Happy Houe

[aleemu]

Hi.
Thanks for the great software masha allah. Im using it in my cafe and it is working fine alhmadhulillah. My question is im starting a promotion in my cafe. And in this promotion, every customer gets a special price in selected products with in a 5pm to 7pm.
I want SambaPOS to automatically change the price for the given time and after 7pm again it should change to normal.

Thanks and jazakallahkhairan.

[emre]

Selamunaleykum aleemu, Thank you for your wishes.
Sorry for responding late. I was preparing for writing a tutorial about happy hour implementation but I've just remembered I already did that
http://sambapos.org/en/content/sambapos-251-test-release

Thanks.

[QMcKay]

Hi All,

I read the tutorial on a timed Happy Hour and created the various Triggers, Actions, and Rules.  The only problem with this approach is that the POS must be running during the Trigger time(s).  During testing, I've always missed the Trigger(s) since I didn't have the software running at the time, so the Price Change(s) do not come into effect (my Happy Hour period is between 15:00-17:00.

Is there a way to check the clock to see if we're within a certain time so that Happy Hour will be triggered even if the POS is launched within the period?

Alternatively, I've tried setting up a manual Activate/Deactive using a Ticket Tag called HAPPY HOUR, with Sub-tags named Begin HH and End HH to fire the Actions HH Activate and HH Deactivate, but I can't seem to get it to work.  I assume I have the wrong Event chosen?

[QMcKay]

Hmm... I had SambaPOS running before the 3pm trigger and still my Happy Hour price definition (HH) is not in effect.  Something must be wrong in my settings??

[QMcKay]

I have a feeling the problem was that I had no Department selected in the Action, because now the Trigger/Rule/Action for HH is working.  Is this really necessary?  I used to have 2 departments "To Go" (Fast Food) and "To Stay" (A-la-carte), and I figured if I left the Action Dept blank, it would apply to both, but it seems it applies to neither.  Can I use an asterisk (*) in it's place?

In any case, I switched to use a single Dept setup, with a special table called "To Go", and the Dept is both Fast/A-la-carte.

[emre]

Hello QTM, First of all thank you very much for the valuable inputs. I've found some minor bugs with your help and I hope to release a fix soon.

Triggers will work even you pass the trigger time but if you pass both triggers (activate and deactivate) they will work sequentially so if deactivate trigger works after activate trigger it might seem not worked. You can add "Show Popup Message" action to ensure if they worked fine or not. I'll sort triggers by their "last trigger time" to ensure they'll work in expected order.

There is a useful little trick in action parameter setup for some actions but it sometimes confuses new users. When you enter a value in department name and delete it it's name will remain empty and it will mean "department name = nothing". Since you don't have nameless department it won't work. To be able to remove a parameter you need to change action type and re-enter parameters. Unused parameters removed from the list when you save and re-open action.

Edit: After reading your post second time I've noticed your issue is not empty department name. Yes you need to enter a department name to make this action work because we keep active price list by department. For example you may want to create happy hour promotion for a-la-carte but not delivery department.

But this won't be a problem for you. Splitting to-go and to-stay is a good idea. You can create multiple "enable-disable" actions for each department and execute them at once on trigger event.

[QMcKay]

Thanks emre,

Everything works as advertised if I am sure to select a Dept in the Action.  It may be useful to be able to use * in case you want the Action to apply to ALL Departments, otherwise, you'll need to create the same Action for every Dept that you have.  I noticed the * for Dept somewhere else in the program, so I thought it might apply to actions as well, though I've not tested the possibility.

You are correct, I don't need to have the POS running before the Trigger - the problem was with the Action having no Department.

Thanks again,
Q