How to use Sales in “standalone” mode
Connection status is determined by looking at the “M&M” lights in the lower right-hand corner of the main Sales screen.
The following table lists and describes these lights.
Light/Button | Description | Color coding |
P | PrintEZ – Appears when PrintEZ application is active. Light only. Note: PrintEZ is used only when printing graphics, not any print job. | White only |
S | SalesEZ – Indicates current connection status to SalesEZ application. Light/button. | Green = connected Yellow = verbosity of application is set to greater than 0 Red = disconnected |
C | Charge Cards – Indicates current connection status to credit card server. Green or red refers to the success or failure of the last credit card transaction. The button starts green when Sales starts up, before any charge card transaction is made, even if the credit card server is unavailable. Light/button. | Green = connected Red = disconnected |
B | BookEZ – Indicates current connection status to BookEZ application. Light/button. | Green = connected Yellow = verbosity of application is set to greater than 0 Red = disconnected |
R | RentEZ – Indicates current connection status to RentEZ application. Light/button. | Green = connected Yellow = verbosity of application is set to greater than 0 Red = disconnected |
As the table indicates, three of these lights are also buttons that can be used to connect/disconnect from the Middleware (S − SalesEZ, B − BookEZ and R − RentEZ). In addition, the credit card light (C) can also be used as a button to connect/disconnect from the credit card server. When any of these four lights is red, the salespoint is operating in “standalone” mode. Rarely are all four M&M lights red. Many salespoints don’t use Booking or Rentals, so the B and R lights are red by default. If there is a severe network problem, then it is possible that the salespoint might lose connection to both the middleware server and the credit card server, but this is unlikely. Usually one or the other is still available.
If the salespoint loses its connection to the credit card server, it can continue to process credit cards in offline mode, as described in the Salesware Installation Guide. If the salespoint loses connection to the Middleware, salespoint operations still work normally except for functionality that requires a connection to active data that is shared by all salespoints. Lost functionality is as follows:
• You cannot use Max4Sale and Points4Sale capability if SalesEZ application is unreachable (however, overrides can be performed for operators with appropriate security)
• You cannot recall saved sales and reservations if SalesEZ application is unreachable (unless saved while still offline, which is somewhat involved – for directions on how to do this, go to
http://google.siriusware.com and search for “Cannot recall sale unless SalesEZ is connected”)
• You cannot look up guests and passes if SalesEZ application is unreachable (unless the GuestUpdate and PassUpdate .INI settings were used to keep local copies, but this adds significant overhead to salespoint operations)
• You cannot use In-House Cards or check In-House Cards balances if SalesEZ application is unreachable
• You cannot validate items if SalesEZ application is unreachable (this of course also applies to ScanMan and GateKeeper modules)
• You cannot perform bookings (privates or pods) if BookEZ application is unreachable
• Retail lookup of items works fine assuming the web.config setting LimitLocalItems is set up correctly
• Servers cannot recall tables from any salespoint for Food and Beverage Table Service; they must use the same salespoint where the order was originally input.
