Print Jobs Based on Users

[emre]

I'm sure I'm really understanding something wrong about your setup. I couldn't understand how bar terminal creates a table ticket.. Is it a restaurant customer or bar customer? If he is sitting at restaurant, how he gives his orders at bar? If he is sitting at bar why he orders to a restaurant table?

If a bar customer moves to a restaurant table without paying his previous bar ticket, restaurant user will switch to bar screen, find his ticket, move it to a table and go on... Restaurant user will do that because restaurant user knows where customer sits. If he goes back to bar without paying to restaurant, this time bar user will click all tickets, find his table ticket and do what needed...

That settlement issue will only prevent restaurant users from settling bar tickets before moving it to a table. I don't know why bar customers wants to pay at restaurant without sitting there?

Update: If I display all tickets to all departments some of our users will complain because of seeing unpaid delivery tickets next to table tickets. Should we really display all open tickets to all departments? Maybe you are dealing with a different issue that we are not talking about. Why you need to see all tickets when there is no department type selected? Where are you using it?

[emre]

I think I understood your problem. There is a little trick that might be useful for bar terminal. You can close tickets at fast food screen without payments by tagging them with a ticket tag. Create a ticket tag button named "Seat", add a single tag value as "Seat" and assign it to "Bar" department. After restart you'll see the "Seat" button at fast food screen. If bar user needs to leave ticket open he'll click at "Seat" button and the "Close" button will appear Or you can configure tag for automatically closing ticket.

Clicking Seat button when there is no open ticket will display all tickets tagged as "Seat" too.

[JohnS]

I'm sure I'm really understanding something wrong about your setup. I couldn't understand how bar terminal creates a table ticket.. Is it a restaurant customer or bar customer? If he is sitting at restaurant, how he gives his orders at bar? If he is sitting at bar why he orders to a restaurant table?

Customer may go to the Bar and get drinks after they have been seated in the Restaurant but before they have ordered.

If a bar customer moves to a restaurant table without paying his previous bar ticket, restaurant user will switch to bar screen, find his ticket, move it to a table and go on... Restaurant user will do that because restaurant user knows where customer sits. If he goes back to bar without paying to restaurant, this time bar user will click all tickets, find his table ticket and do what needed...

All Tickets is only available for Fast Food department type - which is fine but you can't close a ticket in this type, it has to be assigned to a table or customer. This will probably be the way it will run as we done want open tickets without a table or customer assigned.

That settlement issue will only prevent restaurant users from settling bar tickets before moving it to a table. I don't know why bar customers wants to pay at restaurant without sitting there?

During restaurant hours, the Bar can not serve coffee, tea or snacks, therefore they must order from the Restaurant, and they may pay for all drinks and sit in the lounge. Some customers will be allowed to run tabs, and this is where flexibility comes in.

Maybe you are dealing with a different issue that we are not talking about. Why you need to see all tickets when there is no department type selected? Where are you using it?

No department type allows closing of tickets which is handy for 2 or 3 staff using one terminal as tickets can be suspended so other sales can be processed, then the suspended ticket is selected and sale completed.

Update: If I display all tickets to all departments some of our users will complain because of seeing unpaid delivery tickets next to table tickets.

Yes, and this is where I needed to know if it was by design or not. And it is - so that's OK.

[JohnS]

I think I understood your problem. There is a little trick that might be useful for bar terminal. You can close tickets at fast food screen without payments by tagging them with a ticket tag. Create a ticket tag button named "Seat", add a single tag value as "Seat" and assign it to "Bar" department. After restart you'll see the "Seat" button at fast food screen. If bar user needs to leave ticket open he'll click at "Seat" button and the "Close" button will appear Or you can configure tag for automatically closing ticket.

Clicking Seat button when there is no open ticket will display all tickets tagged as "Seat" too.

And there is the workaround
Thank you.

[emre]

John I've noticed restaurant user won't be able to see tagged tickets by switching to bar menu and clicking 'Seat' button. He still can use "All Tickets" button but I'll fix that too.

[emre]

I've released 2.88.

