Learn what's new in the 1.6.1 version of Emerald POS software for retail customers.

Version 1.6.1

April 6, 2021

Release Overview

This release includes the following information:

• Special Notices
• New Features
• Fixes

Special Notices

• Installation: After a fresh installation, Store Server msi and Office client msi, and prior to performing Cold Start, on the first login at the Store Level a password change is mandatory via the Store Office UI. This is important since the installation user is not protected and on changing the password, the Security Policies will then apply.

• Office/EJ: In an Upgrade, the SME will need to manually remove the Electronic Journal, and Order Management screens from their existing Store Office menus.

New Features

REF 493545: Certification of Windows Server 2019
Emerald was certified with Microsoft Window Server 2019. This includes:

• CCM Servers
• Store Servers

REF 495522|496709: Deployment of TDM Parser 2.16/2.17.
The TDM Parser Version 2.16 and 2.17 have been deployed to production.

REF 487347: Catalina: Send a Hashing of the Paying Card PAN to Catalina
Emerald was updated to send Catalina a Mapped ID message once the customers pays with an EFT card for which the EPS can send hashed values of its PAN. The message is sent for each payment. This enables Catalina to use the hashed PAN value as a way to detect customers who are not loyalty customers, identify their selling pattern and print the relevant coupons for them. If Emerald is integrated with a different EPS system, no message will be sent to Catalina.

REF 473518: Store Office Deprecate EJ, Fuel EJ, Order Management
The Emerald Store Office Electronic Journal, Fuel Electronic Journal, and Order Management screens were deprecated from version 1.5.1.

• From this version, all the Electronic Journal, Fuel Electronic Journal, and Order Management screens were removed from the Emerald Store Office.
• The TransactionLogLookup EJ mode (i.e. EJ access service and not the Tlog access service. i.e. lookup on the Emerald TDM and not on the BSP/TDM) is still supported.
• This transaction view functionality is now available in the NCR Analytics product.

REF 493424: Business Rules Support Delayed Manager Approval on POS – Phase 1 Complete Tlog
Previously, NCR Emerald was updated with the ability to solve Business Rules requiring manager approval as delayed interventions. The Tlog was also updated to capture all information for the delayed BRM information as it does with regular interventions. In this version, the Emerald Tlog was updated with a new flag to indicate that the BRM is a delayed BRM.

REF 391803: Tax: Canadian Tax – PST, GST, HST, First Nations, Donut Deal, Prepared Food
Emerald has the ability to support Canadian Taxes and comply with the Canadian regulations by configuration using existing functionality.

• Canada charges sales tax per province (Provincial Sales Tax - PST) and a 5% general tax for the government (Government sales tax -GST).
• There are provinces that do not separate between the two and charge a "harmonized sales tax" - HST which is the combination of GST, PST.
• There are provinces that apply tax exemptions for specific products, which means that in such provinces the PST is not charged for those items. (Some of these provinces use HST).
• There are provinces that apply "First Nation exemptions" for native citizens. These exemptions are triggered from the POS (the cashier manually verifies native certificate) and the PST is exempted.

REF 441154: Support Charging a Service Charge (Additional Charge (Fee)) Amount When Activating/Reloading a Gift Card
Emerald was updated with the ability to charge customers a fixed/dynamic service charge when buying a new Gift Card or reloading an activated Gift Card. The service charge is implemented as a linked item associated to the gift card item. The tag of the Linked Item Group determines if the linked item is an activation charge or a reload charge.

• To implement a dynamic charge, the linked item should be defined as an open price item and the gift card provider should return the charge amount as a response to the first authorization step.
• To implement a fixed charge the item should be defined with a price. A gift card item can still be configured with no additional charges.

REF 437387: Capture Pickup Person Identification for Controlled Drugs
Currently, Emerald supports a Pharmacy System and can process saleable prescriptions with an Rx number, associate them to patients, capture acknowledgements, etc. Emerald was updated to capture the identity details of the person picking up drugs and their relationship of the pickup person to the drug consumer, based on instructions from the Pharmacy System. The pickup person details are sent to the Pharmacy system in the finalization messages processed by the NCR BSP/Pharmacy Service.

REF 457079: Pharmacy: Return an Rx Drug Item - Complete NRR
Currently, Emerald is integrated with a 3rd party Pharmacy System via the BSP/Pharmacy Service and supports returning pharmacy items (Rx Items) in a Return All or Transaction Based Return flow if allowed by the integrated Pharmacy System. Generally, Emerald supports the return of Rx items if allowed, by scanning/keying in the full Rx barcode.The ability to return Rx items without a receipt was added if approved by the integrated Pharmacy system. If the Pharmacy System allows returns, the Rx item will be able to be returned on the touchpoints in the Pharmacy touchpoint group, which allow the sale of Rx items. The price of the Rx item is taken from the Pharmacy System.

