1) Your unit is currently by-passed. The two yellow handle valves connected to the softener need to be open while the Black handle valve on the left will need to be closed for water to flow through the softener.
2) The brine tank will need to contain a supply of salt.
If the softener has been by-passed for some time, it may be wise to discard any remaining salt, dump any brine water to drain, and clean the brine tank using a small amount of bleach (non scented) in water.
Once the brine tank is clean, add two or three gallons of water with a small amount (~ 3 tablespoons) of bleach and then perform a manual regeneration to sanitize the resin within the softener.
Once the resin has been sanitized, add a few bags of water softener salt to the brine tank along with 5 gallons of water. Wait for at least 2.5 hours to permit salt to be dissolved into a brine solution and then perform another manual regeneration to recharge the softening capacity of the resin.
After the regeneration has completed, (likely 1-2 hours), the unit should be putting out soft water to your plumbing fixtures but if you have a tank type water heater, it may take a few days of use before the stored water has been replaced with soft water.
Regarding programming, you may wish to post some photos of the current control settings while also stating your water's hardness level, iron and manganese content, number of people in the house and the softener's BLFC number. This stands for Brine Line Flow Control which should be printed on a label, usually located close to the drain connection. If you know the softening capacity of the softener, that would also be useful.
Edited to correct > Manganese and > BLFC