Focus Office: Creating a Collection

Focus Office allows you to make real time or scheduled changes to local Focus databases anytime and anywhere from the cloud. When working in Focus Office, you will make collections of changes and then publish (download) those changes to selected sites. This article will walk you through the collection creation process. To learn how to publish a collection, see Focus Office: Publishing a Collection for instructions.

Getting Started

Site Specific Collections - Site specific information, such as employee rosters and time card records, will require site specific collections. You will build these collections for a chosen store and will not be presented with the option to select a different store during the publishing process. 

Common Data Collections - Data common across multi-site units, like discounts or menu items, can be edited, added to a collection, and mass dispersed across selected units. You will build these types of collections with the sites receiving the changes in mind. Collections should only contain changes you wish to make to the sites selected when publishing.

Menu Canvas Design Collections - Menu canvas design changes require a separate collection, but can be published to selected sites like other common data. New menu item will need to be added to a collection and published to stores before those items can be added to buttons on menu item canvases. 

NOTE: Permissions to publish collections can be managed by defining user roles. Sites visible to a user can be limited or expanded as needed. See Focus Office: Editing Roles to learn more.

Creating a Collection

Step 1:  Log into Focus Office 

See How to Log In to Focus Office for details.

A collection can be started within any of the categories on the navigation panel shown below. Today we are going to create a collection that contains a new menu item.

Step 2:  Navigate to Menu > Menu Items

Step 3:  Choose duplicate to add a new menu item

• Click the blue dots for options to edit, duplicate, or delete an item.
• Duplicating similar items is the best way to keep important details like the report group & printer routing consistent. It is easier to modify a duplicated item than to build one from scratch using the Add MenuItem button in the upper right.

Step 4:  Give the new item a Menu Name & Price. Edit the other detail as needed. 

Step 5:  Select Add to Collection

• Choose New Collection 
• Add a Name and description.
• Save

Step 6:  If you follow steps 3-5 again, you will now have the option to add that menu item change to the existing collection or start a separate new collection

• Existing collections will be available for selection until they are published. Try to use collection names and descriptions that will help you remember what a particular collection contains.

Navigate to Collections anytime you wish to view existing collection details & statuses. All collections will have an unpublished status until you go through the publishing process. 

If you're ready to download your changes to the store(s), read Focus Office: Publishing a Collection to learn how!

For any questions/issues regarding collections through Focus Office, please contact our support staff at [e-mail].