Why does “Enter Order Ticket Name” behave inconsistently?

[artizansty]

Settings in my Restaurants device settings: Enter a custom number or name before sending the order

What’s happening: When a customer is not attached to the sale, the field stays empty (as above), I can only click Skip, and the ticket title/name on KDS is a random number. This is expected behaviour.

When a customer is attached to the sale, the field pre-populates with their name, if I click Next then the ticket/name on KDS is their pre-populated name, and if I click Skip, the ticket title/name on KDS is a random number. Both of these outcomes is expected behaviour.

Sometimes when I enter custom text into the blank field, it will flow through to the ticket/name on KDS, other times it won’t. Sometimes when I clear a customer’s pre-populated name and enter custom text, it will flow through to the ticket/name on KDS, other times it won’t. This is not expected behaviour.

We use this functionality to eliminate printed paper tickets and allocate table numbers, or write a very short description of the customer, so staff can identify the table and deliver the food. We have too many customers for all staff to know all of their names, so having their name flow through overriding any custom text will not suffice.

Beyond the functionality side of things, the verbiage on the device settings page (per the top of this post) is completely unclear if there is in fact no ability to enter a custom number or name. Even if an attached customer’s name overriding any custom text is intended behaviour, the verbiage is misleading.

I suspect however that the intended behaviour is enabling sellers to enter a custom number or name, so it seems there is a bug.

Can someone please help! I’m really hoping it’s user error on my part.

[artizansty]

Hey @isabelle  @tranguyen this topic hasn’t gotten any airtime, is there somewhere better for me to post it?

[_Violet]

Hi @artizansty - Alanah here, stepping in for @Olive and @tranguyen 👋 Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community to let us know about your experience with KDS order tickets. Apologies for the frustration 😞
 

I would suggest reaching out to our Square for Restaurants Support Team to discuss the inconsistencies you've been seeing. They can walk you through troubleshooting to see if it would resolve this issue and if not, this would definitely be valuable feedback for our Engineers and they can file a ticket to get eyes on this for further investigation.

I'll go ahead and add the appropriate tags on your feedback here on the Community as well. Please let me know if I can help with anything else! 

[Sam_400º]

I had this issue on the KDS (sort of - could enter name but didn’t ‘stick’) a while back. 

Raised a ticket for it - but looked like it was a wider bug so could be worth deleting the app & reinstalling to make sure it’s all up to date? 

Mine was fixed pretty quick but was tech support that sorted.

[artizansty]

Amazing thanks @Sam_400º! I actually emailed and got a response as if I had emailed about Register not being able to print tickets. I don’t even have Register and only sent them a link to this post, so was just another typical agent rushing and not reading customer issues. I’ll call on Monday and hopefully have more luck

[artizansty]

 

Hey @isabelle @tranguyen @_Violet I’ve tried contacting support now multiple times, keep having great attention at the start but then the conversation during away and ultimately no movement on the issue being solved (despite being told the engineers have discovered what the bug is and are fixing it).

The email screenshot above is from over a month ago, and only a single response asking if it’s resolved, which I’ve had to follow up multiple times (with no response) indicating it hasn’t been resolved. The issue was raised in January.

We use Square for Restaurants Plus, we’re a Super Seller, we actively contribute and support others on this forum. Really unimpressed with the support experience on this issue so far and would really appreciate some guidance on how I can get some attention on this issue please.

[tranguyen]

Really sorry about this @artizansty! It looks like this is currently an expected behaviour, actually as the customer name is consider the most important part by the system and will override other information. As such, if there's a customer name attached to the ticket, this is the name that will be displayed rather than the custom ticket name or information that you entered. 

I can see our engineering team are discussing steps around this that will accommodate all workflows, so I'm going to chase up on this on my end and get an update to you. 

[artizansty]

Hi @tranguyen then this is even more concerning that support have told me point blank (see previous email screenshot) that it’s a widespread problem (and thus not expected behaviour). Furthermore, another seller (see this thread) had the same issue and it was resolved (why would "expected behaviour" have needed to be resolved?)

Kinda concerning that there is such an internal mismatch between what we’re both hearing… I really don’t like having that kind of confusion come from a company handling my money and a large part of my business operations…

[tranguyen]

I completely understand your concers, @artizansty and will share the feedback with our team. The behaviour does look like it can be a bug and it wasn't until our engineering team dig into it further that we uncovers it was an intended behaviour at this time. 

I checked back on my end and the issue that Sam was experiencing was slightly different to yours with different root cause/design.

I've chased up on our engineering team now to get more information and will definitely follow up on this thread when I know more. Thank you for bearing with me. 

[tranguyen]

Hey @artizansty, I just want to follow up and let you know the team is expected to have the fix ready for the upcoming updates. Once we can confirm when the update with the fix is going out, I'll let you know right away!

[artizansty]

Thanks @tranguyen 

[artizansty]

Hi @tranguyen just wondering on an update on this? When’s the next update targeted for?

[tranguyen]

I went back to check on the original ticket and it looks like I missed an update from the team so apology for the delayed in updating this thread @artizansty.

The team ended up holding off from rolling out this change as they wanted to understand how other sellers are also using this feature. But they've taken your feedback into consideration and have done a deeper investigation into how this can be configure to satisfy all different workflows that may come up for different businesses. They've created a new ticket for this.

Going by the latest update on the new ticket, it looks like they're working on a few different designs and doing a bit more research to round this out. So while the change won't be in the next update, it is still actively being work on by the team.

Apology for this again, this is on me for missing the intial update.