Customizing the main Solomon Menu

When you click on the link for Modules, you typically get a complete list of all Solomon modules.  Although this is impressive for the sales people to talk about, as a user having to wade this list can be daunting.  Why not just modify the menu to show only the modules you use for your company. This article will show you how to globally change the menu structure as well as how to create menu structure which is unique to a single computer.

Typical menu structure

The trick is to understand how Solomon creates it menus.  There is a file, delta.mnu, which is located on the main program area that your Solomon is loaded. (note; this is the same folder that the program parent.exe is located).  The program should NOT be open with a word processing program, like word or wordpad, because these programs will corrupt this file.  We recommend you use the standard text editor program on your computer called notepad.exe.  Also we recommend that only the system administrator / master users make these changes; because improper changes can cause global access issue problems for all users.

Simplifying your menu structure:

1) Always create a back up copy of the delta.mnu file; before you attempt to make any changes.

2) Using notepad.exe open the file, delta.mnu, and look around.  You will see the hierarchy of the menu structures for each of the modules.

3) When simplifying menu structures, you can go about these two ways.  Method 1 is to add an '*’, asterisk, to column one on each line which you want to suppress.  The asterisk causes the line to be treated like a comment line.  Method 2, which is the one I typically use, is to delete lines which related to menu structures or sections which you are not using.  The deleting of lines is more efficient because of the number of lines which you need to comment out is often very large; hence it is a big administrative task.  (Note: you can get a complete menu structures from a 'clean' copy of the delta.mnu file, which is located on the master program CD for your Solomon version)

When using notepad.exe there is a trick, which you need to remember, when saving the modified delta.mnu file.  Choose file, save as, and navigate to the area that the original delta.mnu file was found.   Next you need to change the field called ‘save as file type’, to all.  When you have this setting, your file will be saved with the desired name: delta.mnu, not the undesired name: delta.mnu.txt.

Here is an illustration of saving the file in notepad.exe:

Example of how modified menu structure shows up in Solomon.

Creating a customized version of your menu structure for different computers/users

There can be times that you want to simply a menu to only show a sub set of the menu choices, such as for an AP clerk menu choices.   You might only have 3 or 4 choices for a specific user, which greatly simplifies the learning curve for new users. 

To accomplish this goal, follow these steps:

1. Create a folder on the local machine.  For example C:\Solomon\Menu

2. Copy the DELTA.MNU from the Solomon CD into the folder created in step 1 or from the main Solomon Iv folder and remove the read-only attribute.

3. Open the DELTA.MNU using a text editor (DO NOT use any other word processing files); edit as desired and save.

4. Open the SOLOMON.INI file on the local machine using a text editor, and add the following section:

[Read Directory]
Menu File=C:\Solomon\Menu\Delta.mnu  (or path to the folder created in step 1)

5. Save changes and close SOLOMON.INI.

Below is a sample of a modified Solomon.ini file  which shows only a few  menus in the modified version of Delta.mnu

Here is an example of a simplified menu structure for limited choices for an AP Clerk.

Please note that if you choose to create a local version of delta.mnu on your local machine, this is not the normal configuration.  Whenever you are talking to technical support at Solomon or at Systematic Solutions, make sure you mention this unique configuration.