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Procedure documentationConfiguring Customer Lookups Through a Browser

Procedure

The Configurator application provides options that allow you to define a customer lookup in a third-party database through a Web browser. A Web browser lookup can help you access customer information for any of the following activities.

  • Look up a customer who does not have their loyalty card

  • Replace a customer loyalty card

  • Allow a customer to pick up a card that they ordered online at a store location

  • Give a customer a promotional item and include it in the transaction (even with a zero balance)

  • Give a customer a birthday gift promotion

A cashier can trigger a browser lookup by evoking the Loyalty Sale UDT. If a loyalty customer number has not yet been entered in the transaction, the POS launches the browser lookup.

  1. On the POS Browser Maintenance screen, configure a browser definition for each of the following lookup scenarios. For information about the POS browser maintenance parameters, see POS Browser.

    • Customer lookup— This allows you to look up a customer who does not have their customer card.

    • Tool key lookup— This allows you to launch a Web browser by pressing the Total key.

  2. Configure the following parameters in UDT Maintenance. For more information about the UDT parameters, see User Defined Transaction: General.

    • Sub-Total Browser ID — This refers to the definition created in step 1.

    • Allow Zero Merchandise Sub-Total — This overrides the standard POS configuration and allows the cashier to total a transaction even if there are no items to launch the Web browser.

      Note Note

      The following POS.INI settings are required:

      End of the note.

    • CDBMULTILOOKUP=N — This limits the lookup to one customer per transaction.

    • CDBCUSTFIRST=Y — This places the customer TLog records at the beginning of the transaction.

  3. To handle customer identification, create an item entry control record to accept a scanned or keyed card number, which is used as a customer ID. For information about item entry control parameters, see Item Entry Control.

  4. On the Customer Database Type Maintenance screen, enter each field that you need to access in the third-party database in Field ID. Enter the corresponding description in the Field Description field. For information about the customer database type parameters, see Customer Database Types.

  5. The Customer Database Profile is used to accept the customer ID scanned or keyed in at the POS and defines the customer lookup from the Web database. You can see the fields you entered in the previous step in the Customer Database List on the right side panel of the maintenance window. Drag and drop each required field in the Field Name column, and select Display and Print for each required field.

  6. On the Customer Database Option Maintenance screen (see Customer Database Option), create a definition for a browser or Web lookup and set the following parameters:

    • Select Print

    • Select TLog

    • Select Allow Browser Lookup

    • Turn off Allow Query, Allow Add, Allow Modify, and Allow Delete.

Note Note

The Web browser always displays the current page before navigating to a specified new page, therefore the screen sometimes displays an old page. This can mislead the cashier. This problem is noticed when the response from the Web service is slow as may be common in Web lookups.

To resolve this problem, a local file called PleaseWait.html is displayed when a cashier chooses the Done or Cancel keys while on the Web browser screen. This html page must be located in the \Program Files\POSWIN\parm directory.

End of the note.