The Offline Ticket Entry Option provides lane redundancy and ensures fault tolerance so that clerks can continue to ring up sales if the connection to the CounterPoint server is lost.
Offline Ticket Entry is also useful during network outages, sidewalk sales,
scheduled server maintenance, or for any situation in which
the server is unavailable. Offline mode may be used as the normal mode of
operation for remote or sometimes-connected workstations.
In offline mode, clerks ring up sales in the normal manner, but the tickets are saved to a local database rather than to the main CounterPoint server's database. When the server becomes available again, the workstation database is automatically synchronized (replicated) with the server, and the offline tickets become part of the server's database.
When CounterPoint is running in offline mode, you can:
Open and close cash drawers
Enter sale and return tickets
Authorize credit card (EDC) transactions
Enter and process orders, layaways, quotes, and holds
Issue gift certificates and store credits
Add new customers on-the-fly
View drawer readings
Other CounterPoint functions are not available in offline mode.
Offline Ticket Entry includes PDRE (PeerDirect Replication Engine) software to replicate the local database with the main CounterPoint server's database.
CounterPoint includes Altiris software that enables a single computer (the Notification Server) to control the installation of software updates, database changes, and file distribution for each offline workstation. The Notification Server "talks to" the other offline workstations and automatically keeps them all up-to-date.
