Frontline: Quick Resto at the Outline 2015 Festival
Last weekend, on the territory of the Karacharovsky Mechanical Plant (KMZ), part of the buildings of which were decommissioned and surviving their last days, it was unusually bright and loud. A two-day Outline 2015 electronic music festival took place in Moscow - a grand event that brought together renowned artists from around the globe and received 18,000 guests. This year, the festival slightly shifted the format to a city picnic and organized a health food market, veg café, installations and outdoor entertainment. The participants of the festival bought food and drinks in numerous points scattered throughout the vast territory of the site. They enjoyed high-quality electronic music and did not even suspect that the food places were not simple tents and outdoor cafes, but automated points with the latest technology. What was the holiday from the point of view of the Quick Resto team, we will tell in this post.
For two days it was necessary to automate the points that will provide food and drinks for 18,000 people. Such an influx of visitors is a considerable load even for stable, tuned and tested equipment. The task was not trivial:
Eyes are scared, and hands are doing. We were sure that we could count on our cloudy Quick Resto and it did not let us down. For work at the festival, 33 cash desks were deployed - standard Quick Resto equipment was used for their smooth operation (we already wrote about this in detail):
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The first difficulties arose with the equipment. The customer purchased MSR213U card readers, which were not supported by our default service. The problem was solved in 5 hours - we created a distribution for the QR Box with the support of this particular type of equipment.
As you can see from the photos, the infrastructure for deploying an automated cafe management system was not the best. There were many concerns related to network stability, voltage, even with the organization of the location and connection of the tablet terminals. It was important to do everything not only quickly, but also steadily, efficiently, so that no troubles happen, ranging from accidentally pulling the cord to problems with communication and electricity.
For two days of preparation and two days of the festival, the terminals were served by two administrators around the clock. Fortunately, serious force majeure did not happen, not counting the minor problems with power supply, which nevertheless happened - everything was solved quickly and the terminal network was restored.
It is well known that the adaptation of personnel to work with the new software takes enough time. In the situation with the festival this time was not. The employees of the power points appreciated the simplicity and clarity of the Quick Resto interface - they worked on the tablet’s usual touchscreen with clear graphic elements.
The staff had no need to master the complex menu of the program and delve into the intricacies of the interface. The training took place half an hour before the start of the festival, because the staff had a lot of work: they arrived in two hours and were busy filling their bars. At each point, a three-minute express course was held - this was enough so that in a few minutes the work would boil and not stop for almost a minute.
The menu of each point was pre-recorded in the Quick Resto system through the back office, its final update took place an hour before the festival opens. This technical moment has played an important role for a quick start of work and super high-speed customer service.
But the most interesting case in the process of deploying our field automation was associated with 1C. The requirement of the customer was the unloading of all data in real time. At first glance, nothing special from a technical point of view, however, the standard unloading in 1C is designed for 1C: Accounting 3.0. And the customer was 1C: ERP 2.0, so I had to work "on the fly." Was developed uploading 1C and back to Quick Resto. To solve the problem, we implemented some functions.
Then, the customer’s 1C engineer implemented the support for the background task, since transferring each check to 1C took a lot of time, and this went against the client’s wishes. As the tests showed, 12,000 checks were loaded for 3 hours - an unaffordable luxury for such a mobile trade. The solution for working in the background made it possible to minimize the processing at the time of loading and continue to work with 1C, while up to the background solution 1C, it would stop working for the time of loading 12,000 checks. And such a simple one was unacceptable.
Now it’s hard to remember what music was like - all efforts were focused on work. For our team, this was an absolutely unprecedented experience. What seemed almost impossible was done and our Quick Resto technology passed another test — it was our Outline. It was cool. But it will be even cooler.
Great weekend to everyone!
For two days it was necessary to automate the points that will provide food and drinks for 18,000 people. Such an influx of visitors is a considerable load even for stable, tuned and tested equipment. The task was not trivial:
- bring and place equipment
- deploy an automation system for outlets in the field
- required to download reports in 1C in real time
- dates were as short as possible.
