Tables and floor plan

In the back office, Service › Tables has two views: Live, which shows what is happening on the floor right now, and Layout, where you draw the room — tables, stools, the cash register, lounges, the bar and doors — exactly as the iPads will show it.

Admins and managers can view and change the floor plan. Using the floor on the iPad is in The floor and tabs.

Open the Tables page

1. In the back office sidebar, under Service, click Tables. The Live view opens.
2. At the top right, click Layout to edit the plan, or Live to go back.

• Live says "Table status straight from the floor — updates as orders move." Layout says "Lay out the floor plan. Drag to position, drag a corner to resize, and add the bar and doors so the room reads the way it looks. The iPad shows the same arrangement."
• Both views draw the same plan, scaled to fit the browser window.
• Only active tables are shown. Archived tables are hidden everywhere.

Watch the floor live

The Live view shows the floor as the iPads see it: which tables have a tab, its state and what it still owes, plus tables held for a reservation (with the Reservations add-on). It changes by itself as the floor works, which is useful from the office during service. Nothing can be changed from it.

1. Open Tables. Live is the view it opens on.
2. Read the line above the plan:
   • the connection dot, with Live, Connecting… or Not updating — retrying;
   • "5 of 12 tables occupied";
   • "$3,480.00 open" — what is owed on all the occupied tables together;
   • at the right, "Updated 9:41 PM".
3. Read each table with the legend under the plan: Free, Open tab, Sent to bar, Partly paid, Reserved.

• A table with a tab shows what the tab still owes: the total, or on a partly paid tab the total less the payments taken.
• A free table with a booking coming up shows "◷ 9:00 PM · Ana · 4" in blue — the time, the guest and the party size — or, once the party is late, "◷ 9:00 PM · 12 min late" in amber.
• Each table shows one tab, as on the iPad.
• The view updates within about a third of a second of a change on the floor. It reads everything again when the connection comes back and when you return to the browser tab. After two failed reads in a row, the dot turns amber with Not updating — retrying.

What Live doesn't show

• The marks only the iPad has: the servers' floor colors, the counts of unsent drinks, and the padlock on a table another iPad is using.
• The iPad's colors. The iPad shows open tabs in amber and partly paid tabs in purple, dashed.
• Layout changes made after the page loaded: reload the page to see them.
• Bookings other than tonight's.

In the back office, under Settings › Reservations › On the floor:

See Reservations.

Add a table

Tables are what the iPads take orders on: ordinary tables, bar stools, the cash register and lounges.

1. Open Tables › Layout and click Add table. The New table dialog opens: "Add a table — you can drag it into place on the floor plan after."
2. Fill in:
   • Name — required, up to 40 characters (for example "B4").
   • Section — optional, up to 60 characters. Sections already in use are suggested.
   • Seats — at least 1. On the iPad, this is the guest count a new tab starts at, and the number a free table shows.
   • Shape — Square / rectangle, Round, Bar stool, Cash register or Lounge (sofa + chairs).
   • Facing — lounges only: 0° — sofa at bottom, 90° — sofa at left, 180° — sofa at top or 270° — sofa at right.
   • Size — Small, Medium or Large, or an exact Width and Height.
3. Click Create. "Table added" appears, and the table lands in the first free spot on the plan. Drag it into place.

Edit a table

1. In Layout, double-click the table — or click it, then Edit under it. Edit table opens: "Update the table's details. Drag it on the floor plan to reposition."
2. Change any field and click Save. "Table updated" appears.

Rules for tables

• Shapes on the iPad: Square / rectangle and Round are ordinary tables (a round table stretched into a rectangle becomes a pill). Bar stool is a small round seat. Cash register is a quick-sale point: tapping it on the iPad opens a sale at once, with 1 guest and no questions. Lounge (sofa + chairs) draws a sofa, a coffee table and two chairs, and is an ordinary table you can order at. Facing only changes the drawing, never the table's place or size.
• Sizes: a new table starts at 88 × 88. Small is 72, Medium 104 and Large 160, all square. Width and height can each be 56 to 600. Choosing Lounge (sofa + chairs) at the starting size switches it to 200 × 140. "Equal sides make a square or a circle; different ones a rectangle or a pill. You can also drag the corner grip on the plan."
• Seats: 1 to 50. The guest picker on the iPad goes up to 20.
• Names can repeat. The dialog warns: "Another table is already called B4. Both will show; tell them apart by section."
• Renaming, resizing, reshaping or moving a table never affects a tab on it.
• There is no delete for a table, only Archive. See Archive a table.
• The dialog refuses with "Name is required", "Seats must be at least 1" or "Width and height must be between 56 and 600".

Arrange the room

You arrange the room on the plan itself.