REF 494084: Send Tender ID to the Check Validation Service
The Check Verification Service was updated with a new field called Tender ID, on its request.

REF 478479: L&P Handle Promotion and Loyalty Member Locking between Suspend and Recall Transactions (UE)
Emerald was updated with the ability to carry over promotions, coupons, and customers from the save transaction to the recall transaction, as if the recall is a continuation of the saved transaction. During recall the promotion engine is requested to act by the saved transaction ID and by the saved transaction time. In the case of Fuel-prepay transactions (that also use a similar save/recall mechanism) this ability is the default behavior, whereas the behavior of regular save and recall is based on configuration.

The customer will be unlocked when the recall is completed.

The new configuration enables the following:

• Allow promotions to be carried over from the saved to recalled transaction. It is also possible to use the new configuration in accordance with the time gap between the save and recall. For example, if a time gap is configured to 1hr, a transaction that was recalled within this hour, will include the original promotions and coupons. Even a promotion such as the 'Happy Hour' promotion, which may have already passed at the time of recall, will still be included. If the hour is exceeded, the promotions and coupons are recalculated as a new transaction.
• Keep paper Coupons in the saved transaction, unlike in current functionality where the cashier must return coupons when saving a transaction.

The new configuration is relevant to Grocery Transactions that use the save/recall mechanism. Note: This feature was tested with the Promotion Engine (AMS/UE). The LPRO will be tested in a separate development.

REF 496526: L&P Work Around Fix to Accept Customers with Multiple Active Cards
Emerald was enhanced with a workaround solution to correct a problem when adding a customer to a transaction when the customer has more than one active loyalty card. The CDM does not currently support a proxy for multiple loyalty cards, therefore, if a customer has more than one active loyalty card, the PE does not necessarily return the loyalty card scanned/entered.

REF 493369: Fuel - Verify Emerald Fuel Promotions/Loyalty with LPE Phase 1
Currently, Emerald is integrated with the AMS/UE using the Universal Loyalty and Promotions Service. All the fuel promotions and functionality supported by the AMS/UE are also supported when Emerald is integrated with the LPE as the loyalty and Promotions Engine (PE).

REF 497097: White Source - Upgrade Log4Net to Latest 2.X. Version
Log4Net was updated to the latest version 2.0.12.

REF 464372: Security - Ability for Single Credentials Cross all Offices
Emerald Stores Office maintains its own users. There are retailers with global users who require access to all the Emerald Store Offices in all stores.

Currently, the Emerald CCM users are configured via the CCM Office or RTI mechanism. The Emerald Store users (Office and POS) are configured via the Store Manager Office or RTI mechanism. All Emerald Office users can be configured to use Active Directory credentials rather than a Password/PIN.

Emerald was updated to support a global authentication for a global user to have the same credentials across all stores. For example, the user can use the same credentials to log into the: CCM Office, Store Office, Utilities (Spooky RTI utility, Base Configuration Wizard, Fingerprint Biometrics Configuration Tool).

REF 479197: Security - Policy Enforcement for Installation Users
Currently, during the Emerald installation, a user is created with the Administer role (i.e. a super user who can perform anything). The password never expires, and the user cannot be deleted. Emerald was updated to:

• Create a regular user during the installation that adheres to the security rules, such as, password expiration, strong password, ability to delete the password, etc. The user will be created with Administrator privileges.
• Generate an access key, on the POS, for the user that was generated during the Store Server installation. Doing this, creates a single maintenance user for a store that can be used on the store level and on any POS in the store and does not require password changes.

REF 482964: Receipt – Add the Ability to Print a Purchase Order Captured on an EFT Payment Flow
Emerald's receipt templates were updated with a new parameter to capture a Purchase Order Number for payments made with credit cards that require capturing a Purchase Order Number on the receipt footer/header.

REF 365303: EFT Support Payment/Refund by an EMV Contact Card – Erroneous Flows with CP
Currently, if an EMV payment card is left/forgotten in the PIN pad and a new transaction starts, the card might be used as a pre-dipped card for the next transaction. Therefore if the customer forgets their card in the PIN pad, it may lead to the customer's card details being used in the next customer's transaction.

The only option Emerald offers today to prevent this case is a pre-swipe-confirmation prompt that appears when moving to tender mode, which prompts the cashier to confirm to continue payment with the dipped card.This prompt is not used by all the retailers and is considered as 'too late' to prompt for the situation, since the customer who forgot the card has already left the store.

Emerald was updated with a new notification that is prompted on the cashier display at the end of the transaction in case a card is still inside the PIN pad. This enables the cashier to either remind the customer to remove their card before they leave, or if the customer has already left, the cashier can pull it out and keep it aside for the customer.

