Hospitality

Where to start

Overview

In one minute

Hospitality is the catering part of BmyGuest. You build one catalogue of food and drink, and run it in one of two modes: either every guest picks for themselves before they arrive, or the host places one order for the whole meeting.

The mode is chosen per location, and a location runs one of them, never both. In the add-on list it is called Hospitality; its settings page is titled Visitor Catering, and the everyday screens say Catering.

Who does what

Hospitality involves more roles than most add-ons, and each sees something different.

How to get there

• Settings: Locations → your location → Add-ons → Hospitality.
• Catering orders: a workspace of its own, for named canteen and finance users and catalogue administrators. Its Setup page holds the catalogue and the payer details for catalogue administrators and finance. Pick it in the workspace menu at the top right, or it is the only thing in the menu for someone who has nothing else.
• Hospitality in the menu: an administrator or receptionist without the Catering orders workspace has Hospitality in the Reception menu instead. It opens the location’s Hospitality settings for an administrator, and a short page on who sees the orders for a receptionist. It is marked Add-on when none of their locations uses Hospitality yet, and then shows what Hospitality does and how to get it.
• The host’s side: the meeting form, and a meeting’s Catering panel and catering tiles on the start page, My guests and My meetings.
• The guest’s page: the link in their e-mail, or My visits when they are signed in.

Setup for the canteen manager and finance

Catering orders → Setup lets the people closest to the food and the money keep their part of Hospitality without being administrators. It shows one location at a time; someone named at several locations picks the location at the top right.

• A catalogue administrator, typically the canteen manager, gets Categories, Products and Menus, and Payer details where the location takes meeting orders.
• Finance gets Payer details where the location takes meeting orders.

The administrator names them under Catalogue administrators and Finance access. The rest stays with the administrator on the Hospitality settings page: the mode, the notifications, who does what, the ordering deadlines and the content language. That way nobody can give themselves more access.

Setup

Turning it on

Hospitality is switched on per location. A company with three offices can use it in one of them, and two offices that both use it can run different modes.

1. Hospitality must be available for your location. If it is not offered on the location’s add-ons, ask BmyGuest.
2. Go to Locations, open the location, then Add-ons and Hospitality, and press Activate AddOn.
3. Set the Content language and press Save changes.
4. Build the catalogue: categories first, then products, then menus.
5. Choose the mode under Meeting orders (Mødebestilling), and fill in that section if you choose meeting orders.

To stop, use Switch off at the bottom of the page. Nothing is deleted: the catalogue, the choices and the orders stay, and so do the settings.

Content language

Every name has two fields: the name in your own language, and an optional English name. Content language says which language the first field is written in. A reader who reads that language sees your name; everyone else sees the English name, or yours if you left it empty.

The catalogue

Three sections on the settings page, and on Catering orders → Setup for a catalogue administrator, in the order you should fill them in. Each has an Add button and, on every row, Edit and a bin.

Categories

Groups for your products: hot drinks, cold drinks, breakfast, lunch. The guest’s page and the selection rules are built around them, so split them the way you want a guest to be asked. A category has a name, an English name and a sort order. A category that still has products cannot be deleted.

Products

Menus

A menu is a selection of products plus rules. In guest selection it is what the guest is shown. In meeting orders it groups the host’s product list and can carry its own ordering deadline.

You can have as many menus as you like: breakfast, lunch, afternoon coffee. A meeting has one at most.

When guests choose

Guest selection

The mode every location starts in. A menu is attached to a meeting, each guest chooses from it, and the kitchen reads the total off the meeting.

Attaching a menu

In the meeting form, choose a Catering menu, or No catering. The field appears when the location has menus and runs guest selection, both when you create a meeting and when you edit it. Choices already made are kept if you change the menu later.

What the guest gets

• The 1-hour reminder e-mail carries a link, as long as the meeting has a menu and the guest has not chosen yet.
• Pre-registration: a guest who fills in their details before arriving gets the catering page as the last step, unless the deadline has passed.
• My visits: a guest who is signed in has a Choose catering button on the visit.

The page needs no sign-in and is made for a phone. It has its own language picker, your instruction text, one block per category with a hint that follows your rules (“Pick one”, “Pick one (optional)”), and a card per product with its picture, description and tags. The guest taps what they want, adds any allergies or notes, and presses Save. They can come back through the same link and change their mind until the deadline.

Where the choices show up

• The guest’s catering tile (a cup) shows a tick once they have chosen.
• The meeting’s to-do line counts the guests who have not chosen: “No catering chosen by 1 of 3”.
• The meeting’s Catering panel shows every guest’s choice added up. This is the list the kitchen works from in this mode.
• By e-mail to the addresses on the menu, with the guest, the meeting, the items and any note, each time a guest chooses.
• In Microsoft Teams or Slack, the host is told when a guest has chosen, where the company uses the BmyGuest app there.

Choosing on a guest’s behalf

Guests forget, or ring instead. The host, and reception at the location, can answer for them.

1. Open the meeting and tap the guest’s catering tile. On the reception desk, use the catering chip on the guest’s line.
2. Enter a number next to each product. The numbers must stay within the menu’s rules for each category.
3. Add any allergies or notes and press Save.

• The guest’s own deadline does not stop the host or reception; the panel says so when it has passed. Once the meeting has ended, the host and reception can no longer choose.
• Where the menu does not allow it (Host/reception may choose on the visitor’s behalf switched off), the panel explains that the guest must answer themselves.
• An answer given by the host is recorded as such, so you can tell it from the guest’s own.

