Guestline EPoS embraces an agile philosophy

Guestline EPoS, for quite a while, was challenged with keeping clients up to date with the latest releases of the software. Whether these releases were simple patches or a great new feature, one of the Guestline support or engineering teams would need to connect to our clients’ computers, terminals or servers and work through several set steps to update them to the latest version, with all the shiny newness. In summary, it was time and resources consuming, allowed mistakes and meant downtime for our clients. 

That was our challenge; to remove the need for a human to connect to a clients’ system and manually update their software. We wanted it to be automated and to be able to update our software for hundreds of clients and terminals at the same time. In doing this we can get patches and new features to all our customers in a couple of days rather than several months. 

Octopus Deploy Cloud makes complex deployments easy  

With over 4,000 terminals just in the UK with Guestline EPoS software installed, Octopus Deploy Cloud allows us to communicate remotely with each one of these terminals to make sure they are security patched (latest versions of .Net framework, Windows Updates, etc) and have the latest release of Guestline EPoS software.  

In addition, it also allows us to create a simple list with the several different ‘variables’ and steps that our engineers used to follow during EPoS installation ensuring consistency and simplicity. 

If you would like to know more about Octopus read and watch. 

How does Octopus Deploy Cloud work? 

Over a period of about two months, we set up our test environments to mimic a clients’ business and worked through each step of the deployment to ensure that we were going to get the desired results. Based on our positive results, we are now actively rolling out this deployment process to all Guestline EPoS clients. We will contact our clients a final time to install on their terminals the Octopus Tentacle (yes, you read that correctly, it is called a Tentacle!), this will enable us to connect each of our clients’ terminals to our Octopus Deploy Cloud. As soon as this is finalised, Octopus Tentacle will check for new updates, and if there is a new one, it will then download and install it. No human intervention, no downtime, no delays and no complications. 

What is new in Guestline EPoS? 

EPoS v4:  Similarly, to Guestline Rezlynx PMS and with Octopus Deploy Cloud and Octopus Tentacle, we are aiming to only support one EPoS version – Guestline EPoS v4. So, we can deploy a simple bug fix or a new feature faster to our ever-growing client base. Previously we would take approximately 18 months to deploy a new EPoS version to all clients or 2 hours per client; now with Octopus Deploy, it takes us between 2 to 5 minutes per client. 

Regional Formatting:  As part of Guestline’s expansion plan into new territories, Guestline EPoS has now enabled the Regional Formatting that is set on the Windows Operating System to support the different formatting variations. For example, we display numbers and currency with a decimal point denoted by a dot/full stop; most other countries use a comma. It is also the opposite for a Thousand Separator; UK/US use a comma and other countries use a full stop/dot.

Much more to come:  With one single version, over the air, real-time updates and an agile development team, Guestline can continue to innovate on your behalf and deliver you more Guest Time. 

For more information on this, please contact our team on enquiries@guestline.com