Smartlaunch Forum / Smartlaunch Discussion / Suggestions & Improvements

Native windows desktop

zifzaf — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:41:41 GMT

hello
Im trying Smartlaunch and trying to use it as an internet timer. in this way.

users can use their prepaid tickets to login. and have access to the normal windows desktop. and not the smartlaunch screnn.
i m using cafe manila and it do that for me . but i found smartlaunch and i think it is better .
i have a cafe internet and some of my users need direct access to windows desktop.

my question is smartlaunch can do that ( when users log in , the smartlaunch screen disappear giving access to windows desktop? if yes how?
if not. please think about adding this function because it is important.

thanks for the good job
bye

SL5 ?

Games.Services — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:14:42 GMT

the forum seems quite.

what happens to suggestions and improvements ?

Time and Balance NEED to be seperated

LiquidMatrix-Andrew — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 06:09:41 GMT

We are a cafe that lets users run balances / tabs / negatives and SL's POS/Accounting system just doesn't make too much sense for a cafe like this.

If you operate only on prepaid time, etc, it works well. But Sl users should have an option on startup to choose a config type or just change the system to keep time and balance seperate.

for example: If a user comes up and puts $4 on his account for 1 hour, it should put an hour on there and thats it. If he buys a chocolate bar on his 'tab', it put thats in a -$1.. when he clears up, he owes $1 and keeps his hour - Instead of the SL system which would balance out the $1 owing with his our, only giving him 45 mins. If there is something I am doing wrong in the process, please let me know. But as I see it - the two colums are directly related and shouldn't be.

The problem is when a kid comes up and has a bunch of hours and time in hand, and looks on the client and sees ' hey, I only owe $10 and still have 2 hrs' and then when they come to settle up they get the shock of the till guy saying 'oh, you owe more money if you want to keep the 2 hrs you have'. The kids budget for what they have on the screen and don't correlate the two as an overall balance, and that the hours are WORTH time on their account - that they have 2 seperate things to consider. I shouldn't have to inform them either. If they have 2 hours, they have that. Period. If they racked up 20 chocolate bars for $20 - that should be it. I can disable the 'pay from account' option to my staff so they just pay for whatever merchandise they rack up and keep their hours - and I make it a policy once hours are paid, there is no exchanging, account, etc...

I am pretty sure there are many other cafe's that operate like mine..

Andrew

Time usage improvement + ordering

LiquidMatrix-Andrew — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:36:18 GMT

So,

I did a search, and a LOOOOONNG time ago we asked for both of these suggestions, but I am going to update it and make the request again. These are BIG factors for us buying the new SL.

1. TIME and BALANCE *need* to be seperate. We run tabs (negative balances) very often with our VIP members. I want them to ALWAYS know the precise amount of time they have left. The only thing we put on a tab is food/drink/products. Time NEVER goes on tab. I think this sample is similar to MANY cafe owners and how they operate. Having time and balance seperate is a HUGE advantage to our operations.

2. Credit limit - The current 'credit limit' system isn't effective, nor does it work properly at all. The credit limit messes up the users actual balance of time. Plus, if the user GOES OVER their time limit, it DOES NOT cut them off. *** We need SL to log out the user after they hit their maximum credit limit **. If unchecked by the employee, a customer can easily go way past their max. We think this is a simple set of code to put in.

3. Finally, an ORDER REMINDER. When a user orders a product, if the employee isn't at the till and doesn't hear the voice. The order will go unchecked. We would like SL to send out a reminder tone/sound/etc once every minute (or configurable variable) to notify the staff member if an order hasn't been picked up.

Thanks,

Andrew - The Liquid Matrix

Check for update to Crystal Reports

Melchior — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:30:03 GMT

Could the SL Team do a check and see if Crystal reports can be updated?
I know there is a newer version on its official site, cost is alot O_O.

Thanks.
I can post more further when I get a chance tomorrow.

Please do not remove console batch files in the new SL

CyberBUNKER — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:34:15 GMT

That is all, my console system uses it.

