Once the program is launched, it will open with a menu on the left, showing you the major sections of the program: Contacts, Donations and Pledges, Publications and Distribution Lists, Events and Tasks, and Reports. The menu also lets you easily get to some of the Settings for the program that you can customize, and a link to this Help section. Click on a word in the menu to go to that section.
Notice that just above the menu, and just under the words "CC Non Proft," there are two small gray boxes with faint arrows in them. These are for navigation in the system. You will find them on every screen in the same place. When you have navigated around in the system these arrows become active and you can use them to go back to a previous screen or forward to the next screen that you have been on.
Once you navigate away from the "Home" screen you will find a link "Home" to the left of the arrows (next to the CCI logo) that you can click on to immediately bring you back to the Home screen.
To help you get around in the system wherever you see a little orange triangle next to an item in the system you can click on that orange triangle to take you to a screen that will show you details about the item. For instance, once you have added some Contacts to your system, when you are on the Home page and have selected the Contacts menu item, you will see the list of your contacts on the right. Clicking on the orange triangle next to the name of the person or group will take you to the details of the contact.
There are two different ways to add new items. The first way is to click on the button that says "Add" with a white plus sign inside a green circle. The second way is to use the button in the status bar at the top of the screen. This works when you are already on the screen for a contact, a donation, or an event, and you want to add a new one of those items. Click on the button in the status bar for New Contact, or New Donation, etc. to give you a fresh screen to enter information.
When you want to find something in the system, and the list of possibilities is too long in that section of the Home screen, you can click on the "Search" button with the blue magnifying glass to quickly find what you are looking for. First, on the Home screen select the topic you want from the menu on the left. Then click on the Search button at the bottom of the right side. This will take you to a screen where you can fill in as little or as much information as you want to narrow your search. Then, either press the Enter key, or click on the "Perform Find" button in the Status Bar at the top of the screen to get your results. Be sure to notice the number shown next to the green circle in the Status Bar. This tells you how many items were found. If there was more than one you can scroll through what was found by clicking on the right-hand "page" in the picture of the notebook in the upper left-hand corner of the Status Bar.
For Contacts, in addition to the Search button, there is an even quicker way to narrow your search. From the Contacts list on the Home screen, notice the white oval with the gray magnifying glass above the column labeled "Contacts." Type in any part of a name you are looking for, from either the first or last name, and then press the tab key or click out of this search box. The list of contact names will immediately shrink to just those that match what you typed in. Click on the orange triangle by the name you want to see that person or group's details.