HI Just wondering has anyone attempted TastyIgniter Integration. Would love to see if someone has already commenced work in this direction. Not sure if it has been done in the past. Would love to get pointed in the right direction.
Depending on their API structure you would probably be best to start by looking at the Gloria food integration for inspiration.
Hello,
I have already considered doing this but it will take quite a bit of time. Currently my multi-location shops use Gloriafood + tookan + sambapos and we use a modified version of the Gloriafood example from here.
Our current roadmap is as follows:
-Add “cloud database” functionality for multi-store customer accounts [done, in beta now]
-Add square payment module processing to SambaPOS [fully done]
-Add TastyIgniter support for multiunits via RestDB Cloud Database + Node.js local service
Basically, TastyIgniter lacks a good API guide which is a huge problem: https://docs.tastyigniter.com/#API-Reference – most of this seems entirely incomplete. I planned on moving forward with this but that has been main issue. Being that it is open source I considered simply writing my own API or using a quick databse to REST API to handle this but have not gotten that far.
I think a much better solution would be to build some restDB (Cloud database solution) hooks into tastyigniter and then have sambapos use restDB’s realtime messaging via node.js helper scripts and GraphQL. It’s really not a huge development challenge. KenDash + the Samba Team have done an AMAZING job at getting GraphQL to work beautifully which really opens the doors with SambaPOS. There are a few minor things that could be better (a few missing 
GraphQL calls) but they can be remedied with automation rules most times.
If you have a complete or existent tastyigniter API feel free to send it to me, I’d be glad to help because I already planned on building this out.
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Mind if i ask if you can share your tookan, square payment processor integration? I really want to integrate them. Im also trying to integrate gloriafoods and tookan with square payment processing and a couple of other payment processors
According to their website, Tookan integrates with GloriaFood and I’ve also seen this in the GloriaFood admin panel. Possibly it doesn’t need to be integrated with SambaPOS to work, as long as you only use it for GloriaFood orders.
@Luis_Varsan Maybe a silly question, but if you are using GloriaFood why do you want to use TastyIgniter? Is it because of the monthly fees of GloriaFood you need to pay if accept card payments?
@markjw It’s actually because of Gloriafood’s choices for how they handle certain things. It’s causing major grief with our customers. Our store/stores rely heavily on the idea of frequent customer balances… Gloriafood does not offer (and according to them have no plans) to offer any method for custom payment integrations.
Their list of accepted credit card processors are not good. They won’t take Paypal nor Square (they give lame reasons – both have an API which works fine).
Quite possibly my worst issue is this: Gloriafood requires you to use their app to accept the order. The issue with this is that their app has no desktop version or web interface and can only be running and logged into one device at a time. This now means that:
.We need an Android tablet on our bar when we do not use Android tablets already.
.If the tablet dies, app crashes, etc then orders fail (the app loses connectivity alot despite tablet being ok)
Ideally I would of liked to build a GloriaFood “Accept” method into SambaPOS but they refuse to offer any API or alternate method for accepting orders.
This leaves as a solution -> Build a custom application which was my initial plan, Tastyigniter seems like a good potential workaround if there is a viable API.
shivankamal - My square module relies quite heavily on a backend “HUB” system which another forum member @QMcKay developed. I would not be able to release that part of the code without his permission – direct integration into SambaPOS without using his “HUB” system would require writing a seperate helper script or modifying / making new code for SambaPOS with VisualBasic I believe.
Your taking about his HUB he uses with his graphql modules yeah?
Yes, this is a base for the Square API integration. I’ve got two methods that can be used to be precise, one is to run payments on either Android or iOS tablets with his HTML POS in a browser, this allows squares native on device API which feature -lower- processing rates.
The basic workflow on this is:
GraphQL/HTML SambaPOS client in Browser -> You click “Pay” -> Squares Native API overlays with amount already entered -> payment processes -> returns to GraphQL/HTML SambaPOS with result -> system calls Squares verification API To verify successful “Capture” -> Automation Command to Mark as Paid Fired (Stores Conf # and Timestamp)
The above works -very- well and is quite simple. We use this at our tap room and it’s splendid.
The alternate is to run the payment via Squares Ecommerce API which can be natively done in SambaPOS Windows Application however you will pay much more for this “privelege” because thats how square works.
I don’t mind sharing those, if you need custom development I am glad to do it for a fee too (as it takes time from my normal day job) - but that is a discussion for PM or Job board. I am not in this for money and actually wish to help SambaPOS. The community has been stellar to me and now I am awesome with API development thanks to my freelance gigs - so I’ve been integrating a ton of stuff.