Customer Rewards

AcademyGaming — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 19:10:49 GMT

I need a way to automatically give out rewards based on definable criteria.

Like $100 spent over 30 days, gives a free day pass.

It should have either automatic reward with a notification for the counter staff AND on the customer login. So the customer knows they got something for being a return customer.

It should also have a manager mode that the manager can review all the rewards given out and be able to put some sort of color code or very visible marker so when that person comes in they are instantly recognized as a VIP customer by the staff.

Windows Desktop Skin

celestial — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:11:54 GMT

A skin that would look like windows desktop ;)

What Saudi games center owners wanna ?

Games.Services — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:46:57 GMT

I have been marketing for SL in Saudi Arabia.

I know a lot of Games Center Owners who really interested in SL .
They wanna to have it in their centers.

There 're some things they wanna to be included in SL .

1\ more details in Reports ، like : user group , name of employee , user name , ... etc

2\ Desktop mode for [u]Internet[/u] customers (because they get used to Easy Cafe) , you can put it like an option to user group application profile .

3\ Unclosed session or visible payment history.

4\ auto upgrade when customers payment history reach a certain amount. (like when customers payment reach 1000$ , he will be upgraded automatically form member to Silver member to 40% discount)

5\ Put permission for Void Transaction, or include this action in the reports . (some employee sell some product , then void the transaction to not be shown in the reports)

6\ When the owner give a client a ban , he should not be unbanned by the employee. (you should put permission for that action)

7\ You should put permission for lock and unlock accounts.

8\ Put separated waiting line for each computer groups (there 're adult group , underage group and smoke group . It can't be the same waiting line).

Thank you ,

Games.Services
Saudi Arabia

Application database

Tero — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:10:00 GMT

Hello. I'm quite new here and just starting a gaming cafe. I don't know if this has been discussed before, but I have a suggestion to get game management easier. We should have game/application database on a website or here on forums where it would be explained how to get different games, gamesaves and settings working. Wine project in open source world has a perfect example of this kind of web site:

http://appdb.winehq.org/

Employee security settings?

irios — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:35:51 GMT

It would be nice to see security settings for employees as well as the cafe's users.

Unfortunately we've had a few issues with illoyal employees, and we would really like to see security settings for employees.

Some of our employees would disable security settings on a client, open the task manager and kill the smartlaunch client.exe so they could let friends and mates play for free on the computers.

Legal ISSUE - SAFT

quimkaos — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:43:39 GMT

In Portugal we now have a legal issue.

Every software that deals with sells (financial management) have to generate an XML file for audit proposes that will be asked by law and taxes authority's. This law started being implemented since 01-01-2007

SAFT stands for "Standard Audit File for Tax porposes" and was created by recommendation of OCDE. I don't know if any other UE country is implementing this standard, but i know ours is unique and called SAFT-PT.
Since this is a "law made" file it's open source, but the entity that it's developing the standard is SAGE - portugal.

At this moment to implement SmartLunch i have to implement 2 financial management softwares: SmartLunch it self plus another PoS software that can generate a legal receipt for the costumer. this is not practical for the solution implementer neither to the PoS operator.

New User Agreement

Jarod [NX] — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:03:21 GMT

When we were originally talking about verison 4, and then later when we were testing v4, there was the impression that a new user agreement screen would be available to pop up whenever a new user logged on for the first time. This would make them read the rules and click "OK" before they could begin using the system. What ever happned to this? Is it still in the works or has it been dropped?

SL Full time FTP site

In The LAN of Games — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:22:25 GMT

Hey, i was hoping SL would actually have a full time FTP site, with login privelages.

I sometimes look for things that are required, which someone has nicely posted a small solution eg, link to a small file like TFT Key Changer, but when i find the link is just to a website that doesnt have it anymore or become a ad for porn? Come on, just easier to have a small FTP, which i still dont have a TFT key changer??

