Micros 3700 Remote Printers not Working 4

[kitsy]

I am the Field Support Technician, and one of my responsibilities is a small restaurant located within one of our stores. When the restaurant changed management a few months back the new team decided not to renew the support contract.

The system is a Micros 3700, with WS/4 and Epson remote printers. About a week ago the system got an unexpected hard reset after it completely hung up. They powered it off with the power button. While the majority of the point of sale system is working, none of the remote printers in the kitchen are working.

We’ve tried restarting the workstation that the printer is connected via with no resolution. The manager decided to pay the large Micros extortion fee for not having a service contract. The tech came out on site. Looked, said everything was hooked up right, and should be working. He then told her that it was a programming problem and she would need to call the support line again and pay the hourly rate to have a programmer look at it.

To the best of our knowledge nothing else has changed. We don’t get any sort of error messages that I can see.

 

[pmegan]

Are you still having this problem or did you get it fixed?

 

[kitsy]

Ya this problem is still occuring the restuarant is just limping by with what they have. There have been some talks of dumping the system. So I'd like to try and get it fixed hopefully before they invest a large amount into a new system.

 

[pmegan]

I don't know your skill level with Micros, so I'll start from the basics and work up from there.

Ok, here's some info you'll need to get this going.
What version 3700 is it?
How many workstations are there?
How many remote printers?
Are all remote printers failing or are some working?
Is the remote printing failing for all workstations?

There are a bunch of reasons that remote printing can fail, here are the first steps I would take.

1) Find out which workstations are running the remotes test the printers through confidence test. If you get test printouts the printer configuration is fine. If this is the case, go to the next step.
2) Go to a workstation and ring in an order that's failing to be absolutely sure that there are no error messages. If there are, write them both down. I know it sounds terrible, but I never trust 100% a problem description from restaurant managers or staff. Operations and MIS have different priorities, and a lot of times they'll click through errors and not even notice.

Those two steps will help determine if there are any problems with the hardware or its configuration. If the confidence passes and you don't get any errors when you try to print, then the system doesn't think its doing anything wrong so it will be a programming issue. There are a bunch of settings you can check. After each step, if you make any changes reboot one of the workstations and ring in an order with our test item.

* Menu Items

1) Open the POS Configurator and go to the Sales tab, Menu Items button. Find a menu item that you know isn't printing correctly, we'll use this for testing. Look at the print class for this item and click the folder next to it.
2)In the window that opens, go to the print class assigned to our test menu item. Make sure the printer(s) it should be printing to are checked.

* Printers
If you're still not printing check these.
1) Go to the Devices tab, Order Devices button. Click on each order device and make sure the Device and Redirection Device assigned to it are correct. The device should be the physical printer, the Redirection Device should be the Order Device.
2) Go to the Devices tab, User Workstations button. Go to the Order Devices tab. Click on each workstation and make sure the correct order device(s) are enabled.


It always helps me to know the "why's" and not just the "how's", so here a quick rundown of Micros printing.

Physical Printers - Each physical printer is controlled by a workstation. This is configured in Devices | Devices | Printer Defintion & Printer Interface.
Order Devices - these are logical printers and are configured in Devices | Order Devices. You assign the primary and backup physical printers to use in the Device and Backup Device field. The Redirection Device assign the Order Device that should be used. 99% of the time an order device should be redirected to itself. You can have multiple order devices printing to the same physical printer.
Print Classes - These are set up in Sales | Print Classes. Each print class activates certain remote printers, as well as determining if items should print on checks, receipts, journals and reports.
User Workstations - You tell each workstation which order devices it can print to in Devices | User Workstations | Order Devices. Each workstation can use any combination of order devices necessary.
Menu Items - Each menu item needs a print class assigned. This tells the system which printer(s) the menu item should print to.

So, to put it all together:
You order a menu item from POS Operations.
The system looks at that item's print class and determines which order device(s) will receive the order.
The system then looks at the order devices that are active for the workstation being used.
The item will be sent to each order device enabled for both the print class and the workstation.
Each receiving order device will look at it's redirection device, (usually itself), and print the order to the physical printer assigned to the redirection device.

The redirection can be a little confusing, it's used mainly for restaurants with multiple kitchens, or in cases where there are multiple bars, with some that are only open during busy periods. When those bars are closed, the order device will be redirected to a bar that's open.


I hope this helps to get you going. Let me know how it goes and if you need any more help.

Pat

 

[kitsy]

I have little or no experience with point of sale systems. What I have learned has been taught by kind souls like you or by trial and error.

Hopefully this is what you need:
Micros Version: 3.2 SP7 hf5
(Build 3.2.101.1895)
DB Build: 1895
DB HF Applied: 101

Workstations: 5
Remote Printers: 4 - However, only 1 is neeed (and possibly 1 backup).
None of the remote printers are working, that I can see
None of the workstations can print to the remote printers.

I am not sure how to do a confidence test on the printers.

When initially troubleshooting, I had them show me what was happening to verify their was absolutely no error message. When the user enters the order and clicks the Send button. No errors occur.

 

[kitsy]

Pat,

One additional thing, do you reccomend simplification by removing equipment that is no longer being used?

