FooodPosWiki

Menu Designer: Designed or Auto

Switch a menu between Designed, laid out by hand, and Auto, which follows your items and item categories by itself; the two questions the switch asks, what an Auto menu shows on the POS, and where to change it.

Who uses it:OwnerWhere:Back officeWindows POSAndroid POSKioskQR ordering
On this page

Every menu is one of two kinds, chosen with the Designed / Auto switch beside the menu's name in the Menu Designer:

  • Designed: you lay out the categories and the buttons yourself.
  • Auto: the menu follows the item master by itself. Every active item category with at least one active dish becomes a tab, and every active dish a button on its item category's tab. A new dish or item category appears by itself; one switched off disappears. There is nothing to lay out.

A new restaurant's Main Menu is Auto, so the POS has a menu from the first dish you add.

Before you start

  • You need the right to edit menus. Without it the switch is shown but cannot be pressed.
  • Save the category you are working on first. With changes not saved, the switch asks Discard unsaved changes? before anything else.

The switch

Designed or Auto, beside the menu's name.
  1. The line under the title: on an Auto menu it says This menu is Auto: it follows the item master by itself.
  2. The menu list: an Auto menu is marked · Auto.
  3. Designed / Auto: the blue side is how the menu is made now. Rest the pointer on a side to read what it means. Press the other side to switch; it asks first.
  4. Menu settings: still there on an Auto menu, for where the tabs go and which names show. + Category, Category settings and Save category are not: an Auto menu has no category of its own to set up.

What an Auto menu shows

In place of a grid to lay out, the Menu Designer shows, read only, what the POS shows for the menu now.

An Auto menu: what the POS shows now, and where to change it.
  1. The blue box: what Auto does, and where to change it, with links to Items and Categories.
  2. The tabs: one per active item category that has an active dish, in the item categories' display order, then by name. Each takes its item category's name, second-language name and colour.
  3. [None]: the last tab, for active dishes with no item category. It is there only when there are some.
  4. The dishes: each with its own name, price, picture and colour, in their display order, then in the order they were added. A dish with an open price shows no price. Nothing here can be clicked into an editor.
  5. The line under the grid: how many dishes the tab holds, and how the POS shows them. When they need more than one screen, Screen 1 of 2 with ‹ and › steps through them, as the POS does.

On the POS, an Auto tab shows its dishes a screenful at a time, 5 by 5, with arrows under the grid on Windows and on an Android POS held wide; a phone held upright shows them as one list that scrolls.

Change what an Auto menu shows

Everything comes from Items and Categories:

To changeGo to
A dish's name, price, picture, colour, place (display order), or whether it showsItems: the dish, or switch it off
Which tab a dish is onItems: the dish's Category
A tab's name, colour or place, or whether it showsCategories: the item category's Name, Colour, Display order, Active
Where the tabs go, which names showMenu settings here

Nothing to show yet: no active category has an active item, and no active item is without a category. Add items on the Items screen and they appear here, and on the POS, by themselves. That is what a new restaurant that started blank sees.

Switch a menu to Auto

  1. Press Auto on the switch.
  2. The window Switch Main Menu to Auto? says what Auto does, and what becomes of the categories designed here.
  3. Click Switch to Auto (it reads Switching… while it works), or Cancel.
The question before a menu becomes Auto.
  1. What Auto does: the rule, in full.
  2. The categories designed here: they are kept, not deleted, and not shown while the menu is Auto. A menu with none says so: nothing is put away.
  3. Switch to Auto: switches the menu. The big green SAVED says This menu is now Auto., then either The POS were told to take it now. or Each POS takes it at its next sync.

Switch a menu back to Designed

  1. Press Designed on the switch.
  2. The window Switch Main Menu to Designed asks what to start from: a designed menu shows the categories and buttons laid out here, and no longer follows the item master by itself.
  3. Click one of the two choices. Cancel leaves the menu Auto.
Back to Designed: start from what Auto shows now, or from the categories designed before.
  1. Start from what Auto shows now: every tab Auto shows becomes a category you can edit. Each one fills itself from its item category, so it keeps showing new dishes until you change it in Category settings; the [None] tab becomes a category of ordinary buttons. When categories designed before are still kept, they are deleted and replaced, and the back office asks once more, saying that this cannot be undone. With no tab to copy, the menu starts with one empty category.
  2. Go back to the categories designed before: the categories kept when the menu went Auto, exactly as they were left. Offered only when there are some.

The big green SAVED then says that the menu is now Designed, what it has to edit, and whether the POS were told at once.

What if…