• Move: drag a table or a piece of furniture. It snaps to the grid when you let go.
• Resize: click it to select it, then drag the small square at its bottom-right corner. With that square selected, the arrow keys resize it too.
• Turn a lounge: select it and click the turn button that appears above it (Rotate 90°). Each click turns it a quarter turn clockwise. Or set Facing in its dialog.

Move several at once

1. Click the first one, then Shift-click (or Cmd-click / Ctrl-click) the others. A small pill at the top left of the plan shows how many are selected.
2. Drag any of them; the rest follow.
3. Clear the selection with the pill's ✕, the Escape key, or a click on an empty part of the plan.

The hint under the plan sums it up: "Drag to reposition (snaps to grid). Drag the corner grip to resize. Click to select, double-click to edit. Shift-click to select several and drag them together."

Rules for arranging

• Positions and sizes snap to a 20-pixel grid, even when you resize with the arrow keys.
• Nothing can be dragged off the plan. Resizing near an edge pulls the item back inside.
• Moving a group shifts every selected item by the same distance. An item that would leave the plan stops at the edge while the others move the full distance. A group move never resizes anything.
• Every drop and every resize is saved at once — once, when you let go, not while you drag.
• Changing the section filter clears a selection, so a group move never moves tables you can't see.
• There is no undo: drag it back.
• A move that fails to save snaps back, with an error message. If a group move fails part of the way, the whole plan is read again: "Couldn't move the selection." (and, if that fails too, "Reloading the plan failed too — refresh the page.").

Add the bar and doors

Furniture draws the bar counter and the doors so the plan reads like the room. It is only part of the drawing: nothing can be ordered at it, and the iPad does nothing when it is tapped.

1. Click Add furniture and choose Bar, Door or Double door.
2. It appears in the first free spot, selected. Drag it into place and resize it with its corner square.

Label or remove a piece

1. Double-click it. A dialog titled with its kind opens: "Drag it to move, drag the corner grip to resize. Nothing can be ordered here — furniture is only part of the drawing."
2. For a bar, type a Label — up to 40 characters, for example "Main bar" ("Shown on the plan, on both screens.") — and click Save.
3. To delete the piece, click Remove. Close leaves it as it is.

• Starting sizes: bar 240 × 60, door 60 × 20, double door 120 × 20. Furniture can be 20 to 1200 wide and 20 to 760 high.
• A new bar is labelled "Bar". Doors have no label.
• Remove deletes the piece for good, with no confirmation.
• The iPad draws a bar as a wood-toned block with its label inside, and a door as a dashed gap in the wall.
• Furniture is drawn under the tables; it can't sit on top of one.

Group tables into sections

A section — Bar, Patio, Terrace… — is a label on each table that groups tables in the back office: the editor can show one section at a time and colors tables by section.

• To put a table in a section, edit the table, type the section's name under Section (or pick a suggested one), and save. A section exists as long as at least one table carries its name.

• To show one section in the editor, click its pill above the plan: All, each section by name (with its color dot), and No section when some tables have none.

• To rename a section, edit each of its tables and change Section. Sections are set table by table.

• Each section gets a color worked out from its name, from a set of eight. Tables with no section are slate gray. The color tints the table and its name in the editor, and the free tables in the Live view.

• Sections never affect tabs or reports.

• The iPad doesn't show sections on its floor. A table's section only appears under its name on the card that opens a tab.

Archive a table

Archiving takes a table off the floor — from the iPads and from both views here — without deleting it, so past checks that used it keep their table.

1. In Layout, double-click the table to open Edit table.
2. Click Archive, at the bottom left.
3. Confirm: "Archive "B4"? It will hide from the iPad and the floor plan." → Archive. "Table archived" appears.

• Archiving is refused while the table has an open tab: "That table has an open tab. Close or settle it on the iPad first — archiving now would hide the tab while leaving it open." If the check itself fails: "Couldn't check for open tabs — the table was not archived."
• An archived table disappears from running iPads within about a second.
• There is no screen to bring an archived table back.

How changes reach the iPads

Every change saved in Layout — a table added, moved, resized, turned, renamed or archived; furniture added, moved or removed — appears on the venue's iPads by itself, usually within a second, even in the middle of service.

1. Save the change in Tables › Layout.
2. Look at any iPad's floor: it redraws by itself. Nobody needs to sign out.

• The iPad also reads the floor again at every sign-in and when it wakes up, as a safety net.
• An iPad in the middle of moving a tab sees the change too: a table that has become free, or has been archived, updates the choices.
• The iPad keeps the last floor it saw, so when the app opens it shows the room's outline at once while it loads.
• An iPad that is offline catches up when its connection returns, or at its next sign-in.
• The back office's Live view doesn't redraw layout changes until the page is reloaded.

Related

• The floor and tabs
• Reservations
• Staff and roles
• Venue settings, hours and targets