POSmonitor

Additional Configuration

Although POSmonitor has been set up for minimal configuration of the application, there are other factors to consider that are just simply the nature of web accessible applications.

To monitor your restaurant you will need to know how to find it and make sure the port is open on your firewall.

Firewall

If you are using Windows Firewall, got to the “Control Panel”

XP

Open “Security Center”. Under “Manage Security Settings For:” choose “Windows Firewall”. Go to the “Exceptions” tab. Select “Add Port”. Name it what ever you like and set the port for what you configured above. Select “OK: to complete”

Vista

Open “Security”. Click “Allow a program through Windows Firewall” and enter password if prompted. Select “Add Port”. Name it what ever you like and set the port for what you configured above. Select “OK” to complete”.

For external or other software firewalls, consult the manufacturers documentation.

Finding your computer on the internet

• If you have a static IP address, you can put in the IP address(:port if not 80) into your browser and it should work just fine. You can obtain your address from your Internet Service Provider.
  ex. http://123.123.123.123 or http://www.123.123.123.123:8080
  
  
• If you have a domain already set up in your restaurant, just enter the domain name(:port if not 80) into your browser.
  
  ex. http://www.myrestaurant.com or http://www.myrestaurant.com:8080
• If you have a dynamic IP address, you can set up a free account with DynDNS to maintain access through a sub domain name, rather than having to know what your current IP address is. They provide you up to 5 sub domain (an example of a sub domain would be yourname.dyndns.org. They have many top level domains{the part between the dots} to choose from.) names for free. Install their “Update Client” and it will keep your IP address updated so you can use just the sub domain name. See their site for more detail. Once set up, access your restaurant by entering http://www.your_sub_domain.top_level_domain.org(or .net,.com etc.). If the port is set to anything other than 80, add :port to the end.
  
  ex. http://www.myrestaurant.gotdns.com or http://www.myrestaurant.gotdns.com:8080
  
  You can also use the DynDNS service for a registered domain for a small fee to avoid the need for a subdomain.

Starting and Stopping

Shorcuts are created during installation. To stop, select Start->POSmonitor->Stop POSmonitor Service from the Windows “Start” menu. To start, select Start->POSmonitor->Stat POSmonitor Service.

The service can also be started and stopped from command prompt. Change to the installation directory(typically C:\Program Files\POSmonitor) and enter the commands start and stop commands respectively.

posmon start

posmon stop

Monitoring and Reporting

Once installed and running you can monitor remotely as described above.  To test locally you can enter

http://localhost

append :port if port is other than 80

There is no need to configure users, POSmonitor uses the users configured in the FreePOS system. 

When the logon screen appears, enter the user number for anyone with "Manager" access in the FreePOS system.

Using an RSS Ticker.
An RSS Ticker allows you to monitor the basic information from your restaurant. You can integrate it as a feed
along with other feeds you may already be monitoring, as well as have a feed for each of your locations. You
can use any ticker application such as a browser extension or the Yahoo Ticker Tape Widget.

 

To subscribe to a feed append /rss to your domain for the Feed URL in your ticker application.
ex. http://www.myrestaurant.com/rss
All feed links will take you to the monitoring application.