Eventually Micros Terminal doesn't print employee reports

[JosueICR]

We eventually found a problem to print an employee sales report from a Micros Res WS4 Terminal, the checks and vouchers prints Ok. At the time of this error ocurs we found at the server a process named print engine that uses around 50% of the procesor, as soon as we force to close this process the cpu goes down and the pos terminals can print the employee sales reports. This occurs as an average once a week per store with Micros Res version 4.1 hf3.

We have others stores with version 3.2 and the problem doesn't occurs.

Any idea how to solve this ?


TIA

JRM

 

[pmegan]

My company has 18 restaurants, all running 3700 4.1 hf3. I've found that this is generally due to the posting procedures embedded in the reports. Employee reports that hang like that are usually due to checks carried over or employees who have been on the same shift for a long time. I haven't seen this happen yet in 4.1, but 3.0/3.1 had an indexing problem in the posting procedures that caused reports to hang like this.

If you don't have employee totals posting in your incremental posting procedures, add them in. This way the reports won't have too much info to post.
Either before you open or after you close, try clocking everybody out, incrementing all shifts and running a current shift employee detail from the PC. Also, keep an eye on the carried over section on your system detail. If there are checks that have been open for a long time they'll have to be closed.


The 3700 was introduced around 1995/6, not 1980, and almost all of the programmers from the original version are gone. The basic ideology is about the same, but that's because it works. The system does have some problems, and I get as aggravated with Micros as any other users sometimes, but to imply that the code is 30 years old and that the same programmers are still working on it the same way is misleading at best. The newer 3700 versions are .Net based and use mostly IIS, XML and Http Requests to communicate, none of which were available on that scale 14 years ago, let alone 30. Many of the COM components have been retired. Also, compare the stored procedures in a Res 2.x database to one of the current versions. In most cases they're almost unrecognizable.

 

[jimmymcp02]

This is a known issue and i have seen it in all flavors of res from 4.1 to 4.6 I have not seen this behaviour in 4.7 (yet) the same errors are logged in the 3700d.log
Tue Sep 08 14:39:40 2009 | MICROS1 | Autosequence.dll | 0 | Timeout Waiting For Mutex [g_hmutex].

And reports (custom or micros) do not print. you cant stop the autosequence server and start it again that fixes the problem most of the time. While the issue is ocurring you can still print the same report in the res server it looks like this affects 40column reports only.

You might want to review your autosequences and make sure you are not double posting the same data over and and over. We were able to minimize the occurance by changing the posting to dashboard from every 5 minutes to every 15 but the issue will happen every once in awhile.

 

[jimmymcp02]

I forgot to ask a question.

When this happens can you open manager procedures and internet explorer when this is occurring?


And last but not least. What OS are you running?

 

[DrZogg]

Hi,

There could be a problem with the parameters being passed in the autosequence. Check the following if you are unfamiliar:

Look at the touchscreen in designer and see which autosequence is being run

Go to AUTOSEQUNCE STEPS and look at the report being called. What is the number of the report? Select the Parameters tab and see that the values corect.

eg. Employee Sales would be a custom report (so I cannot tell you the number), the parameters passed would be DateSourceRange=Today, ShiftRangeSource=CurrentShift, ObjectSourceRange=All

eg. Employe Closed Checks would be Report#90, DateSourceRange=Today, ShiftSourceRange=CurrentShift, ObjectSourceRange=all

The first example should give sales totals etc. The second example should give the list of all checks closed today by employee

 

[JosueICR]

Hi Guys,

Based on the help provided by this forum, we decided to creat a batch that stop and restart a Micros Services, (autoseqsvr.exe), that eliminates almost all the errors related to this case.

Thanks for the help.

Josue R.

 

[jimmymcp02]

I found a fix for a similar issue.

It has to do with win2k3.

Are you running win2k3 by any chance.

 

[JosueICR]

Yes, it's running on Win2k3. Then the problem is related to Windows ?

Regards

Josue R.

 

[jimmymcp02]

yes.

The problem is related to windows 2003 and winInet i just looked at the site and the kb is gone. I still have the patch but i think the fix might also be downloaded as part of the windows updates thats why its not showing up on the link i had.

It used to be KB 950094

If you want it let me know i'll email you the exe.

The symptoms for my issue where the following

When the issue occurs
i cant open manager procedures
i cant browse using IE
i cant start ops on the server
and i cant run several reports from the workstations but the same reports that are 40colum can be run on the back but not the workstations.

Let me know if these are symptoms you are experiencing.

 

[jimmymcp02]

I forgot to mention. this has been addressed in 4.6 MR1 and 4.7. those versions no longer use WinInet.

 

[JosueICR]

i cant open manager procedures (same problem)
i cant browse using IE (never tried)
i cant start ops on the server (never tried)
and i cant run several reports from the workstations but the same reports that are 40colum can be run on the back but not the workstations (same problem)


Regards

Josue R.