Newton 8.2 Release Notes

New Features

• Cross-site Meal Data Purchase Sharing - Added support for sharing data between all District sites during a meal service.

• Added full support for Vendconnect Integration for Vending Machines 

  • NEWTON 18297 - Vending Settings - PIN options
  • NEWTON 18298 - Extended Import Bulk Changes functionality to support Disabling vending.
  • NEWTON 18293 - Ability to disable vending on a Student Account.
  • NEWTON 18294 - Added a cafeteria setting to define the threshold for daily vending that will lock a customer’s account once surpassed.
  • Student settings to allow A la carte vending & allow Reimbursable Meal vending
  • Vending outside of a Meal Service

• Weekly Spending Limits - 

  • Added support for weekly spending limits in POS Customer Maintenance
  • Tracking of weekly spending limit runs Sunday – Saturday and purchases will negate against weekly spending limit
  • Added a notification for students who have met their weekly spending limit

• Premium Meal Support for Itemization -

  • Added support for 4 tiers of OVS itemized meals that allows districts to provide various tiered pricing on reimbursable meals based on the entrée selected. 
  • Item Maintenance – added Alternate Entrée 1, Alternate Entrée 2 & Alternate Entrée 3 to the OVS Type dropdown list
  • Menus – Meal POSISD now has 4 options to map to the Entrees
• Spending Limits on POS Customer Screen - Added the spending limit remaining balance on the Display Student Info screen that can be accessed from the POS screen.
• Meal Controls for Newton in MSB - Added support for new MSB Meal Controls for Newton POS Users. To utilize this feature, meal controls must be enabled in the District's MSB Account. Parent will have the ability to set/change spending limits from their MSB account and have those changes reflected in Newton.

• PIN Number Support

  • Added PIN # to Customer maintenance
  • Extend Bulk Update to import PIN #
  • Added PIN # to POS customer dataset
  • Added PIN # to letter fields
• Annual Participation by School Report - Brought over the Annual Participation by School Report from WinFSCA

• Agent Mode for running scheduled jobs from MCS Cloud - 

  • Ability to schedule jobs to be run in Newton (without Windows Task Scheduler)
  • Ability to run scheduled jobs now directly from Newton
  • For MCS Cloud Users only
• DR Tests for Cloud Migrations - Added the ability to run automatic DR tests with reporting for Cloud Migration Support.  Tests will identify workstations in the district and whether or not they are cloud capable as well as the last time they tried to connect.
• Store Vending Machine Serving Line Config - Added a setting for Stores for ‘serving line configuration’ where the user selects which serving line config to use. For each existing store vending config, a new serving line will be created.
• Auto Kill Cafeteria POS Sessions - Upon logging into Newton POS, any running copies of Newton POS will be killed and the software will no longer error on login.
• Annual Participation Change Report - New report similar to the Participation by Enrollment report from WinFSCA.
• Combined Participation & Sales Report - Copied over the Combined Participation and Sales report from WinFSCA.
• Annual Participation by School Report - Copied over the Annual Participation by School Report from WinFSCA.
• Mass Update POS Groups - Added a mass update screen that allows users to quickly update homerooms and POS Groups for students. 
  Administration and Maintenance | Miscellaneous Setup | Mass Update POS Groups/Homerooms

Enhancements

• Serving Line Filter for Reports -

  • Added new report filter for Serving Lines, users can filter by Menu Configuration, Vending Machine or All Serving Lines
  • Added Serving Line Filter to the following reports:
    Items Sold
    Popular Items
    Line Details
    Items Sold by Category
    Detailed Meal
• Improve Full Sync of Cafeteria Databases - When selecting a cafeteria, the sync slows down on the Replicating Menus & Menu Configs step.  The constraint on this step has been removed and increased the speed of selecting a cafeteria.
• MCS Cloud Enhancements - If a district is hosted, workstation name is ignored for MSB Syncs
• Ability to Clear POS Groups - Added buttons for ‘Clear’ and ‘Delete’ in POS Group Maintenance. Clear – removes all students from the group but keeps the group in the list. Delete – removes the group and all students in the group.
• Add Birthdate to Customer Maintenance Screen - Added a column for student’s birthdate in Customer Maintenance
• Update to Claim Comments - Updated the Comments on Claims to display a preview of the comments
• Claim Update - Added supper and snack enrollment to claim data.
• After Posting Counts Screen Update - Added fields for Supper Enrollment & Snack Enrollment on the after posting meal counts screen. Cafeteria parameter controls if these are displayed.
• Duplicate Menu Names - Added better error messages when attempting to save a menu with a duplicate menu name.
• Permission for Special Diet Maintenance - Permission for accessing the Special Diet Maintenance screen.
• Charging Order for OVS - When selling items on the line, the itemization of components will follow price descending, alpha description and then rec id (for items with the same description).
• Cloud Support Update - Added the ability to turn off keep alives as part of Network Settings allowing districts that have policies that prohibit keep alives the ability to connect to the cloud database.
• Allow charging for Serving Line Vending - Vending machines will now honor charge settings.  Database Upgrade adds a serving line setting override for any preexisting serving line based vending machines and automatically sets the ‘charge action any charge’ to ‘disallow’ – setting to allow will allow customers to charge for vending if funds are not available.
• Better error message when starting serving lines - Added a better error message when attempting to launch a serving line via Newton when a copy of Newton POS is already running.
• Better error message for Max Databases on MCS Cloud - Added an error message when an MCS Cloud district exceeds its allotted number of databases when creating a test or prior year database..
• Test Database Creation Date - Added a column for date created to the test database grid.
• Partial Authorization Support for Prepaid Credit Cards - If a Prepaid Credit Card is used to make a partial payment on the PaxS300, the user will be prompted to decide how to complete the sale.

