Sharp tills and Arbor - Allergens Issue

[qeadmin]

Hello edugeeks

 

We have come across an issue that I suspect has been there since we moved to Arbor a 3 years ago. You will want to check your systems too and please feedback to me.

 

A new student this year has a massive long list of food allergies so has come to speak to the kitchen staff. When we checked his record on the Sharp tills it shows nothing at all about any warnings - This is a major issue as could have serious consequences something they think is ok to eat could contain nuts for example it could kill them.

 

The way how Arbor has allergens it lists everything in brackets so for example: No Pluses (Beans, Lentils, Peas, Chickpeas), Dairy Free (No Milk/Yoghurt/Cheese/Butter)

 

This is good as if we have a admin staff member helping out in the kitchen on tills due to kitchen staff illness they will at least know what pulses are if they don't have a clue for example. However Sharp software is just expecting No pulses, No Nuts, Dairy Free etc so very short fields for display warning when a student is at the till.

 

Basically if the data is too long Sharp just ignore it no warnings or anything. Now we have investigated we have about 5-10 students that don't show on the tills at all. This is a low number but not the point. We can manually on the till data edit the students record to have limited text displayed but my point is then each time we have a new student start we would then have to manually check: do they have allergens that need to display on the tills and are they too long. What happens if a student then becomes vegan so that then takes their record over the character limit we don't know when people make a change to dietary requirements as IT.

 

Sharp have said they have never had this at any other school before and can create a custom setup for us but will charge for it (don't know costs). We did not know we had issues before now and students in other year groups are also affected if this new student had not spoken to the kitchen staff we would be in the dark as would not know as you hope it just works. In my mind even if the till displayed an error to say data too long at least you know there is an issue that needs to be investigated. It does not help parents can use the notes field in dietary to say epipen carrier etc so that also tries to sync adding to the length issue.

 

Maybe this is more of an Arbor issue and other tills may have same sort of problems with sync. Do people just manually check every record to make sure it displays (we only have about 160 students on the list out of 1100) but I want to know it works ideally automatically

 

Thanks for you time

 

If anyone has Arbor and Sharp tills please have a look for me and PM or post on here. Most work without issues we ran a report on all students with Dietary requirements and looked for the long ones.

[dmj]

 

Maybe this is more of an Arbor issue and other tills may have same sort of problems with sync.

 

Sounds like you were right the first time: Arbor is sending the correct information and the sharp PoS is just dropping it.

 

I'd be inclined to go back to sharp and argue for a bugfix as the product is dangerous.

[qeadmin]

Think I/my new tech have upset them as not replied to last few emails. It needs a phone call but wanted more ammo from here hopefully.

[dmj]

I think you'll need to get a fallback system (use paper or something?) in place.

Can you escalate it internally, someone from legal in the LA/MAT ?

[DrBeaker]

Sounds like you were right the first time: Arbor is sending the correct information and the sharp PoS is just dropping it.

 

I'd be inclined to go back to sharp and argue for a bugfix as the product is dangerous.

 

In which case raise it with SLT and they can sort it out with the company. That's why get they paid the big bucks, not IT.