The Floor Plan (or Design Floors as it is known within Backoffice) is a service provided with your copy of Backoffice that adds a visual blueprint style layout of your store’s floor.

There are 2 main functions, one is a visual cue for which tables are currently in use and which are not. The second function is for waiters/waitresses to easily understand the layout of the store’s floor and easily keep track of orders.


Initial Setup


To get started with the Floor plan you need some basic information:

  • How many tables with how many seats.
  • How many tables will be in a smoking area, and how many will not.


You will also have to set up the employees who will use the floor plan as waiters/waitresses, which we will also cover in this document.


Setting up Employees


To set up your employees, follow the steps below.

  1. Open Backoffice.exe
  2. Select Lists > Employees > Employees
  3. Select the employee that you wish to change to a waiter/waitress.
  4. Edit the Employees details by selecting the button that looks like this:
  5. Select next so that you will be in step 2 of 3 as shown below:
  6. Check the Is Waiter checkbox in the form and select Finish.
  7. Do this for all the employees you wish to change to waiters/waitresses.
  8. Close the employee properties


To get started with the Floor plan, follow the steps below.

  1. Open Backoffice
  2. Select Activities > Add-ins > Design Floors


The Basics of working with the Floor Plan

Once you have opened the Floor Plan, it should look like the image below:


Please Note: The below image shows a completely finished floor plan, as you can see there are 18 tables in total, walls are blue and the doors are red. In this case, the round tables have 2 seats each and the square tables have 4 seats each.



You can also add more functionality to it, in case your store might have a deck or a second story, you can add these on the left under the interactive buttons and then place where you stairs are by pushing the stairs button. More details on this below.

User Interface Details


The main menu consists of the following;


 

From left:

  • Save Button
  • Open Button
  • Options Button


Please make sure to save your document before closing the Floor Plan or else all your hard work will be lost.

The Options Button will open to a form that looks like the image below. It’s mostly for setting the color changes as the status of a table changes over time.



Below the Main Menu you will find the Draw menu, which includes all the tools you need to draw your floor plan:


 

From Left:

  • Select Button - Used to select anything that’s already placed in the canvas area.

Please note: After you have placed a shape, the mouse pointer will default back to the select tool. Keep this in mind if you want to place multiple items such as tables.

  • Wall Button- This will draw an angled blue line, which can then be dragged into shape and placed where the user wishes to place it within the canvas area, as shown below.

  • Door Button - Draw a red line that will be angled the same way as the wall line above, functions as a visual cue for where the doors are within your store.
  • Window Button - Places a darker yellow which functions as a visual cue for where windows are in your store.
  • Stairs Button - If you have more than one level set within the floor plan then you will be able to place some stairs as a visual cue to where stairs would be within your store. The stairs button looks like a round table, as shown: 


  • Text Button - This button will place a text box that you can type in. This is used as another visual cue for items/places which cannot be visually displayed within the floor plan. Such as counters.
  • Round Table - This is a visual cue for a round table. After placing a table, please select the table number you want to use for it.
  • Square Table - This is a visual cue for a square table. After placing a table, please select the table number you want to use for it.
  • Table Selection Button - From this button, you can see a list of all the tables saved on your database and their finer details.
    • You can also change the details of the tables from here. Such as the number of seats, number/name of the table and whether it is a smoking or non-smoking table.


Setting up Tables

It would be of best interest to create all your table numbers/names before you start drawing up your floor plan. This can be done with the Table Selection Button. The button looks as follows:


Select the button and the following form will appear:


Use the button toolbar in table plan to add, remove and edit tables to your liking as shown below:


 

From left;

  • Start of list button
  • Previous table button
  • Next table button
  • End of list button
  • Add new Table Button
  • Remove Table Button
  • Edit Button


Once you select the “Add a new Table Button” the following form will appear:



From the above form, you can set a number for the table. You can also set whether it is a smoking or non-smoking table. And finally, you can set the number of seats available for that table.


Please Note: If you do not have any tables set before adding tables, the table plan form would appear automatically to help with adding tables to the database.


After this everything else should be more or less straightforward and easy enough to set up.