Focus Local: Courses Setup – Alpha POS Services

Focus's Coursing feature helps Servers pace out meals by sending groups of menu items to the kitchen in bundled Courses. The Course name appearing on the kitchen ticket will communicate the desired meal timing to the kitchen staff. Popular Courses include Beverages, Appetizers, Entrees, and Desserts. For Example, all appetizer Menu Items can be pre-assigned to the Apps Course, but Servers can choose to fire off an App as a part of the Entrée Course when different meal pacing is needed. This article will demonstrate how to setup a Course using Focus Local.

Required Job Rights (See Focus Local: Editing Job Rights or Focus Office: Editing Job Rights to see where to adjust Job Rights):

General
Locations

From an Order Entry Station: Coursing Setup

Step 1: Select the Wrench icon from the login screen

Step 2: Choose the Setup option

Step 3: Enter your access code (fingerprint or manager card option available)

Step 4: Path to Miscellaneous > General > Courses tab

Note: From Focus's back of house solution, login and follow the steps from here forward.

Step 5: Name your Courses & browse to assign a Check Image i.e., c1, c2..

The Course Name will appear on the kitchen ticket as the Course identifier.
The typical image path is C:\\Focus\images or D:\\Focus\images. If you have more than 4 Courses, images will need to be created for 5-10.

Step 6: Save & Close the General Window and path to Locations > Locations

Step 7: Check Couse Display for each restaurant Location using Coursing > Save & Close

If setting up Courses using Focus Office, this part will still need to be configured locally.

Step 8: Path to Printers > Remote Check Formats

Check Separate by Course to separate each Course by a line break.
If using Coursing and Positions together, check Course/Position. Menu Items will be grouped by Courses and sorted within each Course by Position, beginning with Position 1.
Save & Close

Step 9: Path to Menu > Menu Items & Assign Courses to all applicable items

In the example below, the Report Group "Entrees" was used to filter the menu items:

The Quick Set feature can often speed up the assigning process. If you can isolate Menu Items that all need the same Course assignment, you can Quick Set them all at once. For example, the Report Group Filter used below has isolated only Entree Menu Items, so we can Quick Set these items with the Entree Course.

Using Quick Set

Select Tools > Quick Set

Choose the Other Settings option
Check mark the Set box next to Course
Choose the applicable Course
Select Quick Set & Close

Another way to isolate items is to go to the Canvases icon or path to Menu > Canvas Designer

Lasso & Select a group of items & Double Click on the selection area

This will bring up the Menu Items window with only the selected items. Now you can easily Quick Set the selected items with confidence that only the chosen items will be affected.

Step 9 is complete once all items have a designated default Course., You may want to configure some Packages to make it easy for employees to change the default Course when necessary. Close the Menu Items window and follow the steps below to add any of the optional Coursing Packages.

Optional Coursing Packages

There are 3 optional Packages that can be added to order entry to give Servers Coursing flexibility:

Course Review - Allows the user to assign the proper Course through the visual Course Review Window before the items are ordered.
Course Selection - Allows the user to manually assign a Course to the selected Menu Items in Order Entry by displaying a list of previously defined Courses.
Individual Courses - Allows the user to manually assign a Course to the selected Menu Items in Order Entry with one touch of a button. e.g., Course 1, Course 2 or Beverages, Appetizers...

Step 10: Navigate to Order Entry > Packages