And what about SL direct? Is that ever intended to work? Or does It? Australia too far away? The idea for SL direct where you mass purchase games directly through game makers is great. Plus you would actually have a company created NODVD solution. And already setup for SL server and client, so we dont have to worry about emulation, scripts, and all other headache related issues.

Cheers

Age Difference on computers

letsplay2000 — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:16:47 GMT

We have a smoking section and would like to be able to make sure that nobody under 18yo can sit there, and this would be nice if SL had a build in feature that could help us

Memory Usage too high

genesis — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:23:52 GMT

The title of this post says it all, I'm noticing the memory usage for 4.0 has been growing larger and larger every time there's an update. It's to the point where it's affecting smooth gaming.

Not only the client, the admin is also taking about 25MB of memory. My front-end computer is a P3 with only 128 mb of ram, kind of makes it slower. Should also be done for the server to optimize memory handling.

Should be looked into.

Restrictions on log export for employees

irios — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:11:58 GMT

There needs to be a restriction on what log information an employee can export.
We've asked for this to be fixed for [b]several years back [/b]- both on email and on telephone support - and we were promised they would look into it, but there are still no restrictions on this.
The way it's now, any employee with access to the admin module can export economic data, and simply open it in Excel or similar to get the numbers.
This needs to be fixed!

It's time to have your say: SmartLaunch Public Review

Zaigon — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:14:49 GMT

I recently asked the guys over at SmartLaunch whether it was ok to get the publics input towards their systems, to get a better view of the direction that SL should be moving. This is an initiative for SL to get the opinions of the software, and what is wanted and needed in the software to fully drive their business.

Currently, SmartLaunch customers have three ways of which they can suggest improvements and report problems: SL Forums, SL Bug Website, and by Email. The problem with this system is often suggestions or problems are unheard due to prioritization of other areas of SL, communication/language barriers (for customers who don't speak English, this can be a problem), or a lack or interest from other users.

This review is intended to act as a bridge between SL Customers and the SL Development team. It is structured in a manner to address the three modules of SL, and the components within. Main components, such as Financials, will be reviewed seperately to the three modules. Respondants will be asked to rate the neccessity, from 1 to 10, for the areas they wish to be addressed, but I ask you to scale it accordingly, not to the users wishes.

Users will be asked to respond in the following categories. Components of Modules will be listed under those Modules.

Modules:

Server:

Update System:

Database Setup:

Employee Privelages:

User Groups:

Grouping/Consoles:

Security:

Client Interface (Server-side settings):

Application Management:

License Management:

Network Mapping:

3^rd Party Devices:

Others:

Administrator:

Statistics:

Email Sender:

Launch Application Remotely:

Error Reporting Center:

Bookings:

Prepaid Tickets:

Waiting Customers:

3^rd Party Devices:

Others:

Client:

Components:

Financial:

Financial Reports:

Point Of Sale:

Stock Control:

Receipts:

Others:

I would like submissions sent to me in the following format:

For Issues with the software:

The Module/Component in question.

The current problem with that Modoule/Component.

The way you see to overcome this problem.

Last, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important this solution is.

For Features you'd like to see in future versions:

What job is required to be done.

What is currently available to do the job (if anything). This may be some part of SmartLaunch, or another program.

How you would like to see this implemented into SmartLaunch.

Last, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important this solution is.

Please only make one submission, so take your time to review the entire system yourself, and compile your findings before sending it to me.

No current timeline has been given for submissions for this review, but I will judge it from the amount of submissions I receive within the first week. When all submissions have been received, the information will be compiled and reviewed before it is sent to the SmartLaunch Development Team. It will additionally be posted on these forums.

Any submissions posted in this topic will be completely ignored, but suggestions towards the review structure will be welcomed. Submissions are to be mailed to [url=mailto:asp3ct@hotmail.com?subject=SmartLaunch Review]asp3ct@hotmail.com[/url].

