Genkiosk & how to use it
The background
When hosted software providers like Genkiosk came on the scene several years ago, traditional software vendors scoffed, doubting these upstart "software as a service" vendors could make a dent in their market share. They didn't buy the concept of software offered on demand over the Internet on a rental basis. As it turned out, they were wrong. The number of businesses embracing hosted software has grown dramatically since 2005, with small businesses leading the charge (they benefit greatly from access to larger more comprehensive systems). According to the Yankee Group, the applications most often being implemented via a hosted provider are marketing, telemetry, project management, time and billing, accounting/financial, CRM, merchant services, inventory management, messaging, payroll.
Genkiosk is Fully Hosted
Genkiosk is the very latest in telemetry based solution that connects hardware to centralised hosted software. It works entirely over IP through a web browser which means there is no need to invest in or support any costly server technology. This method of working not only lowers costs but also increases flexibility because organisations can choose which features matter to them whilst benefiting from the stability that larger systems bring them. Information is no longer tied to the office and Genkiosk is designed for enterprises that need to be free from such restrictions.
How Genkiosk is used
Schemas
With Genkiosk Schemas are used as a way to define and control the general setting and behaviour of a kiosk, a group of kiosks or entire network. There are many circumstances where kiosk settings need to be kept consistent across a group and this is where schemas are useful. Schemas help kiosks operators to stay organised. Schema settings fall into the following groups:
Skins
A skin is what the user of the kiosks interacts with sees. This is often described as the user interface, can be customised and personalised to suit different environments. This feature enables you to preview and select the skin associated with a specific Schema.
Skin Text
This feature allows you to customise areas on the skin such as your telephone number, text used during payment etc
Payments
The Payment feature allows you to set charges (if there are any) for using the kiosk or its applications and to define how much time/usage is available for that fee. You can also select what currencies are allowed for and this information is relayed to the user of the kiosk.
Navigation Buttons
This is where you define what buttons related to browser controls are available. Functions such as zoom, language, stop, home, back are selectable depending upon the schema being built.
Category buttons
Content buttons that remain onscreen while the user is interacting with the kiosk are defined through this feature.
Attract Loop
Attract Loops provide a means of organising full screen attract pages which can be displayed when the kiosk isn’t it use. You can upload, organise and preview advert loops.
Whitelist
Often content is restricted to ensure the safe and appropriate running of a kiosk in a public setting. A centrally managed whitelist is used to define which links and URLs are allowed.
Dialog Control
This is how to manage Dialogs that are displayed to users of the kiosk to ensure key events and prompts are clearly displayed at the correct time. From here it is possible to enable, disable and edit all dialogs.
Script Control
This advanced feature is used to run scripts on kiosks in an organised and auditable manner. Scripts are used when special tasks or applications need to be run.
Multilingual
To maximise usage kiosk operators must take into account location, language and currency requirements. This feature supports many languages and currency options including Arabic which goes right to left.
Remote View
Being able to remotely view kiosks is a powerful way to manage routine checks, customer services and to view how content updates are shown in the field. Remote Viewing provides encrypted viewing facilities with a full audit trail of users. You can choose to view or take fully remote control the kiosk from within the browser.
Audit Trail
Who did what and when is a vital part of quality systems within any organisation. The Audit Trail feature provides a complete activity log for each user. Audit information is also available for every kiosk which provides a breakdown of events prior during and after a user has interacted with the kiosk.
Payment Portal
Often Kiosks need to accept payment. Payment Portal is a quick and easy means for kiosk operators to accept cash, vouchers, credit cards etc
Credit Card Transactions
Genkiosk can provide credit card services where cards are typically authorised within three seconds!!
Wallet
Wallet is a great way to create customer loyalty. This is a useful feature where you want to encourage customers to store remaining credit to be used at a later stage, or load a personalised kiosk environment.
Reports and charts
Many useful reports are available to track and make sense of usage, revenue and potential issues within a kiosk network. Useful graphs and tables provide Information often on a live basis. This information can be used to provide reports and analysis to your customers and help to build a more profitable kiosk business going forward
Multiple User Logins
Where there is a need to have several users to manage a kiosk network (e.g. accounting, engineers, sales, customer services), Multiple User Logins provide access foe users to the parts of the management system that matter to them. The built in audit trail is available to each user. This ensures that there is complete control over access rights of users of the management system.
Productivity tools
There are many productivity tools available that can be applied to one or many kiosks. Features such as remote view, reboot now, reboot when free, insert credit, send schema, update software are available on either a right mouse click or on buttons in the web page.
Alerts
Alerts don’t necessarily mean that something is wrong, but serve as a prompt to check a kiosk. For example coin alerts can be defined that notify you if a coin mechanism hasn’t been used for a specified period of time. This is a useful way to quickly identify possible coin mechanism jams which can be the result of vandalism or tampering. Issues such as connectivity and hard disk temperatures are also tracked. Alerts allow you to minimise issues in a cost affective remotely managed way.
Navigation Tree
This is a convenient way in which to organise and view a network of kiosks. Using a familiar Windows style explorer environment within a browser allows for the quick and easy management of kiosks.
Live Events Window
This is a great tool for observing and interacting with events that affect the performance and behaviour of a kiosk network. For example if a kiosk user inserts payment the live events window allows you to view the transaction immediately including; amount paid, remaining credit and payment type. The same applies to many powerful features including remote viewing live kiosk sessions
Queue Management
Operators who manage in excess of 250 kiosks benefit from tools to manage the distribution of content and software updates in a more structured manner. Queue management provides a way to prioritise and even delete jobs queued up waiting to be applied to kiosks.
Data Link
Hooks and feeds are available for many accounts, CRM and legacy systems. This feature ensures that a joined up process can be achieved for enterprise customers.
