Design Notes. Retail Memberships

A retail membership links a retail system to external systems in an ongoing manner. Essentially these are rollups to handle multiple connections in a uniform way without having to create interfaces for each external connection. Many franchise systems will include a membership component so that settings and key files can be distributed to lanes.

Database

Heading rows for each membership are stored in the memberships table. Parts of this table are replicated to all lanes as they may have a need to know active memberships. A membership has a unique membershipkey which is a unique key value that defines the actual connection. This membershipkey is used internally to identify connection. Membershipkey values are the same over different retailers if they are both members of the same group.

Some memberships are able to supply settings into a retailers system. An example might be joining a loyalty program which has a need to add user interface elements or receipt formats. These settings are stored in the settingsmembership table and loaded as part of the normal POS settings load process.

User Options

A membership control page exists from sshome.htm This page allows the joining and leaving of groups. There is little other direct user interaction with a membership group.

Internal Operation

Once enabled, each membership group is able to poll its defined external hosts to upload and download information. This exchange of information is controlled by Fieldpine at design time. When a membership is built its range of abilities is set, it is not a dynamically changing interface.