Machine health and alarms

Smart coolers watch themselves: SandStar knows each machine's temperature, whether it's online, and when something goes wrong, like a high temperature or a door opened without a sale. TicketStacker reads all of that from SandStar every 10 minutes, so a warm cooler shows up in TicketStacker shortly after SandStar sees it. You don't have to check SandStar's app.

Turn it on

Machine health comes with the SandStar connection. Open Settings → Connected apps → SandStar VMS. Under What to sync, Machine health and alarms is ticked for every company already connected. Untick it to stop the checks. Nothing in SandStar is changed: TicketStacker only reads.

Machines match by SandStar's serial number, then by the name in SandStar's Inventory Report. A SandStar machine TicketStacker doesn't have yet is skipped until its stock comes in.

What you see on a machine

Open a machine (Sales & Inventory → Machines, then its page). Machine health shows every number SandStar gives:

• Temperature, with the limits set in SandStar, if any
• Connection: online or offline, and when it last connected
• Last report: when the machine last checked in with SandStar
• SandStar alarm: whether SandStar has an alarm on for it, and its stock alarm
• Defrosting, Doors, Signal (bars), Screen and Software (with the last restart)

Under them is a chart of the last 7 days of temperature (dashed red lines are SandStar's limits), then SandStar alarms: what's open now (Pending, or Being handled in SandStar) with SandStar's advice, and the recently handled ones. For a suspected theft, Watch SandStar's video opens SandStar's clip.

On the Machines list, a machine with a problem says so in its row (Temp with the reading, Offline, or the alarm's name), and its side panel shows the temperature, whether it's online and how many SandStar alarms are open, with a link to Machine health.

Alerts

Three kinds of alerts come from the machines themselves, alongside the usual ones (see Inventory):

• Temperature: SandStar reports a temperature alarm (high temperature, temperature anomaly or temperature control trouble), or the reading is outside the limits set for the machine in SandStar.
• Machine alarm: any other SandStar alarm, like suspected theft, a door that won't open or close, or blocked cameras. Out-of-stock alarms are left to TicketStacker's own Sold out alerts.
• Offline: the machine has been offline longer than the company allows (60 minutes to start with). Machines offline for more than 30 days are left out, so a machine in storage doesn't alert forever.

They show on the machine, on Alert rules, at the top of the Sales & Inventory Overview's to-do list, under the bell and in chat channels, like the other alerts. When SandStar marks an alarm handled, or the machine comes back online, the alert clears on its own.

Tickets for alerts

Each new machine alert opens a ticket, so someone owns it. The first time it happens, TicketStacker makes a Machine alerts stack (New, Checking, Fixed, No action needed). Each ticket names the machine, the alert, the machine's location and the temperature, and is linked to the machine's equipment in Assets.

• One ticket per machine and alert: if the same alert comes back while its ticket is open, the ticket gets a comment instead of a second ticket.
• When the alert clears, the ticket gets a comment saying so. People close the ticket when they're sure it's fine.

Admins change this on Alert rules, under Tickets for alerts:

• Untick Open a ticket when a machine alert starts to stop tickets (alerts still come to the bell).
• Choose which alerts open tickets: Temperature, Machine alarm and Offline to start with; you can add No sales, Low stock, Sold out, Cash low and Expiring.
• Pick another of your stacks under In this stack, or keep Machine alerts.
• Set Offline after (minutes) (10 to 1440).

Click Save ticket settings.