Unable to print POS transaction to kitchen printer!

[HALBURN]

I know that FileMaker Go does not support printing, but has anyone figured out any workarounds?

We are trying to use FMGO with a POS system and we need the ability for the waiters to send their orders to the kitchen.

Currently we do this on a Mac Mini POS terminal. We have the FileMaker client print via a script that executes an AppleScript. The AppleScript determines which department in the kitchen to send the order to.

I was thinking that I could have a script running on the server every 30-60 seconds, and have it check a field value to determine if the order should be printed, but I am concerned about the server load of having it run so frequently.

Any suggestions?

[fseipel]

Since Filemaker Go supports the WebViewer, it should be possible to trigger the AppleScript by opening a WebViewer that accesses a page on the Kitchen computer. This will eliminate the need for any polling of fields.

To run the AppleScript, you could use ACGI Dispatcher http://www.sentman.com/acgi_dispatcher.html

Another alternative would be to use a plugin that permits you to trigger a Filemaker script over the web, such as Remote Scripter from 360Works http://www.360works.com/remotescripter/ -- so the WebViewer would just go to the appropriate URL. Troi Activator could also be used similarly.

Filemaker's example plugin SDK includes an example to run a Filemaker script, so it would be possible to write your own plugin to do this, by combining Microsoft's TCP Listener example, with the filemaker template (at least for Windows platforms). I'm not sure how you'd write a plugin to do this on a Mac. Presumably, that is how these plugins work.

[Tanner]

I have a server script that runs every minute and another one that runs every 5 minutes and have not had any performance problems. I think the script would be pretty simple.

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I think you could easily run that every minute without any performance problems. Especially if you are running on modern hardware.

[HALBURN]

thanks for the excellent suggestions