Automatic Print from Hold

Objectives

Set up automatic printing based on items placed on hold.

Prerequisites

Print server or exclusive use of kitchen display systems at community

Access to back office application

Instructions

Overview

This functionality allows communities to place items on hold and have them sent to the kitchen automatically based on a time set on the item level or based on the minimum time of all items.

Please note: Community must have a print server or exclusively use kitchen display systems for this functionality to work

Back Office Set-Up

1. On the Modes tab, populate ‘Print From Hold Enabled’ to either ‘Use Item Time’ or ‘Use Minimum Order Time’. ‘Use Item Time’ will set the time to be printed based on the number of minutes to hold for each item on the order where print from hold is applicable. ‘Use Minimum Order Time’ will set the time to be printed based on the minimum number of minutes to hold of all items on the order where print from hold is applicable.
2. On the Item Management tab, set ‘Automatic Print from Hold Enabled’ to ‘Enabled’. Populate ‘Number of Minutes to Hold’ with the number of minutes the system should wait to take the item off hold and send to the requisition printer.

Touchscreen Workflow

1. Users place items on the order on hold and sends the order to kitchen. Any items not on hold will print.
2. The system will then determine what value to set as the hold until time. See below section on Determining Hold Until Date.
3. A scheduled job runs every minute to see if there are any items on hold and the hold until date has passed. If any are found, the items are taken off hold.
4. A requisition is created for the order and is added to the print queue or a job is created for the kitchen display. The print server will then pick up the job and send it to the appropriate requisition printer.
1. If printing succeeds, the system will mark the items as sent.
2. If printing fails, the system will send an email listing the reason for the failure.

Determining Hold Until Date

Use Item Time

Any order items on hold will be checked to see if they have ‘Automatic Print From Hold’ set to ‘Enabled’. If any order items are found, a hold until date is populated on the order item based on the ‘Number of Minutes to Hold’ populated on the item.

Use Minimum Order Time

Any order items on hold will be checked to see if they have ‘Automatic Print From Hold’ set to ‘Enabled’. If any order items are found, the system will first check to see if any items on the order with a hold until date were already sent to a printer. If order items were previously sent, the system will set the hold until date as the current date/time for all eligible order items so the order items will print the next time the scheduled job runs.

If no order items with a hold until date have been sent to a printer, the system will determine a base send time and the minimum hold time to calculate the new hold until date.

If there are order items which currently have a hold until date set, the base send time will be set to the minimum of hold until date - hold time. For example, if existing order items have a hold until date of 12:05 and the items have hold times of 5, 8, and 10 minutes, the system will set the base send time to 12:00 (5 minutes before 12:05).

If there are no items with a  hold until date set, the system will check if there are any items for the order that have been sent. If there are order items that have been sent, the system will set the base send time to the maximum successful print time. If no order items have been sent, the base send time will be set to the current date/time.

The minimum hold time will be the minimum item ‘Number of Minutes to Hold’ for all items on hold where ‘Automatic Print From Hold’ is enabled. For example, if items associated with the order have hold times of 5, 8, and 10 minutes, the minimum hold time will be 5 minutes.

All eligible order items will have their hold until date set to the base send time plus the minimum hold time.

Use Minimum Hold Time Examples

Scenario A

Scenario B

Scenario C