Hello Network!
Greetings from the California Academy of Sciences. We are celebrating our one week go live anniversary today!
One item, that seems simple enough but is giving us lots of challenges is triggering the cash drawer to open after a cash transaction. We are self-hosted and using BOCA printers for tickets and receipts. We have tried numerous configurations from direct BOCA connection to Serial to USB adapters. We have not yet found the magical solution. Do any of you have this figured out?
Best,
Carl
Hi David,
We're in the process of discussing what to do about receipts and bocas. We too think we'll go the direction of "We can e-mail receipts if they do, and/or print confirmations to a page printer." and are likewise worried about those member upgrades. How do you currently handle that interaction?
Thanks!
Katie
We basically created a workaround that lets us sell the new membership at an arbitrary price (so that the cashier can manually subtract whatever they already paid earlier in the day). So we never actually link the new membership to the original general public order. This probably has downsides when it comes to data analysis, but it was the only way we could see to make this work at scale.
After an earlier attempt to handle this without it, we have now installed the "Memberships as Performances" customization, which makes this a little easier to do since you get access to pricing rules, etc. The first attempt to do it without the customization was very counter intuitive for frontline staff and ended up leaving a trail of phantom dollar transactions scattered around the system that no one could figure out how to handle. It's better now. (That said, the ability to adjust the price from quicksale instead of having to go into order details would make us super happy. Any developers listening?)
I could put you in touch with someone a bit more familiar with the details of the setup if that would be useful.
If they paid with card, you can look-up their earlier order by full or partial card number (chicklet next to order number on order details). If it was cash, you pull up any cash order for the same amount they paid and do the ticket exchange/ membership addition to the same order.
Carl,
This is John from the Support Team writing. To use a Cash Drawer with a Boca, the drawer is connected to a dedicated cash drawer port on the printer. The Boca cash drawer port is a specific option that provides a 3.5mm stereo jack on the back of printer that sends a 50ms +24VDC signal to the cash drawer. This is a special-order option on Boca printers.
If you have that port and the corresponding cable, then Kaley's reply should help.
Hello from Wisconsin. We just celebrated one year LIVE. I asked our IT guys for what they had to do for the cash drawers. Here is what I got back. Hope it helps.
We are using this serial to USB adapter, we install the drivers for the adapter, once we see the device under Device Manager/ports, we switch the COM port # to 5 (per Tessitura). I tested through CMD with the command ECHO ^G>COM5 (if you use a different port #, make sure you use that # at the end of the command). If the cash drawer opens, the rest should be a Tessitura configuration. If it doesn’t open, make sure that if the cash drawer has an optional power adapter, you use it. We had to!
Julie
To follow up on Marilyn's comment, the USB triggers are detected as a COM port (set to 5 in our case) in Windows and basically have a 24V capacitor to trigger the solenoid in the cash drawer to pop.
Our cash drawers do not have an external power supply and have a db9 to rj12 cable which was previously connected to Epson receipt printers. The cash drawer cable plugs into the trigger.
You can test to see if it is working correctly by typing
copy con com5 <enter>
<type any character(s)> <enter>
^Z <enter>
echo ^G>com5 <enter> would probably also work
The capacitors can fail although we've only had 1 failure in the time that we've been using the triggers.
Configuring multiple brands of hardware devices such as cash drawers with different interfaces can often be a tricky problem. This is compounded by channeling those connections through Citrix in the RAMP environment. Development has standard configurations that are fully tested by our Quality Assurance team but we also find that sometimes Support and Development must work through specific issues individually with members. In addition, we continue to improve the interface and enhance the documentation to include all the possible variances we've encountered and to provide ways to ease the configuration overhead for members.
Current documentation for cash drawers includes:
Any member that encounters problems getting cash drawers to work successfully is encouraged to contact Support for assistance.
Bob BellVice President Development SupportTessitura Networkwww.tessituranetwork.com bbell@tessituranetwork.com
Wow. Thank you Network for all the support and answers. It's amazing! I love it.
We have ordered the USB triggers and will be testing them out ASAP. We'll be sure to include details here.
Stay tuned for my next post about attendance tracking for comp 2 & Under guests. Coming Soon!