This enhancement prevents the card being used to pay for other purchases not made by the customer. The notification message is supported in Sales, Returns and Tender Exchange.

REF 469443: DMS Client Service – Do Not Write WCF Configuration Entry to the Config File
Emerald was enhanced with a solution to solve the DMS Agent 'Side by Side' crash issue. For example, if the POS shuts down during a service startup, it could lead to a corrupted config file. The system was updated to reduce the number of times that it writes the WCF host and client properties to the application config file. It writes them only once after the installation and on the event of changing one or more of the communication properties on the server side (DB).

Resolved Issues

The following defects were fixed in this version:

• Fixed TFS 494073: During a Forecourt client upgrade via MSI – There was no upgrade indication. 499109 | TDM - The way Nhibernate saves records to DB was fixed. Fixed TFS 501303 | The POS log had a fatal exception.

• Fixed TFS 501812: Promotions were duplicated on recalling an unbalanced Prepay Transaction at the FuelPOS.

• Fixed TFS 501829: Promotions were duplicated on recalling an unbalanced Prepay Transaction at the FuelPOS.

• Fixed TFS 501902: Prepay line fuel products did not refresh on pump change.

• Fixed TFS 502074: CodedUI - RTI PaymentCardForgottenNotificationConfigurationMaintenanceRequest was rejected in "Default Configuration"

• Fixed TFS 502261: In unfuel transactions which contained a promotion on dry items, the promotions were not displayed, and the Balance was incorrect.

• Fixed TFS 502266: In Unfuel transactions which contained Voided Prepay got stuck at Fuel (were not removed from the Pump).

• Fixed TFS 502165: The 'approvalRequestedCount' field was missing in the Canonical Tlog when there were PromotionApproval Tags.

• Fixed TFS 501888: Happy Hour was not voided on recall (after moving to tender mode) when the Time Gap condition was not met.

• Fixed TFS 501732 | JIRA REF AMS-37864: MFR coupons were sometimes voided after the transaction was saved.

• Fixed TFS 501698: An unhandled exception occurred on completing the Transaction with Fuel Prepay LineItem along with a Dry Item that had a Promotion.

• Fixed TFS 501584: An unhandled exception error occurred when the "TimeGapBetweenSaveAndRecall " tag was removed in the CCM.

• Fixed TFS 499287: Open Price BRM functionality did not work when configured with a Department Sale.

• Fixed TFS 499901: Reload of an opened Price Gift Card after Canceled Activation was wrong.

• Fixed TFS 499937: The Gift Card slip was printed as OK even though the Gift Card item was deleted automatically in Save and Recall transactions. Activate and Reload.

• Fixed TFS 500602: FuelPOS – The drawer did not open when performing a Paid Out.

• Fixed TFS 495443: CCM Office – An unhandled error occurred when a record was edited in the Tender item restriction screen.

• Fixed TFS 495714: "Biometrics service is offline" was not present in the DefaultResourceManagement RTI.

• Fixed TFS 496411: Trunk - Default CVS decline message prompt was not configurable.

• Fixed TFS 496621: Office Client - A bad reference causing the build to fail locally was fixed.

• Fixed TFS 496622: POS Client - Refactor code in PaidIn/Out area.

• Fixed TFS 492797: The Processing screen was not displayed during fingerprint authentication for manual approvals.

• Fixed TFS 493021: Tender Exchange with card conversion - when converting to a non-existing tender the payment/refund was not post-voided.

• Fixed TFS 493082: Business Rule - Base configuration - Notification Message dialog box did not close after searching for the message.

• Fixed TFS 493154: Mixed Actions - Void Item BRM - Item with multiple quantity was not split after voiding for the first time.

• Fixed TFS 493797: Balanced Cash transaction closed by Forecourt in Cashier Accountability was not displayed "View Transactions" in the office / Cashier Pending Period /Store Balance Report since the Tlog did not contain '<r10Ex:BalanceShiftStart '

• Fixed TFS 494106: Fuel transaction car wash expiry date was not written correctly in the TLog.

• Fixed TFS 494280: Fuel POS - Paid Out in Fuel POS - Fund transfer with voided flag=True and amount 0 could be created.

• Fixed TFS 494749: The ItemLink field in a deposit item was populated with the "tick" time stamp, instead of the SequenceNumber of the Alcohol item.

• Fixed TFS 494774: The Tax Exemption Receipt did not contain the character $ in all amounts.

• Fixed TFS 495274: Fuel and Grocery POS - Missing Pre Price Override screen for Tare item.

• Fixed TFS 495294: Tender Exchange BRM with Enter Loyalty Action caused the Tender Exchange process to fail.