Pictorial Introduction

Here is the main menu. Notice the report buttons in the top area and the mostly administrative buttons in the lower area. The large box for a message area let's you know what is going on.

On the right of the header area you see "Test Game". That's user-selectable text to help you keep things straight when you have multiple games going and have more than one Intel Monkey open.

If you vertically stretch the window, the message area takes all of the additional space.

The message area scrolls in case you want to review something.

The configuration menu. These are user configuration items. When you configure "AE Home" doing so will also automatically configure the items in the same group. If you are doing testing like I was when I took this pic, you might then set "archive" to point somewhere else, but normally you would just leave it pointing to "SAVE/archive". Notice that this software makes slash (/) and backslash (\) interchangeable.

Database maintenance. If and when you want to create a new database all you have to do is push a button. The old database will be renamed (-old##) in case you change your mind or make a mistake.

As Intel Monkey is further developed new features will be added, and some of those will require new database tables and fields. After an Intel Monkey upgrade the databases can be brought up to the new specs with a click of the Upgrade button. The Check button will check the structure of the database against the specs in the configuration files (those are what a new version of Intel Monkey might change).

The heart of Intel Monkey is the reports. Everything else exists to bring you the reports. Here is what the SigInt report look like when you first start it.

In the above pic you see on the right side an area where EVERY field can be filtered on and/or sorted on. Filters can be typed in directly on that main report screen, but many times it is easier to click on "Edit" and use the pop-up.

Many pop-ups contain pick lists, like this list of bases. Here you see the result of Wake Island being selected, then submitted by "Enter Selected". That put the filter into the edit box just below. Notice the item to be filtered on is between vertical bars |like this|. The first part of a filter is the filter command, in this case INEM, but you never have to fill that in manually (or remember it) unless you want to. More on that later.

After I clicked "Done" the pop-up closed. Back on the main report screen I also clicked on the check mark in the Date filter to change that from "Active" (see earlier pic) to "Inactive". I left the soft selection for Date as it was. Notice the Base filter near the bottom. It is "Active" but not blue like Date was before. Instead it's a lighter color. The lighter color signifies that it has changed since the last time filters and sorts were actually "Executed". It's sort of like giving an assistant a bunch of orders all at once and then finally saying "OK, now go do it!". In Intel Monkey reports "Execute" is "Go do it!".

And here is what things look like after pressing "Execute Active Filters & Sorts".

A little more on the filters pop-up. Notice the buttons INclude/EXclude, Exact/Contains, Match case/No match case. By toggling those choices you control what filter is made. In the prior example we INcluded Wake Island, but we could also have said to EXclude Wake Island and we would have seen all the records where Base was not Wake Island. Here is the break down.

IN means include.

EX means exclude.

E means an exact match. So |Wake Island| would not match "Wake Island Atoll".

C means contains. So |Wake Island| would match "Wake Island Atoll".

M means match case. |wake island| would not match "Wake Island".

N means no match case. |wake island| would match "Wake Island".

Notice just below those radio buttons is a large button that says "Insert Blank Template...". Right now it also says "[INEM ||]", which is the actual blank template it will insert. If you change one of the radio buttons, perhaps switch from Exact to Contains, that will change accordingly, in our example to "[INCM ||]".

But what does it mean to insert a blank template? Press the button and that template will be inserted into the editing box just below. Then you can enter your own filter term between the vertical bars. Experiment for yourself. Try out the |wake island| example described above with Match case and No match case to get a feel for how it works.

Earlier you saw the pick list for bases. Here is a different type of pick list. I chopped off this screen pic because the list of ship types is very long so it goes top to bottom of the monitor and you can scroll it even further.

After you click on a ship type the filter will be added to the filter box. In this pic I have also then opened up the other pick list for "Ship Groups".

When I clicked on one of them the appropriate filter was inserted. As you can see that filter has multiple terms!

Here are the overall rules. A filter starts with "[". Then comes the four letter command (in this case it is "INEM"). A space " " separates the command and the first filter term, then the term is enclosed in vertical bars (for example |DD|). If there are additional filter terms they should be separated from each other by a space " ". A filter ends with "]".

Notice also that we can have multiple filters at once. They are all combined before being given to the database when we press "Execute".

Here is the main report screen after we pressed "Done". I also already clicked to make the Base filter Inactive and deleted the Base filter from that edit box.

Here it is again after we pressed "Execute".

So how do sorts work? Here is an example.

To make an example that show things clearly I created a filter with all the warship types. Notice the sorts that are active. I wanted to sort by ship type, then ship name, then date.

The SigInt report covers all Sigint so the field names are generic to account for LCU or whatever might show up. "SubjType" will give us the ship type, so that is Active with Sort Level 1. "Subject" will give us the ship name and is Active with Sort Level 2. "Date" is Active with Sort Level 3. Think of Sort Levels as priority: priority 1 is higher than priority 2, and so on.

Look at the results and see how the list sorted as we wanted.

Filters and Sorts work the same way on all report screens. Pick lists only help you to make a filter; if you type in the exact same filter it will work the exact same way. When there is no pick list for what you want you can use the radio buttons plus the "Insert Blank Template" button to construct the command you want, then either type in or copy-paste in what you want to filter on.

Filter pop-ups for date fields are set up differently, they are customized for dates.

Filter pop-ups for hex numbers are also customized for, well, hex numbers.

In both cases you can type in what you want or use the construction buttons provided.

Dates have some extra commands. You might have already noticed the "[LAST |30|]" data filter that most report screens start with when you open them. That means "the last 30 days that are in the database". You can also specify start and end dates. Here is a look at a date pop-up. You can set a date and then click on Start, End, or enter a single date. You can also exclude a single date. Or you can select one of the preset LAST buttons. Of course, as with all filters you can also type directly into the edit box.

Here is that last SigInt report with our date filter added and all other settings the same.

This is what a hex number pop-up looks like. You get the idea by now.

The next image is reduced resolution. This is the Damage Report, which shows damage to bases and industry (it's one of the Combat reports). Notice there are so many fields we have to scroll to use the filter boxes. In this case I sorted first by Loc (location) and second by Date.

I also filtered on "Fires" using filter "[EXEM ||]". EX means exclude, and notice the filter term is empty! So I have told it to exclude all blank "Fires". The result is a report showing only records that have Fires, sorted by location and date.

To make that filter I opened the pop-up for the Fires field, clicked the radio button to change from INclude to EXclude, then I clicked "Enter Blank Template". Voila!

Here is the Battles report showing all mentions of "CV Akagi". The filter is [INCM |CV Akagi|]. It has to be C for Contains because the Battle field is the entire text of the battle. Also notice if we said |Akagi| instead of |CV Akagi| we would also get battles containing squadrons with "Akagi" in their name instead of just "CV Akagi" as we want.

PS: Remember to always limit Battles with a date filter or (as here) with some other restrictive filter. Otherwise the report can get too large. 1 day of battles is the full AE Combat report!