The Artisan family of applications and services can work together to enhance the roast master's productivity. This article will describe the many ways these applications communicate with each other and how you can use them to increase your productivity.
The Players
- Artisan: the regular app instance that you use for logging your roasts
- ArtisanViewer: a second instance of the Artisan app started next to a regular Artisan instance runs as ArtisanViewer with restricted functionality, offering all but recording
- artisan.plus: the inventory management Web app that integrates with Artisan
Artisan and artisan.plus
Artisan can be linked to the inventory management platform artisan.plus. Once logged in, Artisan receives the current stock situation from the artisan.plus platform (visible in the Roast Properties)
Completed roasts are reported back to the artisan.plus platform and the corresponding stock is updated automatically. All further modifications applied in Artisan or the platform are synced automatically. On opening a profile in Artisan updated properties are retrieved from the platform if available. Changes applied on the Artisan side are send back to the platform on saving the profile to the disk.
Roast entries on artisan.plus contain links to quickly open the underlying profile in Artisan. A double click on the profile title in the Artisan app opens the corresponding roast entry on artisan.plus.
Artisan and ArtisanViewer
Artisan and the ArtisanViewer are very similar. Yet they each have a different purpose. Artisan can perform every function of the Viewer and more. The greatest difference is that only Artisan can sample and record a roast. Both are capable of viewing, analyzing, and editing properties of a recorded profile. Let's look at how these two can work together.
Completed Roast in ArtisanViewer
Notes:
- Artisan and the Viewer keep separate settings stored between usage. Settings files can be opened in Artisan and the Viewer. Settings files cannot be saved from the Viewer.
- On macOS the Artisan.app can be started only once. However, you can easily make a copy of the app and name it, for example, ArtisanViewer.app. Now you can start that ArtisanViewer.app while the Artisan.app is already running. Which app is started on double-clicking a file icon is determined in macOS by the "Open with" in the File Info section (right-click an .alog profile and select "Get Info".
Some roast masters use a workflow for back to back roasts where they enter roast properties information after the roast has completed. They prefer not to delay starting the subsequent roast to hold the previous one open in Artisan while they enter data. It is possible to save the previous roast to a file, start the next roast and then open the previous profile in the Viewer. That is a rather manual process. Beginning with v2.4 Artisan automates this by automatically opening the previous roast in the Viewer as soon as the ON button is clicked.
To enable this feature use the menu to go to Config>> Sampling. Tick the Open Completed Roast in Viewer checkbox.
It may be helpful to click the Keep On checkbox as well. When Keep On is selected, the roaster scope will automatically transition back to ON when the previous roast ends. This can be a time and click saver when doing continuous roasts. It is most efficient when used with the Autosave feature that saves the file to a customized file name at the end of a roast without user intervention.
When Keep On and Autosave are used with Open Completed Roast in Viewer a roast when it completes will be saved and open in the Viewer automatically and the roaster scope returned to the ON state.
Note: On some platforms the Viewer is not automatically opened. The Viewer must be started and running before profiles sent by Artisan can be opened.
Comparator
Profiles being examined in the Artisan Comparator roast compare tool can individually be opened in the Viewer. Double click on the profile identifier in the first column of the Comparator window and the profile will open in the Viewer. The reverse works too, a profile from the Comparator will open in Artisan.
Bear in mind the receiving application must not be doing something that would prevent it from display the sent profile. This includes being in the Designer tool, the Wheel Graph tool, the roast Cup Profile editor, or when the Artisan scope is ON or recording a roast.
What happens if the receiving application has the Comparator open? The profile will conveniently be added to the Comparator list.
Web Reports
If you use Web reports you may have noticed that they contain links. What do these links do?
Note: Below we talk about Artisan or the Viewer being "blocked". They are "blocked" when
in the Designer tool, the Wheel Graph tool or the roast Cup Profile editor. Artisan is also "blocked" when it is ON or START'ed and sampling a roast.
1. Roast Report
The Date field link appears for artisan.plus users who have sync'ed the profile with their plus account. Clicking this link will open the roast in the plus service and display it in a new browser tab.
The Beans field link appears for artisan.plus users who have entered the beans to their plus account. Clicking this link will open the Beans page in the plus service and display it in a new browser tab.
2. Batches Report
The Title column links will appear for all roasts whether or not the user is subscribed to the plus service. Clicking on one of these links will cause the roast to be displayed in Artisan. Whenever Artisan is blocked it will forward the roast profile to the Viewer for display. The Viewer will display the roast profile so long as it is not blocked.
Links will be seen in the Beans column for artisan.plus users who have entered the beans to their plus account. Clicking this link will open the Beans page in the plus service and display it in a new browser tab.
3. Ranking Report
The Title column links will appear for all roasts whether or not the user is subscribed to the plus service. Clicking on one of these links will cause the roast to be displayed in Artisan. Whenever Artisan is blocked it will forward the roast profile to the Viewer for display. The Viewer will display the roast profile so long as it is not blocked.
Enjoy using the Artisan family of apps!
Marko and Dave