This store at its peak had close to 10 workstations and 6 remote printers. Would you reccomend removing the extra workstations and printers from the config or just leave them there? The equipment is still in the store most of it is turned off or just not used.

I am just trying to help make my job easier and maybe help whomever has to follow in my foot steps.

Thanks,
Roy

 

[pmegan]

Roy,

Were those unused workstations and printers turned on before this problem started? You may be running into a situation where the remote printers you need are being controlled by the workstations that are turned off, but that should throw an error at you when an order is placed.

Since there's no error when you send an order, my guess is that it's going to be a programming problem. Try going through the steps I outlined for Menu Item and Printer troubleshooting.

Here's how to use Confidence Test. I'm assuming you're using printers on an IDN line. They'll have a data cable that looks a lot like a phone line and a little bank of white dip switches in a red box on the back.
[ul]
[li]In the configurator, go to Devices | Devices. Highlight the remote printer you're trying to get working and find out which workstation is controlling it from the Printer Definition tab.[/li]
[li]Go to that workstation, sign in and look for a button that will give you the Windows desktop. When you press it you'll see the Start button pop up.[/li]
[li]Press Start and go to Program Files | Micros. Dig around a little in the menu and when you see Confidence Test open it up.[/li]
[li]Click on Printers in the left panel, then select the IDN tab. You'll see the printers controlled by the workstation. Select the remote printer and click the Get Version button. [/li]
[li]If the connections are all correct you'll get a little pop-up window with the printer version. If it errors out, there's no connection.[/li]
[/ul]

 

[kitsy]

Pat,

Not at all these workstations/printers have been off/disconnected for almost 6 months now. So the problems shouldn’t be related to them.

Running the Confidence Test, Printer Returned a version of 1.15. I also did a test print, and test cut, and they both worked as expected.

So next per your suggestion I moved onto the menu items:

So I selected Item:
161003 – SHOP CKN STRIPS
Print Class – 203 Broil Printer
Print On:
*Customer Receipt
*Report
*Check
*Journal
Remote Devices:
Print to 1: Broil Printer

Then went to Order Devices:
Header – 201 – Broil Header
Trailer – Blank
Device – 201 Broil Printer
Backup Device – 201 Broil Printer
Redirection Device - 1 Broil Printer
Check Info Print Format - After Header.

Opened up Workstation 5: in Workstation. 1. Broil Printer is checked.

Rebooted the workstation. Tried printing again. The printer is still not printing. Still no error message occuring.

 

[TobeThor]

Is there any chance somebody changed prep ptr rerouting to "No Output". That would explain no printing, no errors but a good connection.

 

[Ali1973]

check the dip swiches of the printer. some times they move or people just touch them ,may be helpful in this matter.

 

[kitsy]

The dip switch settings seem to be the same as all the other the other printers. I am not sure what the correct dip switch settings should be.

I am not sure about the rerouting setting, could you tell me where to find it?

Thanks,
Roy

 

[pmegan]

Hey Roy,

Your dip switches are probably ok, the confidence test would have failed if they were set wrong.

The rerouting is the order device redirection. Since the confidence test passed, this is a more likely suspect, but from your description it looks like this is set up correctly too.

These are all the things I can think of that routinely get messed up by mistake. Here are a couple of long shots.

Take a look at Devices | Devices.
Go to 201 - Broil Printer
On the General tab make sure the device type is Roll Printer.
Go to the Printer Definition tab and make sure the Print To Disk Filename box is grayed out and blank.

Now take a look at Sales | Tender/Media
Find your Send tender, go to the Service Total tab and mak sure that Fire Order is selected.

Also, have you tried ringing this item in as a fast transaction? So instead of pressing Send, just hit Cash and close it out in one shot? That might help to determine if this is a problem with the Send tender.

 

[kitsy]

Pat,

Thanks for you help.

So here is where we stand. I went to the shop today, I had to reboot the server for some other maintenance that needed to occur in the rack it is in. I then verified the settings and everything seemed correct. I made one minor change assigning the Broil Print Class to the Send/Tender button.

After that I went up to the restaurant. Tried Test Prints, neither worked, no error messages. Per your previous recommendation, I restarted the workstation. This time the machine booted up rang up an item. Got Error Message that Broil was down, and sending to backup. This worked, Walked into Kitchen, Broil was unplugged. Plugged back in. (Yes, last week it was all plugged in and working). Redid Confidence test, successful. Re-rang order, printer is now working.

Restarted each workstation, all workstations seem to be able to print. Not 100% sure what corrected the issue but it seems to be working now.

Thanks,
Roy

 

[pmegan]

It sounds like you have print masking enabled. I haven't used that feature in years and forgot all about it. Take a look at Revenue Centers | RVC Printing | Options. There's a setting for each RVC call "Tender Media printer link as mask". If that's enabled the tenders will act like filters and use the assigned print class to determine remote printing. If this is the case, you'll want to either uncheck it or take a look at the other buttons that may send orders to the kitchen, (print, cash, etc...).

At this point you should probably disable the unused order devices by removing the redirection links. Just go to Devices | Order Devices, select each unused order device, click on the Redirection Device field and press the Delete button on your keyboard. This way if you do enable other remote printing you won't get a ton of errors from printers that are shut off.