When the host orders

Meeting orders

The canteen model. The guest is never shown a menu; the host orders for the whole room, the kitchen is told by e-mail and works from a day list, and finance settles afterwards.

Two sections of the settings page, each with its own Save changes button. Meeting orders (Mødebestilling) holds the mode, the notifications, who does what and the ordering deadlines, and only an administrator can save it. Payer details appears once the location is on meeting orders; catalogue administrators and finance can keep it too, on Catering orders → Setup.

The host orders

When creating the meeting

Catering for this meeting appears on the new meeting form for a host who may order at that location. Fill it in and it is saved with the meeting, or leave the products empty and add catering later.

On an existing meeting

Open the meeting and press Order catering in its Catering panel (Change order once there is one), or tap a guest’s catering tile. The panel shows the ordering deadline at the top.

• The product list is grouped by category. Products whose deadline has already passed for this meeting are left out, and the panel says so.
• The kitchen is e-mailed within seconds, with the delivery as a calendar invitation.
• The meeting’s Catering panel then lists the order for everyone to see, with Change order.

Changing and cancelling

• Saving again replaces the whole order; its status becomes Changed and the kitchen gets a fresh e-mail.
• Cancel catering removes the order and withdraws the calendar entry from the kitchen.
• After the deadline the panel is read-only and the host is asked to contact the kitchen. A settled order cannot be changed by anyone.
• Once the meeting has ended, the host and reception can no longer order, change or cancel, even if the canteen has reopened the order. The canteen can still correct what was delivered.
• Moving the meeting moves the order with it, recalculates the deadline and tells the kitchen, whether the meeting was moved in BmyGuest or in Outlook. That holds after the deadline too, and then whoever placed the order gets an e-mail asking them to contact the kitchen if it no longer fits. When the meeting gets another room, the delivery place follows as long as it is the room’s name.
• Deleting the meeting cancels its order. After the deadline it becomes Cancelled after deadline, so the kitchen can decide about food already made, and the host is asked to ring the kitchen.

How the ordering deadline works

It is recalculated every time the order is saved, from the products on it at that moment.

1. Every menu that contains one of the ordered products and has an ordering deadline is a candidate.
2. If there are none, the location’s default ordering deadline is the only candidate. If there is no default either, the order never locks.
3. Each candidate is counted back from the meeting’s date in the location’s own time zone, skipping weekends and closing days where it counts working days, to its time of day.
4. The strictest one wins. Mix a two-day product with a one-day product and the whole order must be in two days ahead.

The kitchen’s day

Catering orders shows one location at a time. Choose Day or Week, step with the arrows or Today, or pick a date.

• The tiles: orders, attendees and items in the period, and how many were cancelled (a red badge when after the deadline).
• To produce: every product added up, grouped by the time it has to be ready. This is the prep list.
• Meetings: one line per order with the time, the meeting, the room, the attendees and items, and a Locked badge once the host can no longer change it. Open shows the whole order.
• Cancelled orders: kept at the bottom, so the kitchen can see what was called off.

Week shows the same for the whole week, with a section per day and an Open day link, enough to order goods and plan staff. Print (day view) gives a paper sheet for the day, and every order can be printed on its own.

Delivered quantities and settlement

What went out is not always what was ordered. The correction is made on the order after the meeting, and it is what gets billed.

1. Open the order from the day list.
2. Fill in Delivered on the lines that differ. Leave a line blank to bill what was ordered.
3. Press Save delivered quantities. Canteen and finance can both do this.
4. When the period is closed, finance ticks the orders on the day list and presses Mark as settled.

Reference

Statuses and history

The History on an order lists every event with a time and a name: placed, changed, moved with the meeting, cancelled, reopened, delivered quantities corrected and settled. Nothing is overwritten, so a disputed invoice can always be traced.

An order outlives its meeting. When a meeting is deleted, the order keeps the meeting’s title and time, so the kitchen can still see it and finance can still bill it.

Who may do what

The export and the e-mails

Export on Catering orders downloads the shown period as a CSV file for Excel, one row per order line: the meeting, purpose, host and place, internal and external attendees, cost centre, project and invoice recipient, product, ordered, delivered and billed quantities, and status and notes. Prices and amounts are included only for those allowed to see them, and the external guests’ names only for finance. A cell starting with =, +, – or @ is made safe so it cannot run as a formula.

The kitchen’s e-mails carry the whole order and a link to it, and the delivery as a calendar entry that is updated on a change and withdrawn on a cancellation. They are written in the location’s content language. Their wording is set in the e-mail templates, not on the add-on page.

Limits and quirks

• One mode per location. Some meetings cannot ask the guests while others are ordered by the host.
• The canteen and finance screens are for meeting orders only. In guest selection the kitchen works from each meeting’s Catering panel and the notification e-mails.
• The guest’s link is on the 1-hour reminder only, not the 24-hour e-mail.
• The guest’s own page has the check-in look, with the location’s branding, like the other pages a guest opens from an e-mail.
• No production or delivery states. An order is ordered, changed, cancelled or settled; there is no “in production”.
• One price per product, and the payer details’ lists are kept by hand, not checked against a finance system.
• A settled order does not move with its meeting. The invoice has already been drawn from it.
• No SMS. E-mail, Teams and Slack only.

Help

Troubleshooting

Button and screen names are given in English, as they appear in the screenshots. If you use BmyGuest in another language, the wording differs, but every screen and button is in the same place. The screenshots show a fictional company, Northgate Group.