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2007 Newsletters

Some Talk About Journals! The DMS Software (builds 660) and above  including DMS 700 contains a full ORDER JOURNAL for every order placed in the system. This journal contains a log of every action taken on the order, including the time it was started, the items that were added to or deleted from, and any custom notes you want to add along the way...

DMS Website Design Setup. This month, we are going to show you the DataWedge System and how easy it really is for any "Restaurant Delivery Service" to build a professional website, host it, manage and promote it. Our web site building modules are designed specifically for people who want to focus on running their business instead of mastering complex technology and design skills needed to build and market a web site...

DMS Web Administration Setup. In the beginning of our web development days, customers that wanted to make changes to their web sites had to sit on the phone and make their change requests manually. DataWedge has since created an Administration Web Site known as "DMS Online Ordering Management" as a comprehensive solution designed to simplify the management of building a web site and controlling your online ordering engine. This site automates a large number of tasks that assist in doing everything from managing the text on your pages, to controlling the template used on your website (if any), as well as controlling black-out dates and times to ensure that your web site is not taking orders during holiday hours...

DataWedge Adds a Fee Profile to the DMS Software. We all know setting up 'Delivery Fees' in the DMS 2000 software can get frustrating and consume much of a person's time. Every zone for every restaurant must be programmed separately, having to enter data in each box on the grid. The Photo  below is an example of what the grid looks like in DMS 2000. Let's say you have 8 zones in your delivery area. There are 18 columns on the grid, 16 showing below with the 2 web lunch and dinner columns recently added, giving us 144 boxes to enter data into. If an RDS has 20 restaurants that means they must enter data into 2,880 boxes, eating up valuable time...

The Ever-Present Asterisk. When viewing an order from the dispatch screen, you may notice those funny little stars called *asterisks* next to the customer's name, the restaurant's name or even in the map column. Throughout the course of a conversation with CSRs, Dispatchers, and even RDS Owners the question always seems to come up: "What is that asterisk for?"...

DataWedge Accommodates New Rule. Last month's article covering Visa’s policy on additional fees certainly struck a chord with our customer base last month.  Over the past 30 days we have received multitudes of phone calls from clients wanting more information on this topic, or to discuss the scenario further in regards to how vulnerable they are."...

Operating Inside Your Merchant Agreement. While we have been vigorously upgrading many customers to the new DMS 700 software these last few weeks, while continuing to correct annoying bugs.... in the aftermath of some recent events, we decided to take a quick side-line from discussing .NET features this month and instead discuss a completely different topic...

DMS2000 To Become DMS 700 "We've been quietly working in the shadows for a while, but we are about to spring forward with a new set of options, services, and features..." In March 2006, we began the monumental process of writing the new software from the ground up. 15 months and 250,000 lines of source code later, taking total advantage of technology's newest methods of communication, we have included several new features that can be beneficial to any RDS that wants to take advantage...

2006 Newsletters

Modifications to Rapid Rewards Programs. Major additions and features have been added to the Rapid Rewards Program set. In builds 677 and above when going into Marketing --> Rapid Rewards, you will see the following interface...

Driver Checkout and House Account Interface Changes. This month, I would like to document the changes made to the driver checkout screen and the House Account Transactions screen. Driver Checkout - more and more customers seem to be embracing the idea of extending the length of time a driver might checkout... The House Account Interface for House Account Transactions has also been altered to allow for easier viewing and sorting of House Account Transactions...

Driver Map Changes. It used to be that the Driver Map in the dispatch screen gave you the estimated location of a single driver. This interface has changed drastically to try to give the dispatcher a much larger view of what is happening in a particular area. or example, if you are one of the many MapPoint 2002/2004 users, right-clicking on the dispatch screen on any order and selecting "Show Drivers Map (MapPoint)" will now show you the following information...

Dispatch Alarms. Some calls have come in recently concerning the use of the Alarms feature in the dispatch screen, and how other RDS’s are using them in the operations world.  I thought I would take the opportunity this month to go into a detailed explanation as to how to configure them, what each alarm means, as well as cover some recent changes to the alarms feature that you might not be aware of...

Summer Is Coming. It seems a little on the obvious side, but summer is coming.  As we take a quick scan over our call logs, here is what to expect in the coming months... Now is the perfect time to start to shift some of your focus to the corporate sector of your business.  While your individual residential customers might not be around over the summer, certainly the corporate sector of your city will still be operational. It happens every year…

Custom Surveys Now Available On Web Engines. We are excited to announce the latest feature addition for our on-line ordering customers:  the ability to program custom surveys at the end of every on-line web order.  These surveys are programmed in by the RDS through your Web Admin Pages, and can be a valuable tool in obtaining customer feedback regarding your delivery service...

DataWedge Marketing. If you have been in the industry for any length of time and managed to survive, you have already learned the importance of marketing. If you have honed your skills to a fine edge, you probably already learned about the differences between MARKETING and RE-MARKETING. What you might NOT be aware of, however, is that if you are a current user of our on-line ordering engine, DataWedge has programs that help you in both of these areas at no additional cost to you...

Remote Access. Very often, when a support question comes in regarding DMS, we will use a utility called 'VNC', allowing us to take control over a user's desktop.  Following the adage of  "a picture says 1000 words", it certainly makes the job of support much easier, as we can immediately see what our user's see, and fix the problem much more readily...

2005 Newsletters

Restaurant Paging System. In today's RDS operations, the dispatcher is constantly spending time on the telephone just to confirm the status of the fax that was just sent over to a restaurant. A large bulk of a dispatcher's time is no only spent on the phone with the restaurant, but also spent waiting on hold while the restaurant goes to verify the status of the fax that was sent over...

Preparing for natural disasters. We have been having a lot of conversations and time spent with our customers surrounding the topic of running in the wake of a natural disaster.  In the aftermath of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, quite a few customers have been affected to some degree.  With winter snowstorms coming around the corner... it seems to be a good time to discuss the topic:  specifically, the area of getting power...

DMS 660 is now available. It’s been a long and hard battle, but finally split payments are now possible with the DMS Series 660 and above. Previously, in DMS 659 and below, orders could only take a single credit card or single check. While adding a check AND a credit card was easy, splitting a payment up into two or more credit cards required some ‘original’ thinking and workarounds...