How to Broadcast Caller ID Popups to Other Terminals

John.s said:
By your rules and actions it looks like you are calling a Widget by name, which is why it only works on a custom entity screen.
U tride thet??

Yes @JohnS is spot on. However the process can be simplified if we a action called Add Entity Value so we can use the existing Customer Search screen which works very well for me and did not need to create a new screen from scratch.

@Emre is this a possibility?

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Any Further progress regarding this ?

This is is something that I could not get to work myself and was on my to do list, is there a way this can be achieved without creating a custom Customer Search Screen?

I’m confused…

What is the question here exactly? What are we trying to achieve? What is the exact desired flow?

I think he is wanting the Caller Id popup to show on all terminals not just the one the Caller ID is hooked too.

Hi @QMcKay

Trying to find a way to broadcast the Caller ID Popups to other terminals that does not have a Caller ID device connected as @Jesse stated.

For 4.1.79 version I’ve added support for executing automation commands when popups displayed by Display Popup action clicked. I hope that would help.

However I don’t like the idea of displaying popups on all terminals. Instead terminals can Grab phone call. I don’t remember if we’ve discussed it in forums or somewhere else but I like that idea.

To make it work we can store calling number as a Global Setting and when user on other terminal clicks Grab button we can read that global setting to get calling number. However we’ll need to be able to display customer search screen with phone number to allow user create new customer if customer not recoded before. To be able to handle that I’ve added Entity Screen Search Value parameter to Change Ticket Entity action. By configuring few rules we can configure even more complex workflows.

  • For example we can assign calling customer to ticket automatically when Grab button clicked. If customer does not exists we can display Customer Search screen.
  • We may also clear global setting so other users can’t grab same number.
  • We can completely disable local popup and only use Device Event rule to update global setting. So local terminal will also use Grab button to select customer and won’t see unnecessary popups if number grabbed by other terminal.
  • We can disable Grab button if there is an active ticket on screen. So only terminals that don’t have an active ticket can grab numbers.

Sorry for not bringing it to attention before. I expect real life users to share their comments about how we should handle phone calls so I can implement features that will be useful for everyone. As too few people does it, it takes longer than it should because that forces me think as a restaurant manager, guess what operator actually needs and how it can operate, think possible alternative uses and find a common solution… but I’m a developer. This is all guesswork.

I’m still not %100 sure if the best solution is displaying popups on all terminals, grab button or something else. Maybe I’ve guessed it wrong and implemented useless features. A lot of restaurant people uses SambaPOS and visits forums everyday. Can’t we do it better?

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Hi @emre

Thanks for your prompt response.

Caller ID is a brilliant feature and works extremely well.

You are correct in stating that it is unnecessary to display popups on all Terminals. I fully agree. In my case I would only like it to display to my Office Terminal where I sometimes take phone orders. But we would not want the tablets to display the popups. Maybe this can be managed with mapping in the rules so we can select which terminals should display the popups?

I agree with the GRAB Idea and sure it will work just fine.

Looking forward to testing this out.

Thanks again @Emre, great work as usual.

Well @emre when I’ve post the idea to broadcast caller id to all terminals,i did that because I found that very useful to me and I wanted to share it with others. However I think you’re idea to grab phone calls is a much better idea.

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@pizzaeilat4 please don’t misunderstood me. I appreciate what you’re doing here. Receiving such few comments for new feature ideas surprises me.

For example if two more people comments for idea X the resulting feature X will work fine for 3 people.

If these 2 people ignore Idea X but raise issues when feature X does not work as they want it will take 2 more development cycles to make it work fine for 3 people.

Don’t you feel we’re having fewer new features on each new release? No I’m not becoming lazy…

Every single SambaPOS user should care about it as it slows down our development. Increasing community should do the opposite and improve us positively. That was my point.

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Maybe I should give priority to requests that receives kind of positive attention by likes or comments.

I see your point. I also feel your point. Ive not used caller id yet but it was something I was planning on using. However I have not seen any solution that really interests me yet. To be honest neither of these solutions interest me enough to want it in my business but I still feel like I want CallerID so I will keep thinking on it.

To be honest what interests me the most would be Twitter, and Facebook ordering. I would probably enable twitter and facebook ordering imediately and then improve it later. Unlike Caller ID I would rather think of a more useful solution for it.

Reason is I can talk on phone and still take an order… yes having it populate automatically would be nice… its not really required business function. Twitter and Facebook integration however would be a direct plus and boost to my sales.