Any information sent to myself will not be associated with your name, although in the situation where a specific problem has occured, or something along those lines, I will ask your permission to quote that portion of the text you have sent. All time taken towards this is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Darren Turner

Name of employee in "Personal Log" of a user account?

irios — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:54:21 GMT

Somehow the employee column is gone in v4.1 when you lookup the "Personal log" of a user account.

If an employee does a mistake and you want to check up on the details, you're gonna have to start looking through the whole system log instead of simply looking up this info in the user account itself.

v3.6 used to have this visible, but this is gone in v4. Why is this?

Restriction on login user as different user group

irios — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:38:20 GMT

We need to have restrictions on the feature that allows you to let a user log on with a different user group than it originally belongs to.

I.e. an employee will let a guest (a mate or friend) log on with member pricing. Not good.

Show total logged in users, and percent

kjcdude — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:07:21 GMT

A very simple request but extremely useful for our business.

In the bottom right of the admin window which shows free computers, please add the following options in preferences.
Total computers that are currently logged in
Total consoles that are logged in
Total that are logged in
In percent, how full the store is

Thanks
Kyle

Adding money to account, and deleting minutes/discounts.

Eggserv — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:04:49 GMT

A couple of functions that would be useful.

1. Adding money to accounts.

This is an old issue, which hasn't changed from 4.0. When adding money to an account which is in debt, any money owing isn't automatically deducted from the amount owing on the current session, but is automatically added as time. Consequently, users can owe money from previous (continued) sessions, but have time credited to their account.

Strangely, the balance on the account is correct when money is added - e.g. if someone owes $5, and deposits $10, their new balance is $5 in credit, but $10 worth of time is added to their account! Very annoying.

I can't see that this is a big issue to fix, if the module that adds time to the account is made to deduct any money owing 1st from deposited funds before calculating the time to be added.

2. Deleting minutes/discounts.

Every day, we encounter situations where we'd like to remove minutes from a play and pay session (not an offer). We get quite a few casual customers who don't want to join as members (and take advantage of lower offers), and therefore attract our higher per minute charge. As a courtesy, I usually discount the end price for 'regular' casual users if they've been online for some time.

I'd like to be able to discount by removing minutes and/or by typing in a discount when their session is ended. A $$$ discount would be preferable, as it would show on receipts, and is a physical show of goodwill on our part (always appreciated by regular customers).

I see there are 'Add discounts to customers' and 'Delete time from a user's account' administrator options in the server settings. Are these activated, or there as future features? I can't find any way of discounting, or removing time currently.

What is your sales model?

Chris [SL] — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:32:19 GMT

As part of an effort to make configuring Smartlaunch for every cafe's unique business model easier, I am trying to find out how everyone does things in their cafe.

If you care to participate, please post in detail what your pricing model is and how you sell time. Do you make use of account balances and credits for non-time products? If so, describe in detail how, etc. This data will be used to make it easier to enforce your model on the Point of Sale system.

[b]PLEASE KEEP THIS THREAD ON TOPIC. NO DISCUSSIONS, BUG REPORTS, COMPLAINTS, OR UNRELATED SUGGESTIONS.[/b] Put those in other threads, and [i]do not reply to other user's posts[/i].

This thread is [b][i]strictly[/i][/b] for information gathering, and your cooperation in helping us get a fuller sense of how you use Smartlaunch is greaty appreciated.

[b]EDIT:[/b] You may private message me your response if you prefer. It is in your best interest to respond in some way, as it will lead to Smartlaunch being able to better cater to your unique needs.

EXTRA SUPPORT!

Hajo — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:05:21 GMT

Hello fellow SmartLaunch users,

Medieoasen and me, started up this small extra support for people who use SmartLaunch.

We use the Program mIRC, (this program is free to download)

you join the server gamesurge and go to the channel #smartlaunch-users

Here we will try to give some extra support to those who need it. all people who have a bit experience in operating systems and all that kinda stuff are ofcourse welcome to assist!

MARK!
WE ARE NOT PROFESIONALS AND WE ARE NOT PART OF SMARTLAUNCH
so please dont come to us to complain about Smartlaunch!!!!