They now also offer an iOS app for accepting orders. Yes they are rigid in the way they want to do business. Paypal is possible to be integrated but they want to offer support on it due to the fact they aren’t able to charge for it then. I have found braintree competent as well and they are a division of paypal. We do resell Gloria food solution as well. What we like about TI is that being opensource we can rebrand it to our brand name and gives us more flexibility. Also they offer a good table management solution which is not present with GloriaFoods but is in the works.
@naresh Maybe… the main issue for us with Gloriafood is that it simply is very inconvenient and borederline horrible to have to have an Android device laying around, more wires and another thing for staff to break, deal with, leave uncharged, etc. We miss way too many orders due to their Android app crashing, connection losses, tablet not being charge, random sound issues, etc. While I do appreciate many things about GloriaFood it is simply unfit as a commercial solution for a restaurant unless the restaurant is already running an Android or iOS tablet primarily… which would be entirely counter-intuituve if they are using SambaPOS.
@Luis_Varsan One of our restaurant partners what they have done is they wait for a call from Gloria Food when an order comes in and one of the managers logs in on it using their phones and prints it off the kitchen printers. I dont think its practical but they dont do too many online orders so it works for them.
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@naresh - Yeah that is an option the main issue is we do get a large number of orders and it quickly gets out of control. Having to add extra steps to pull orders isn’t really any better than just accepting orders on facebook or email… the idea is to have an automated system. In a fast paced restaurant environment or coffee shop it’s indispensable for things to be automated and require the least number of fallible steps possible, hence why TI could be a far better solution than GF. All the great backend technology in the world doesn’t make GF good if their platform requires a faulty app to accept orders.
@Luis_Varsan We are at the moment in the process of developing an app for our partner restaurants that want TI at their restaurant, Also we are considering of using the same structure to integrate it with our SambaPos setup. Me and Shivan were discussing this a couple of days ago over the phone. We are just in the planning stages.
@Naresh nice. Thanks! I already kinda have a working demo but it’s not pretty, basically I use a node.js helper script to enable direct REST API access to the TI database. By doing this and creating a few simple calls I can then use a node.js helper script with GraphQL on SambaPOS to interface with TI in a very efficient manner. My main concern here is the need to expose direct DB methods with TI vs an official TI API.
I never really have issue with GF Android app but iOS issue is I have to leave screen on otherwise losing connection, no idea if they fix this but I think it is iOS issue.
Yeah, GF is big now and they are not really take any suggestions. The way they let users order before checking if the delivery is in the service area is horrible. Users have to take lot of time to put in all order to find out that it is not in service area. It is very very bad experience for users. I suggest them to get users put in address first then order but they don’t listen and tell me like the way they do is the best.
There is a reason for this, same as all delivery services like JustEat, etc., is that if you ask a customer for details up front, you will get a lot less orders, same with ecommerce if you request a customer to register to place an order you will get a drop in orders. I agree with the way GloriaFood and all others do it because the customer is more likely to complete order once they have got to checkout. But yes it doesn’t help your situation. Customers can see delivery area on info tab, how about on your website you mention your delivery areas clearly, would that help?
I also agree GloriaFood are not really interested in feedback even from “partners”. I recently debated with them about allowing more printers to work with their app (if you use standalone without SambaPOS - we promote it standalone as well). Their app only works with specific models of Epson, Star and Seiko, and its a restriction they put in place for silly reasons (they think supporting any ESC/POS printer will give them support hassles). I never usually sell those brands as unbranded ones work fine, so its very annoying to pay sometimes 2x the price for an Epson printer just so it can work with their app. There is a free POS called Loyverse, it has Android and iOS apps and both of them (yes, even iOS) can print to any ESC/POS printer connected on ethernet, and from Android even on USB. So there is no reason GloriaFood needs to restrict this way - I think they just consider “they know best” and all their users are dumb.
There may be some small hope here, I noticed this the other day on their integration docs (client_payments - work in progress), but no mention anywhere else about it…
Gloriafood does support PayPal via Braintree. I use Braintree as my processor and process quite a few transactions daily with it.
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Just eat ask to enter postal code before showing the list of restaurants. So customers know upfront.
That what it should be.
Yes - before showing a list of restaurants. But if you go to a website created by JustEat, it shows menu first just like GloriaFood. I know it’s causing you some issues, but there are well researched reasons for doing this way, its pretty much industry standard.