Eyes are scared, and hands are doing. We were sure that we could count on our cloudy Quick Resto and it did not let us down. For work at the festival, 33 cash desks were deployed - standard Quick Resto equipment was used for their smooth operation (we already wrote about this in detail):
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- 33 iPad as end user terminals
- three reliable check thermal printer Posiflex Aura 6900
- eight of our minicomputers QR Box for connecting peripheral equipment
- three Posiflex card readers (MR-2100U-3) and seven MSR213U readers
The first difficulties arose with the equipment. The customer purchased MSR213U card readers, which were not supported by our default service. The problem was solved in 5 hours - we created a distribution for the QR Box with the support of this particular type of equipment.
As you can see from the photos, the infrastructure for deploying an automated cafe management system was not the best. There were many concerns related to network stability, voltage, even with the organization of the location and connection of the tablet terminals. It was important to do everything not only quickly, but also steadily, efficiently, so that no troubles happen, ranging from accidentally pulling the cord to problems with communication and electricity.
For two days of preparation and two days of the festival, the terminals were served by two administrators around the clock. Fortunately, serious force majeure did not happen, not counting the minor problems with power supply, which nevertheless happened - everything was solved quickly and the terminal network was restored.
It is well known that the adaptation of personnel to work with the new software takes enough time. In the situation with the festival this time was not. The employees of the power points appreciated the simplicity and clarity of the Quick Resto interface - they worked on the tablet’s usual touchscreen with clear graphic elements.
The staff had no need to master the complex menu of the program and delve into the intricacies of the interface. The training took place half an hour before the start of the festival, because the staff had a lot of work: they arrived in two hours and were busy filling their bars. At each point, a three-minute express course was held - this was enough so that in a few minutes the work would boil and not stop for almost a minute.
The menu of each point was pre-recorded in the Quick Resto system through the back office, its final update took place an hour before the festival opens. This technical moment has played an important role for a quick start of work and super high-speed customer service.
But the most interesting case in the process of deploying our field automation was associated with 1C. The requirement of the customer was the unloading of all data in real time. At first glance, nothing special from a technical point of view, however, the standard unloading in 1C is designed for 1C: Accounting 3.0. And the customer was 1C: ERP 2.0, so I had to work "on the fly." Was developed uploading 1C and back to Quick Resto. To solve the problem, we implemented some functions.
- Unloading and loading of dishes and goods. For dishes, support for process charts was implemented, it became possible to unload process charts from Quick Resto to 1C in the form of components and load them back. Dishes can be unloaded immediately with prices. You can keep all price records in 1C, and then, through processing, update prices in Quick Resto.
- Unloading and loading of incoming invoices. Now it is possible to unload goods from 1C and load other receipts (which were entered into Quick Resto) back.
- Now you can unload the movement of goods in 1C from Quick Resto.
- The ability to download sales in 1C in the context of checks was added. In the standard unloading, sales were shipped immediately by the “Retail Sales Report” document (equivalent to the Cash Shift document in Quick Resto). Now you can unload any check from Quick Resto to 1C. And by check, you can unload all the information: the amount of cash, the amount of non-cash funds, the amount of customer's bonuses, if he made the payment by a bonus card.
Then, the customer’s 1C engineer implemented the support for the background task, since transferring each check to 1C took a lot of time, and this went against the client’s wishes. As the tests showed, 12,000 checks were loaded for 3 hours - an unaffordable luxury for such a mobile trade. The solution for working in the background made it possible to minimize the processing at the time of loading and continue to work with 1C, while up to the background solution 1C, it would stop working for the time of loading 12,000 checks. And such a simple one was unacceptable.
Now it’s hard to remember what music was like - all efforts were focused on work. For our team, this was an absolutely unprecedented experience. What seemed almost impossible was done and our Quick Resto technology passed another test — it was our Outline. It was cool. But it will be even cooler.
Great weekend to everyone!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/367647/
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