Grtz Hajo/ Medieoasen

smartlaunch languages

Megapig — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:39:32 GMT

well i thought it would be a good idea to put some flags which smartlaunch supports on the client login screen ;)

I work for a cafe in Inverness and some times i cant tell where the hell there from and if they want me to change the language from English or not.

User Folders Quota!

Masai — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:48:52 GMT

Hello,

i have a net that has more than 800 users, if i set PUFs and personal folders for each user, there will be a problem on the server.

Is there a way of limiting each user folder quota?

Receipt re-print facility

Eggserv — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:34:55 GMT

One feature that we'd really appreciate is the ability to re-print receipts. We often get customers who ask for receipts after we've closed their sessions and hit the PAY button (even though we usually ask beforehand). We currently hand-write receipts when this happens.

The ability to re-print receipts once a session has been ended and paid for, would be VERY useful for us. Also, NZ tax law requires re-prints of tax invoices to have the word COPY on them (so that people don't claim multiple tax on copies of the same receipt).

If there is currently a way of re-printing receipts, someone might like to post the procedure here.

two requests...

voudas — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:59:40 GMT

1. plz find a way to hide the green "s" smart launch icon on the task bar, it's supposed to be hidden but most of the time it appears and it gives clients the ability to self logout, either on purpose or accidentally (by thinking it's the msn icon)

2. is there a chance to implement a ballance sum? both negative for people that owe money and positive for those that have prepaid. It's just a sum and it saves time from exporting data, importing it to excel and calculating...

thx

Export - which apps/games are on which PCs

tonyharding — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:55:17 GMT

I would like to see SL being able to export which applications/games are on which PCs.

As we dont have all the clients the same. We have different games installed on different PCs.

It would be good to have this to be able to be exported so that we can print it out and then show our customers.

Report Suggestion

FalGra — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:09:09 GMT

There are many issues with SL reporting "feature" from incorrect days of the week, to information just not being included within the correct timeframe specified. We are closed on mondays and our reports say we had 300 hours used monday but yet tuesday 43 hours... it's like Sunday shows up as monday, monday is tuesday, tuesday is wednesday, etc...

Suggestion beyond the bugs to be fixed.

A report allowing us to see what new accounts or atleast how many new accounts within a time frame... Possibly by day/hour of day/week/month/year/etc... So that we can see which periods of time are best for us for new customers.

Say we wanted to see how many new accounts we signed up every month for the past year giving numeral data as well as a graph, it would show:

january 24

february 40

march 73

april 9

may 40

etc...

Also, we should be able to run reports based on age brackets/gender/group etc...

pie charts to see how many members are <18, 18 - 24, 25 - 34, 35 - 44, 45+ make up our whole...

We have been doing this manually by exporting our entire database, computing age based on date relative to todays date, then manually bracketing those ages to see the # in each group. It's a lot of work each time we want to run this demographic report.

SMART LAUNCH LINUX

CyberCityNairobi — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:40:42 GMT

Is there a linux version of smart launch billing system. if there is how could we get our hand on it?If not, is the SL team planing to develop one for the open source lovers.:D

Creating a "Common Batch Files Basket Case"

Sniper Zero — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:22:50 GMT

hi everyone!!

I'm planning to get SL within the next week (even though it has so much problems especially due to it's developers it's the best piece of software around...) and I've been tryin and tryin to get it work nicely.

After a couple problems running games I've been searching the forum for HOURS looking for solutions that you guys gave to other ppl, sometimes found 'em some others don't...

After all this research I got myself a hint: why can't we ALL do a common 3d where we'll post links to our batch files for ALL games that we surely had problems with, and we surely know others will have same problems?

That will spare new ppl from searching the whole forum looking for answers (but will be usefull even for the best of you, in case you lose something for viruses, crashes, formatting, etc it will be like our "personal knowledge base" to remember all the hints we used to make this or that game)

I believe that would be certain help for newcomers like me, and would also spare some of you from being obsessed by us lookin for help!!