EDIT: Sorry for a thread hijack I will make a new post for my request but I wanted to comment here as I could see @emre point.

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@Jesse that exactly describes what I feel. We have power (potential) to implement (invent) things never thought before but it can be only possible if we improve our communication. After writing this I started thinking the reason of it might be how I prioritize things here. I’ll request from everyone to contribute more. Even liking useful posts does a lot difference.

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I totally agree
I also blame myself in it and I’ll try to improve my involvement in all sorts of ideas
Brainstorming is something needed here more and we need to do more for the community and development
Thanks

A good challenge for everyone is when you request a feature try and give back by commenting or giving input on a different request or issue even if you may or may not see a use for it for yourself. Sometimes all we need are ideas. You should be interested in it however we would not want you to invest time in something that does not seem interesting.

Or maybe involve other people that you think might benefit from your idea. Get them interested in it and it will spawn more interesting conversations and generate some great ideas.

It may seem silly because you need SambaPOS to do what you want it to do… but the community is very powerful and it can spawn some very useful features many of them you would use in your own businesses we just need the spark of life to happen for the ideas. This comes from each and every person that reads or posts on the forum.

While reading it I thought it explains really fine. For most people a POS system is still nothing more than a tool to print tickets so what people finds interesting is still that. However SambaPOS is here, it is free, does everything, all restaurants can use it and in the near feature everybody will do such things without making big investments.

We release SambaPOS for free because we believe traditional ways of doing business is changing fast so what a traditional POS system offers will not have a big business value anymore. Probably everything will fit in to a tablet and it will stand on the desk like the calculator. These are still expensive (like calculators was expensive before) as there are no real alternatives but SambaPOS changing that… because it should change.

Few days before one SambaPOS user sent me an invoice. It was what he needs to pay to the online ordering service. Thousands of dollars every month. This is too much as it brings too few new customers. Most of these people are still old neighbors but they prefer to use Internet. As more restaurants defers orders, reservations, loyalty to third parties they need to share more from income.

Yes Everyday thousands of genius level entrepreneurs trying to figure out ways to receive more shares by offering consumers new tools to interact with restaurants. This is very critical because as you give more share you’ll need more customers and to be able to get more customers you’ll need to pay more (or decrease prices, make promotions, etc).

That needs to be fixed. POS systems will always be the essential part of the business but what POS systems can offer won’t be able to fix that. It needs a different approach. That’s the reason why I’m thinking traditional POS systems will not be valuable as they are before. Also that’s why I’m focusing on something else and SambaPOS is different. Yes other POS providers will improve themselves by offering cloud based solutions, tablet menus or other fancy stuff but none of them will work fine because too few people understanding the real picture.

What customers are expecting from us is not the “tablet menu” that offers nothing more than paper alternative. Swiping all food images one by one is a real bad experience. We need to understand how technology changes consumers life and how they want to interact with us. New technology improvements allows us to interact with customers very personally without contacting them in real life. For example we can even know how much calories they need by connecting their health apps. This is crazy awesome…

Awesome but… only if your POS system supports that… Umm. Sorry don’t expect point and click technology anymore. Because that approach standardizes how restaurant works. Everybody can offer (or can’t offer) same thing so to be able to be “different” we need to customize how our system works for us. So if you think you need to reach more people, offer a highly personalized experience to your customers and do something to get your customers back from third parties, understanding how SambaPOS works is essential. Because it will be the language you’ll speak with your customers. This is our vision and we want to stand there.

Of course this is my personal opinion. As the developer of SambaPOS we’re depended to community support and it is beyond my powers to direct SambaPOS to a different direction than what community wants. Yes we don’t know exactly what needs to be done but I strongly believe if we communicate better and if more people contributes we’re able to do amazing things.

Sorry for that long post but I hope that explains my point. I didn’t wanted to upset anyone. Thanks for your reading.

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Here, here - quite visionary and love your efforts…Paul.

I fully agree with you on this. There are rediculous fees for online order and many other pos services. I have seen many restaurants pay $12,000-$14,000 for a 4 station point of sale system. These people are not only paying a high price but they are also getting crappy software with no suport. Also for online order the fees are outrageous as I have looked into payed solutions before.

I have been running a surveillance systems company and have been slowely implamenting other services like wireless communication systems and now samba and I have to say I always strive to build my customer base by providing fair pricing for good solutions.

Also I would love to receive comments about my idea for receiving emails to sambapos that I’ve posted last May Request for Email module
I really think that will be very helpful but maybe it’s just me :wink: