The kitchen display system (KDS) provides an alternative to requisition printing in a kitchen. The system replaces the printer with monitors that display ticket information. The content of the ticket is the same as on the requisition, with additional functionality to show as past time. Users can bump orders, recall the last order bump, and print the order to a requisition printer upon completion. The user interacts with the system either via the touchscreen or the bump bar. Hardware information can be found in the hardware article.

How KDS Works

The kitchen display system is treated by the application as an additional printer and is associated with printer groups on a department level. If a KDS printer is associated with items being sent, a HTML file containing the contents of the requisition is created. It is then picked up by the KDS and displayed. New tickets are added to the end of the existing tickets.

To select a ticket, users will either press the ticket on the screen or use the number keys on the bump bar to select. All actions below require selecting the order first. When the user is done working on a ticket, they will press either the Bump button on the screen or the Bump button on the bump bar. This will remove the ticket from the screen. Users can use the Recall Order button on the screen or the Recall button on the bump bar to bring back the most recently bumped order to be displayed on the screen. Users can also select and zoom in on existing orders to get a better look at the contents. This is done by selecting the Summary button or the Summary button on the bump bar. To close out of the zoomed in ticket, users can either press the ticket or press the Home button on the bump bar. Scrolling is accomplished by the scroll bar on the side of the screen or the Scroll button on the bump bar.

If there are multiple tickets for the same order, when one of the tickets is selected, all other tickets with the order are also highlighted in a light yellow to let the users see the additional tickets. Once a ticket has passed its past due time, it will turn orange on the screen to alert the user. If late time is enabled, when the ticket passes its late time it will start to flash orange.

When an order is bumped, it can optionally be sent to a requisition printer. The order is only sent once all tickets for the order are no longer on the screen.

Clicking the Mode button on the bump bar while a ticket is selected will open a dialog that displays the ticket split up by seat so it is easier to distinguish what items go with what seat. Clicking the Mode button while a ticket is not selected will open an Additional Functions dialog, which will change the behavior of certain bump bar buttons. While that Additional Functions dialog is open, the Scroll and Summary buttons on the bump bar can be used to zoom in and out of the kds to make the tickets appear larger/smaller.

KDS Display Limit

The KDS will display a maximum of 50 tickets at one time. Once the KDS hits that limit, new tickets are put in a queue and will not display until enough tickets have been bumped to bring the new tickets down the queue. When the limit has been hit, the ticket count on the bottom of the KDS will flash red and display the total count (ex "Tickets: 50 / 65") to indicate how many tickets are currently pending.

There is a scheduled job that runs once a night to mark all tickets from the previous day as bumped. For those changes to be reflected and for those tickets to be removed from view, the KDS needs to be refreshed. Some communities leave thier KDS running overnight, so those changes aren't picked up. To assist with this, the KDS will check if it needs a refresh every hour by checking if its oldest ticket has been system-bumped. If so, a prompt will appear, telling users to click Bump to clear the old tickets. When they do, the prompt will go away and the KDS will be refreshed, removing old tickets. The same refreshing happens when bumping an order while the KDS is at its display limit.

Prevent the KDS from Falling Asleep

By default, the KDS will fall asleep after 30 minutes if there is no interaction with it. If this behavior is not desired, an active period can be set with the Active Window Start Time and Active Window End Time. Between these two times, the KDS will not fall asleep. The Keep Monitor Awake Time field also must be set, and it should generally be set to 14 minutes. This field makes the KDS run a script every X minutes to keep the KDS from falling asleep. We set it to 14 to ensure we get two chances to run the script, just in case the first time fails. NOTE: This feature is only available on the 7.10 OS image and after.

How to Set-Up KDS

On the Printers page, create a new printer.

• Printer Type – Display
• KDS Terminal Serial Number – Serial number of the terminal that will be running the KDS system, typically a POSX serial number
• Check For New Tickets How Often? (seconds) – How often should the system check for new tickets to display in seconds
• Display Ticket as Past Due (minutes) – After how many minutes should the system display the ticket as past due (orange)
• Display Ticket as Late (minutes) – After how many minutes should the system display the ticket as late (flashing orange). Late time takes priority over Past Due time.
• Kitchen Display Bump Printer Group (optional) – If the system should print to a requisition printer(s) after being bumped, select the printer group that the order should print to. This printer group will need to be set up on the Departments page as well.
• Display Mode - The maximum height to allow long tickets to expand. The default size will allow tickets to double in height if the content extends beyond the ticket height. Compact disallows that expansion, and Long allows ticket to triple the ticket height as necessary. In all cases, if the content still extends beyond the allowed height, the ticket becomes scrollable.
• Default Zoom - Zoom percentage that the KDS should be set at when the KDS is loaded. 
• Keep Monitor Awake Time (minutes) - After this many minutes during the active time, a script will be run on the KDS to keep it from falling asleep.
• Active Window Start Time - Between this time and the Active Window End Time the KDS will be kept awake.
• Active Window End Time - Between this time and the Active Window Start Time the KDS will be kept awake.
• Ticket Order Timer Displayed - Control whether the Order Timer is displayed. Displays a counter in minutes of how long a ticket has been accessed by the KDS.
• Non-Overdue Background Color - Set the base color for the KDS ticket when rendered to the screen.
• Overdue Background Color - Color the ticket on the KDS will change to when the ticket becomes overdue.
• Selected Background Color - Color the ticket on the KDS will become when selected by user.
• Associated Background Color - Color the Ticket on the KDS will become when a different ticket of the same order is selected.

On the Terminals page, create a new terminal with the serial number of the KDS terminal. This will allow the system to create rows in Computer Net Settings.

Link the printer to a printer group on the departments page.