project, you may create as many logbooks as you like. Each logbook has a unique name and a validity range. efa will only allow to enter sessions within the validity range of each logbook.
Each project has exactly one person, boat, and destination list (as well as related data such as boat status, waters, etc.). This data may be entered manually, imported from efa 1.x, or at any time be imported from an external CSV or XML file. The import can import new data or update existing data. The format of the data to be imported has to follow certain rules, and must be indentical as the export format that efa generates. Therefore it is easiests to first generate an export of some dummy data and use the exported file as a template to create import files.
Statistics can at any point in time be created by an administrator with appropriate permissions by chosing the option Statistics and then select One-Time Statistics. In order to make statistics available to everyone in the club, you have to save them as statistics setting as a admin first, and enable the option Statistic publicly available.
To protect against data loss in case of hardware failures, software failures or improper use, you should take some precautious actions:
With efa you can access a remote running efa, which is for example installed in your boathouse, from any place in the world over the internet - if also the computer in the boathouse is connected to the internet. This way you can for example administer efa remotely from home, or connect multiple efa installations to share the same data.
First you have to activate the remote access function in the server efa by enabling the corresponding option in the configuration under Data - efaRemote. To access a remote efa installation, you have to have efa installed on your client as well, and create a project there with storage type efaRemote. To connect to the server efa, you have to enter the server's IP address in your client project, and specify an administrator account on the server to login. This administrator must have the permission Remote Access on the server. You also have to specify the project name on the server you want to access.
Per default, efa uses port 3834 to connect remotely. If your server is standing behind a router, you have to enable Port Forwarding on your router for port 3834 to your server PC.
If the server does not have a static IP address, you may use efaOnline to get the current IP address of the# server when connecting from the client. Please sign up for an account on efaOnline and enter this account data both on the server in the configuration settings, as well as on the client in the project settings.