Note: On the first message of this topic we talked about print jobs. I fine tuned map selection by order department too. It will work as expected now. Thanks.

[JohnS]

Emre,

Works great - exactly what we need, and the settlement restrictions are working as expected.

The only thing I have found is in the WPR that the Department Totals heading is left justified on the screen and when its printed its right justified. See attached.

Note: On the first message of this topic we talked about print jobs. I fine tuned map selection by order department too. It will work as expected now. Thanks.

This topic did end up long and drawn out, and finished in a different subject, but look at what was achieved. SambaPOS now supports franchises within shops and documents all cross sales.
Awesome feature.

Thank you Emre.

[JohnS]

OK, so now back to the original problem.

When a Restaurant terminal orders Bar products, we need a ticket to print out at the Bar with the order.

Solution is to have two order tickets and two print jobs.
- Kitchen Order Template & Kitchen Order Print Job
- Bar Order Template & Bar Order Print Job

All terminals will have Kitchen Order Print Job.
Only Restaurant terminals will have Bar Order Print Job.

[emre]

A single printjob should work too. First map line for Bar department and a second one for the rest.

[emre]

Emre,

Works great - exactly what we need, and the settlement restrictions are working as expected.

The only thing I have found is in the WPR that the Department Totals heading is left justified on the screen and when its printed its right justified. See attached.

Note: On the first message of this topic we talked about print jobs. I fine tuned map selection by order department too. It will work as expected now. Thanks.

This topic did end up long and drawn out, and finished in a different subject, but look at what was achieved. SambaPOS now supports franchises within shops and documents all cross sales.
Awesome feature.

Thank you Emre.

John, In software development good communication is everything. That conversation might ended up with a result of nothing. Mostly your persistence and patience for delivering the information did it. From technical side that was not a big implementation but I think we handled an interesting case.

While evaluating a software people focuses on features and if there are lots of buttons, menus or settings they thinks that software is good. Features by themselves have no value. The important thing is what cases that software can handle. There are lots of software filled with awesome features but %80 of it implemented without thinking the full case and when user tries to use these features together in real life it simply doesn't work as expected.

Lots of development teams does this mistake. Thinking about nice features is simple but generally it ends with no real value. Thinking about cases is harder and needs more time but when people contributes like John did, it generates great value. Technically we only added a department selection feature for terminals and added about 40-50 lines of code. Any developer can do that. Understanding the need is our real job. I hope every restaurant owners focuses on their cases instead of the features they think they'll need.

John thank you very much again for investing your time for that great result.

[JohnS]

A single printjob should work too. First map line for Bar department and a second one for the rest.

Emre,

That's what I thought, but the department in the printer mapping is the active department, not the physical department. On a Restaurant terminal, to print a Bar order from the Bar menu the department in printer mapping is Bar - which means all Bar terminals will print Bar orders too.

I actually typed all this up ready to post, but decided not to as separate print jobs fixed the problem.

If you change the department print mapping to physical, then you need to list all of the product groups to print - too messy.
The other option is to add Terminal Name to the printer mapping which will replace the need for two print jobs.

What we have now is two simple print jobs that work.

[emre]

Last note: It might seem weird at first but I intentionally right aligned all sub titles over numbers for easier reading.

[JohnS]

That makes sense. It just looks out of place compared to the rest of the layout.

Maybe a blank line above it may look better.

[emre]

A single printjob should work too. First map line for Bar department and a second one for the rest.

Emre,

That's what I thought, but the department in the printer mapping is the active department, not the physical department. On a Restaurant terminal, to print a Bar order from the Bar menu the department in printer mapping is Bar - which means all Bar terminals will print Bar orders too.
...

hmm... doesn't direct bar orders prints? Yes, not needed
Since we'll create a separate terminal setting for bar, alternatively we can remove print job from bar terminal.

[emre]

That makes sense. It just looks out of place compared to the rest of the layout.

Maybe a blank line above it may look better.

I tried it before but adding blank line creates longer prints and people said it wastes paper It will look fine on thermal print. If not we can think different solutions.