I know that this "SHOULD" be SL team's job... but in many months I've spent on this forum I'm positively sure they won't do it... I also know that this way SL will be an "almost-open platform" (and as such we "shouldn't" pay for it...), but I believe this way we'll get it to work better and better (still, this "SHOULD" be SL team's job but...), and maybe we can get some "prizes" from SL ppl (don't worry guys, nothing expensive... we know how much you care about money... sure more than you care about customers...) for helping them developing THEIR software, still a job that THEY "SHOULD" do... for example they could grant us a specified percentage of discount for the new version for each problem/batch/exe etc supplied!

I've said it, if some of you find this a good idea show up!! if you don't want to do this in here 'cause you're fed up with SL ppl (like many other ppl...) and do not want to hel 'em in any way we can arrange it somewere else, but still I think witt be a good idea...

Let me know 'bout it, byez!

Gender able to be specified only when user fills in info????

FalGra — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:12:21 GMT

Why can the customers gender ONLY be specified if the user fills out info at login, but we cannot manually specify this from the admin station? We do not allow customers to fill in info theirselves because they put in fake info...

It would be nice to be able to run a report and see how many female/male customers we have, so that we can tailor marketing better.

Need bandwidth manager

honestvip — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:53:42 GMT

hi Ineed bandwidth manager for working to cafeenet

Smartlaunch to support Windows Graphical User Interface as well?

jwux196 — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:44:33 GMT

Is it possible for Smartlaunch to support Windows Graphical User Interface as well?

It is definitely user friendly for internet cafe customers.

Consoles: Out Of Time -> BIG RED F*ING FLASHY BOX ON ADMIN SCREEN!

pstone — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:42:22 GMT

Can we add the ability for SL Admin to open a GIGANTIC FLASHING RED BOX IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN for anyone who runs out of time on a CONSOLE so my employees can remember to tell them they're out of time so they don't end up playing for free for hours... ARGH...

This should be a queing system where NO MATTER WHAT, if you have 12 people logged in and 10 of them all run out of time, you get 10 BOXES QUED UP ONE AFTER THE OTHER - You would have to hit the OK box or SPACE BAR to "CONFIRM" or be able to close the box. If there's another one qued, A NEW BOX!

This could naturally be an option but we're loosing a lot of $$$ cause employees are too busy to keep an eye on everything and the X10 thing doesn't work at all.

HELP?

Image on background.

Gizmoo — Sun, 25 May 2008 15:43:58 GMT

When you click a game you get a brief description and also an image of the game (if you so wish)

I would like to see a box on the background where we can place an image of our choice. In my case i would want to put the Logo of my cafe there. Or if i have an promotions have them there.

Thoughts :p ?

Gizmoo

pause workstations

celestial — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:36:23 GMT

is it possible to add the ability of a new operator access right to pause time?

Network mapping to work with Samba Fileserver

Luke — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:49:13 GMT

I would like Network mapping to work with Samba Fileservers.

We already use the fileserver to store the PUF's. We will also store the files for the Gizmo server on it when Gizmo gets released.

It is such a good and cost effective solution instead of a Windows Server.

I am sure a lot of other cafes use samba servers as well.

Suggestion: Multiple waiting lines

Fortress — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:59:15 GMT

I would like to request that the SL Dev team implement a new feature. I often have users come in and want on an Xbox but all my stations are full, I can't add them to the waiting line because it just puts them in for first available (usually the open PC's). For example, I have two types of clients, Members and prepaid tickets, so if someone wanted an xbox and we were full I would scan their membership card or their ticket to place them in line for that system,, Much like the current line,, I then could not log another user into the system by accident.

I'm sure other centers are having similar experiences and would also like to see this added, so if you agree please show your support by adding to this post, it shouldn't be too difficult to add,,, if it's truly needed.....

Thanks,

Brian

FortFrag Gaming Center