Friendly Naming for PDFs

BlueBox PDF's have always been named with the date/time stamp at the time of creation.

Today, happily, this has changed to incorporate the short-name of the document type, the customer company name and the document number. Much easier to read and recognise.

Supplier Pre-Defined Delivery Charges

In BlueBox each supplier is entered as a 'standard user' and then by adding them to the 'Creditors' user group they become enabled as a 'supplier' in the procurement module/s of the system.

Newly added fields in the bb_users table relating to suppliers and delivery charges are:

'delivery method' now with an additional field 'delivery method cost'

'delivery method two' also with its cost field 'delivery method two cost'

and finally 'free delivery over value'.

These new fields will help in defining the procurement relationship with the supplier, and the following rules apply to Purchase Orders only. Essentially what they are doing is determining if an automatic delivery charge should be applied to all PO's for this specific supplier. If either of the 'cost' values are entered, and a new PO is created with a corresponding delivery method, then the system will take that as an instruction to automatically add a delivery charge to the PO for the specified value (ex VAT).

If there is a 'free delivery over value' setting for that supplier, and the PO's grand total (inc VAT) is greater than the amount specified, then a zero-charge delivery item is added, indicating that there is no delivery to be charged for the order.

Lastly, if a delivery related item was added to the order manually, determined by the item_data name containing the words 'delivery', 'freight' or 'postage' then this process is skipped altogether, assumning that delivery has already been accounted for on the order.

New Ajax Lookup Feature for Creditor Invoice Numbers

Similar to the previous post, BlueBox now includes a Creditors Invoice Number validator which checks to see if the number entered has been used for that creditor previously.

If no supplier/creditor is entered in the form then this feature will not run. If one has been entere it will verify the uniqueness of the number entered and come back with a positive or negative message.

New Ajax Lookup Feature for SKU Codes

Maintaining a unique alphanumeric SKU code sequence is a bit of a pain. BlueBox now includes an automated alphanumeric SKU sequencer:

This new feature appears in the bb_item_data and bb_item_data_options menu.
It checks the sequence you have entered and strips out the numeric portion, looking for the next highest number to suggest. If no numbers exist for that alpha-prefix then it starts at 0001.

Setting up your BlueBox2.0 ePOS as a Customer Survey Kiosk

BlueBox ePOS terminals have a setting called Kiosk-mode which allows a touch-screen PC to be set up as a customer survey kiosk with touch screen keyboard.

Benefiting from offline/online syncronisation technology, this feature will work offline all day and then sync the survey results when it gets a connection.

The purpose of this survey kiosk mode is to capture customer feedback on a few questions, capture their basic contact details and then to issue an optional voucher code so that can benefit from providing you with the information.

To set up your BlueBox ePOS as a kiosk follow these steps:

1) Set up a dedicated ePOS till and set the following settings:

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• Upload an image for the background (suggest 1024 x 768 px) - remember to leave a patch in the middle blank/tinted for the text to display on top of. A block 724px wide and 350px tall positioned at 150px left and 120px down from the top left corner, is optimal.
• Add your survey questions - these are formatted as follows:
  
  This is a question?Answer One|Answer Two|Answer 3;
  
  The question must end in a ? and the answers must be separated with |'s, finally end the question with a semicolon.
• Add some 'end text' for the survey - this will display to the customer once they complete the survey.
• If you want the survey to send a text/sms message to the customer on completion enter the message you want sent. You can use the tag {vouchercode} if you want to include their unique discount voucher code in the message.
• If you want the survey to send an email message to the customer on completion enter the subject and email message you want sent. You can use the tag {vouchercode} if you want to include their unique discount voucher code in the message.

2) If you are sending sms/text messages, remember to set the bbsettings for sending text messages in the admin > modules > module settings section. For the Gateway, you have a choice of clickatell.com (SA, UK and Global), txtlocal.com (UK and Global), logicsms.co.za, strikemedia.co.za and bulksms.2way.co.za.

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3) If you intend issuing discount vouchers with unique voucher codes, you will need to add a voucher to the ePOS 'Discount Vouchers' module. Go to sales > point of sale > discount vouchers and add a new voucher. The only pre-requisite here is that the voucher name must have the word 'kiosk' in it:

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 4) Open up the ePOS till and ensure that the latest till settings have been syncronised with the offline database. If you are unsure, click on extra > system > Delete Local Data and Refresh.

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5) Once you are sure the till settings have been syncronised, click on extra > system Kiosk Mode to switch to the Kiosk. You will see the following screens (with your own background image and survey questions):

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 6) Test the settings by clicking on the various answers, entering test user details and check that you receive the sms/test message and/or the email.

7) You can switch back to the 'main' ePOS screen by clicking on a hidden 'button' in the bottom right corner of the kiosk screen:

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8) You can see the status of your captured surveys by clicking on the 'All Sales' button. Each survey is sent to the server as a 'zero value' sale. The customer details and survey answers are sent along with it as notes for analysis later on.

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Extending User Login Period per User

Up until now, BlueBox2.0 has had a user-session length control in the configuration file. This applied to all users of the system. If left at zero it would mean that a user's session would never expire and if set to a number, that would represent the number of minutes that a session would last for.

Now there is a field in the bb_user table called session_force_timeout_minutesNUM which allows you to set the session-life per user. Once set, on next login the specific user will have a forced logout after the number of minutes specified.

A handy implementation of this would be to add the following checkbox to the standard login form -

<input type=checkbox name=global[fields][session_force_timeout_minutesNUM] value=3>

This would instruct the security wrapper to updated the account with the specified number of minutes if the box was checked.

Overriding Ability to Change Price, Qty and Discount in BB2.0 Forms

In BlueBox2.0, we have a 6 settings at item_data level which control whether their item price/qty/discount can be edited in forms. This protects the buying or selling price of an item, as well as stopping staff from discounting items that they shouldn't or changing the tax/vat codes on items that they shouldn't.

Up until now this setting has been global and no user was able to get around these controls if they were set. Now we have a new permission at bb_sales and bb_procurement level which allows this to be bypassed.

Simply setting a user with the permissions bb_sales-can_change_form_prices_qty_and_discount or bb_procurement-can_change_form_prices_qty_and_discount will then allow them to edit these fields where others cannot.

Note that any users who currently have bb_sales-all/admin and bb_procurement-all/admin will also inherit this new ability.