Backup Primary
PAR will soon be adding a feature known as Backup Primary (BP) to our stack. We will not be able to receive the new version of PAR until this has been enabled.
Action Required:
At the store level, this change should be barely noticeable. The only important callout is that register 2 - DT Pay must be online in addition to register 3 - Call-In (sometimes called Phone-In) for end of day to properly run. If either register goes down, please request that support reassign another terminal as register 2 or 3 rather than just promoting another register to primary.
Purpose:
The purpose of this feature is to make the POS more resilient when offline. Previously, PAR required either the primary terminal or internet to be reachable at all times to function. If PAR lost its connection to both the internet and primary terminal at the same time, it would often be hard-down until both are restored. This meant that if a store was offline and the primary terminal rebooted or was disconnected, the store might be down for the remainder of the outage.
With Backup Primary, DT Pay will be able to "step in" and act as the primary terminal for offline operation and sync with the primary terminal, Call-in, as soon as it is brought back online. This effectively means that the POS will continue operating unless the internet, Call-in, and DT Pay terminals are all down simultaneously.
Callouts:
It is important to make sure both the primary and backup primary terminals are online when EOD runs. This is why DT Pay was selected as it already takes priority over the other registers due to its role. If DT Pay goes down, another terminal should be reassigned as DT Pay before EOD even if the store has a DT Pay 2.
The backup primary terminal is not yet able to facilitate online ordering. PAR will be adding this functionality in later versions, but for now another terminal will need to assigned as the Call-in before digital ordering will resume.
Additional Resources:
For more information, check out PAR's feature documentation on BP, reach out to PAR, or contact RS Admin.