I mentioned last weekend that I spent a good 14 hours at work getting the register system up to snuff so I could begin putting in the items that were missing and also remove all of the items that we either no longer carry or were put in the system wrong to begin with.
The problem with that is, well, it didn't work. Check that, it did work, but it didn't. See, as things turn out, I did all of the changes in the office computer, which is the computer that runs a large chunk of the system, it is where we get reports from and usually it is the one I use when adding new items or adjusting prices. Well, Saturday I had done a bunch of deletes mostly and was just hoping that the registers upstairs would keep up, or eventually catch up.
So I go in Monday morning only to find out that many of the changes I made did not cross over yet, and now some of the keys of the touch screen were also not working. The screen keys are much like items in the system, they have an SKU number, but then they open to a pad where you can enter the price. We use these keys for items that do not scan, or for other things that do not have bar codes (Western Union, Cricket bill pay, etc.) On some of the registers those keys were not working, others they did work. I figured maybe the system was just being incredibly slow, so I did not think anything of it and if all of the changes hadn't taken effect by Tuesday I would give a call to the register people to see what was up.
Tuesday comes and still problems. I go to one of the registers and start looking into the inventory and I am see lots of items that just shouldn't be there, and some of the screen keys still have their old SKU numbers attached to them. This presents a problem because when you go to hit that key, since the old SKU number no longer exists rather than open up[ a price pad, a simple Item Does Not Exist message pops up.
That was it, I made the call to Shawn to see if I could get an assist on what to do next. I explained what I did and the first thing he told me was not much of a surprise given how cheap we can be at times, but that our computers are out of date. The software we are running is a 2 GB program, most of the registers on the floor only have 1 GB of memory. That would explain why the changes were taking so long to take affect originally, but we are 4 days later and still having issues. Shawn suggest that I do an option called a Data Pull, basically go to one of the terminals upstairs, go into the system options and pull all of the correct information from the basement computer. Because of the number of changes it may take a while, so I make sure I get all of the instructions correctly then head upstairs and crack open the deli register (our slowest register business wise) and see if I can pull this whole data thing off. I select all of the proper options, press the pull button and one second later it is done. Damn, that was fast. Given our computers, probably too fast. So I look into the inventory and there are still deleted items and bad SKU numbers everywhere. I try again, same result.
I call Shawn back up and let him know the data pull isn't working, he tries it remotely from his location, again nothing. So he starts poking around in how the system is configured and we found a huge culprit. Remember how I said we were running a 2 GB program on computers with 1 GB of memory available, well as a work around to save memory space, someone decided to basically eliminate record keeping, that is our records were only being kept for one day before the system would delete them, so all of that work I had done on Saturday, the system basically quick doing changes at midnight, because then when an upstairs computer would try to mirror that record of changes, that record no longer existed. The result is I get to do the whole damn thing over again from another terminal upstairs on Saturday, this time saving the records for at least 7 days, so if any issues arise we can actually pull the changes this time.
That means I am due for at least another 14 hour day tomorrow, so I am going to bed right about now.
maybe now knowing more about the crap you have to work with it would be prudent to just do a few updates on a daily basis than trying to hit the system with a ton it can't cope with?
ReplyDeleteWell I was able to go in and reset how long records were kept, I moved it from one day to seven, so even if I am having issues with things crossing, I should now be able to successfully pull of a data pull without the record of changes disappearing on me. If I felt we were in a position to just do a few things each day, I would go ahead and do that, but usually and significant changes, regardless of how small tend to choke the system (the whole process speed issue and what not), so if I am going to do it I am more of the yank the masking tape off of the mouth kind of guy rather a slow painful process.
ReplyDeleteThat completely sucks that you have to re enter everything again!
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be so bad, given some stuff did actually cross last weekend but the killer is just how slow the machines are upstairs versus the one in the office. I got some of it done, but I have a feeling this is going to be a project that is going to take a few days.
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