DD Reports & Windows10

Windows 10 does some strange things with printers and Digital Dining.  And you may encounter this issue if using a Windows10 machine as your Back Office.  Symptoms of this issue could be any of the following but typically this simple fix will address any of them.

  • Reports display incorrectly (column titles and data appears unformatted)
  • Reports display blank results when information is known to exists to report on
  • Reports appear to not run at all.  (ie. No report window pops up after a report is run)

To fix this issue, try navigating to control panel, devices and printers and ensure that you have a default printer selected.  To do this, right click on the printer and select “Set as Default”.  A check mark will appear over the printer typically letting you know that this particular printer is now your default.

Reopen BackOffice and run your report and see if the issue is resolved.

If the issue is not resolved.  Go back to control panel, devices and printers and select a different printer as the default. (You can always select any printer to print to once you are ready to print a report.)

Try to run your report again and see if that fixes the issue.

If that does not, your system may need to have a REPAIR_ALL run, which typically takes roughly 20mins.  Please call if you feel you need to have a REPAIR_ALL run on your system as certain aspects have to changed prior to running this tool.

Our support number is 843-900-4433

 

Properly Uninstalling Digital Dining from WinXP

Digital Dining leaves behind some trace files when is uninstalled from a WinXP system.  So after an uninstall is performed you need to backtrack and perform a few extra steps to completely remove DD.  You want to do this when performing reinstalls to address issues or things of that nature.

Before Uninstalling DD, backup your configuration files in the Digital Dining directory.

You will want to copy the following files to a temporary location as you will drop them back once a reinstall is complete.

DDDATA.ini, DDPRINT.ini, POS.ini

Next open control panel, add remove programs and select to remove Digital Dining.

When the uninstall is complete DO NOT REBOOT yet.  Select No when prompted to reboot.

Browse out to File Explorer, and navigate to Program Files or Program Files (x86) and right click on the Digital Dining directory itself and select Delete.

Next still from File Explorer, navigate to the Windows directory.  Navigate to the Assembly directorty.  High all files that start with DD.  Delete these files.

Next Reboot and then perform a fresh install from the BackOffice\Data\CDROM directory. (ie. Setup.exe) — Always install as administrator.  Do this by right clicking the setup.exe file and select “Run As Administrator”

When the install completes, DO NOT REBOOT.  Grab your configuration files you copied out of the directory earlier and paste them in the Digital Dining Application directory.

Now you can reboot and the system should come right up and hopefully any issues being had are now resolved.

Troubleshooting Caller ID Issues with DD

Digital Dining Caller ID is relatively simple process to setup and manage.   You just have to plug in a CallerID box such as WhoozCalling and then setup the Caller ID server to reflect the COM port and communication settings.

This is done by launching the Caller ID Server from the Digital Dining Application directory and then select Setup from the top menu.

Enter in the details for the COM port and how many lines the system will be using and what type of CallerID Unit is being used.

Numbers should start relaying through the CallerID Server and users can select to enter order for the caller directly from the POS.

Computer Not Found Error

When attempting to connect to your data folder from a client terminal, sometimes even though you can see the backoffice machine and select the data path for DD, it will come back in a yellow status saying “Computer Not Found”.

This issue seems to be Permissions/DNS related although typically changing these settings will not correct this error for some reason.  Here is a work around that does fix the issue:

  1. Make sure the back office machine is using a STATIC IP Address.  Not DHCP.
  2. Open Windows File Explorer, Browse to Windows directory.
  3. Browse to System32\drivers\etc
  4. Locate the files labeled “HOSTS”
  5. Right click on the file and select edit.
  6. At the bottom of the file on a new line enter the IP Address of the backoffice server.  Hit the tab key, then enter the network name of the backoffice machine.  (ie. xxBO).
  7. Save and close the file.
  8. Your digital dining data path box should now appear green and you should be able to connect to data.

Adding Reports to Dropbox Tasks

You can have Digital Dining automatically send your reports to DropBox for you by performing the following.

Open up ddsetup.exe.  Log In.  Click on Misc. Task Maintenance.  Report Task Maintenance. Name this report if this is a new report and you are not modifying an existing task.

Select Report Type desired, Select specific report.  Destination -> Disk File.  Output Format-> PDF.

Path -> Browse out to the location of your DropBox folder location.  Give the report a name and be sure to have it add date format to the end of the report so it doesn’t overwrite preexisting reports.

Click on Access.  Click Add Task.  Click on Schedule.  Choose “Daily” and a time for this task to run (ie. 3am)

Save and Exit.  You can now add or edit your next task and assign a different report to be pushed to DropBox.  Do this for each report you are wishing to have in your DropBox.