  Cancel – voids the partial auth in Portico and returns to the checkout screen
  Accept Partial Payment – completes the sale with just the partial amount tendered and will charge the remaining amount according to charging limits at the site. If charging is not allowed, the sale will not go through.

  Collect Cash – this will complete the sale with the partial auth and prompt for collecting a cash payment for the remaining amount due.
• MSB Sync Improvements - Updated the MSB Sync to better handle network errors when retrieving batches.
• Shutdown Logging - Added local and SQL server logging to track when Newton is shutdown to better handle potentially corrupted databases.
• Touchscreen button update - When editing a touchscreen button, clicking on the button does not automatically prompt to add a new item if an item already exists on the button.
• Cancel buttons in POS - Updated Newton POS with cancel buttons when connecting to the real time server on startup and user authentication.

• Clear POS Groups - 

  • Added a clear group button to POS Customer Groups that clears all students from the group but keeps the group
  • Added a delete group button that deletes the group and clears all students from the group
• Balance Summary by School Report - Updated the criteria screen to include a specific date filter defaulted to today’s date when running the Balance Summary by School report
• Customer Maintenance Update - Added a column for “birthdate” to the Customer Maintenance grid.
• Claim Comment Update - Updated claim comments to display a preview on the grid.
• Mass Update POS Groups & Homerooms - Added a utility to update POS Groups and Homerooms from a grid, or using the ‘Group Update’ to update multiple records at a time.
  Admin & Maintenance | Miscellaneous | Mass Update POS Groups / Homerooms
• Item Name Change - When changing the name of an item in Item Maintenance, it will update the item name on touchscreen buttons – this will overwrite any custom captions.
• Speed Up Site Select Functionality - When selecting a site, starting a serving line, or starting a meal, the replicating of menus & menu configs has been sped up.
• Alert for Housekeeping after EOY - Added an alert that warns districts of not running ‘Housekeeping’ after running EOY.

• Additional Enrollment Counts on Posting Screen - 

  • Added fields for entering in Supper and Snack Enrollment counts on the posting screen – all counts entered here are treated as free
  • Added a Cafeteria Parameter to control if these counts are displayed on a per cafeteria basis or via a template
• Supper & Snack Enrollment on Claim - Updated the claim data set to capture, calculate and record supper and snack enrollment.
• Duplicate Menu Names - Added a better warning message when creating a menu with a duplicate menu name.
• Permission for Special Diet Maintenance - Added a new permission for access to the Special Diet Maintenance screen.
• Permission for Menu Maintenance - Added a permission for accessing the Menu Maintenance screen.
• Menu Maintenance Tracking & Report - Added tracking and reporting for identifying which user made changes to a menu and what date the change was made.
  Reports & Letters | Central Office | Menu Change Tracking Overview
• Add Customer Category Filter to ‘Items Sold by Customer’ report - Updated the ‘Items Sold by Customer’ report to include the Customer Category filter.
• Scheduled Job to Reset Menus to Template - Created a scheduled job for resetting menu overrides back to the original template. Job can be run daily, weekly, hourly, etc.

• Update to MEC Scheduled Job - 

  • Updated the MEC Scheduled job to select which types of changes to make via the job. Paying to Free, Paying to Reduced, Reduced to Free, Reduced to Paying, Free to Reduced, Free to Paying.
  • Added an option to select meal type when running the scheduled job.
• Update to MEC Utility - Added an option to select meal type when running the MEC Correction tool.
• Meal Eligibility Corrections Report - ‘Meal Eligibility Corrections’ report lists changes made via the MEC Utility.  Report can be run for Correction Date range, Operating Date range, meal types and types of changes that were made. 
  Reports & Letters | Central Office | Meal Eligibility Corrections
• Meal Eligibility Corrections Errors Report - 'Meal Eligibility Corrections Errors’ report displays all errors that occurred when running the MEC Utility.  Report can be run based on Correction Date range and/or Operating Date range.
  Reports & Letters | Central Office | Meal Eligibility Corrections Errors

Fixes

• Fixed a bug that was causing an error when attempting to perform a 2^nd full refresh of a local database.
• For MCS Cloud hosted districts, the Plugin Alert Checker was erroring.  For hosted districts, they will no longer receive the Plugin alert checker – users will need to check plugins to verify they are loaded from the Plugin Maintenance screen.
• Fixed a bug that was causing itemization not to combine correctly when selling meals as a function key sale.
• Fixed a bug that was not displaying comments on the Void and Edit Comments Report.
• Widened the Serve Date column on the Bank Reconciliation Report so that dates no longer wrap.
• Fixed a bug that was not considering Price Category mapping when running the Meal Eligibility Correction Utility.
• Corrected PV2 math for Claims that no longer displays a negative number when calculating counts.

• Corrected the PV2 math for Meal Count creation when running the Participation & Sales Report. Added a database upgrade that automatically fixes any past days that included a negative number.

• Added better error handling for RTS logins.
• Added a warning to select a cafeteria before selecting POS Customers in letter generation criteria.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the report criteria of “use users default cafeteria” to not automatically select their school.
• Fixed a bug that was causing an exception error when running the Meal Eligibility Correction Utility for the entire district.