Sites Overview
The current primary purpose of sites is to allow a pantry to define multiple different menus that pantry members can order from depending on the site they have been assigned to on their member intake form. The menus created for the sites will utilize the same the same food items and inventory when members are ordering. When an organization has multiple sites, the “Site” field in the top right-hand corner of Pantry Maintenance will change from a static field.
to a drop down
with the first option in the drop down being “All”. This Is used to filter the different parts of pantry maintenance by sites (Fill Orders/Manage Orders/Menus). This article goes more into detail on this in the final section.
Defining a new site
To create a new site, you will need to have permission to both User Maintenance and Pantry Maintenance. To start, you will need to select the user maintenance option in the pop up side menu from the main dashboard view.
After that navigate to the “Groups” tab and click the “Add New Group” button.
After clicking the “Add New Group” button you will be prompted to enter a name and a description. The name will be the name of the new site that will be added, and the description is just some helper text so that people know that this group was created to be a new site.
After entering a name and description click save group. Once the group has been saved you will see additional tabs at the top of the pop-up window. Click “Users” and make sure your user is checked and then click Save Group once more. If there are other users who should have access to the site (modifying menu's for the site) make sure you check their names as well.
User Maintenance is no longer necessary for creating sites, so you can close the User Maintenance tab If you’d like.
Next, select the Pantry Maintenance option from the pop out menu in the dashboard view. This will open Pantry Maintenance.
In Pantry Maintenance, select the “Maintenance” button in the pop out menu and then select the “Sites” button.
After you’ve clicked the “Sites” button, click the “Add Site” button that appears in the upper right-hand corner above the grid.
In the “Add Site” pop up that appears, select the name of the group you created within User Maintenance for the “Name” and then enter a Location ID. Make sure the “Is Active” check box is checked and leave the Pantry and Case Management drop downs set to “Yes”.
Make sure you select a Warehouse Location to be used by the site. This determines where inventory will be pulled when pantry member orders are placed against menu's created for the site. For more information, please see our documentation on Warehouse Locations. After doing this, click Save.
You will find that the site has been added to the grid and, if you refresh (F5 on your keyboard) pantry maintenance you will find the new site option has been added to the “Site” drop down in Pantry Maintenance.
Setting a site for a pantry member
When a new pantry member is added to the site you are instructed to create and fill out details for that member within the Intake. You can access the intake by either going to the bottom of the edit contact page and clicking the “Open Intake” button at the bottom of the edit view of the contact screen.
or by going to the “File” folder and selecting the MC Intake within the folder. When you have the intake open you should be able to find the “Pantry Location” drop down to the right of the “Pickup Day” drop down. Note that this drop down will only appear if the pantry has more than one active site.
Set the “Pantry Location” to be the name of the site that the pantry member is part of. The site selected will affect the menu that the member will have access to when placing orders. This is all that needs to be done to set a site for a member.
Site Maintenance
After clicking on Pantry Maintenance in the side menu of the dashboard you can manage you’re existing sites by going to “Maintenance” and then “Sites”. Here you will see a grid containing sites currently in your system. Clicking the “Include Inactive” check box will also allow you to see any sites that you’ve made inactive.
By clicking the edit button In the right most column of the grid you can make changes to the existing sites.
1. Name This allows you to change the user group associated with the site. Unless necessary I would recommend you avoid changing this after orders have been placed for the site. For more information on changing the group assigned to a site see the “Defining a new site” section at the top of this article.
2. Location ID This is the id used for the site. Typically, this is used for reporting purposes in cases where there may be two sites with the same name but different location id’s. Note that changing the ID will not have any effect on the prefix used for member id numbers.
3. Is Active If a site is active, they will appear in the “Site” drop down that appears in the top right-hand corner of the Pantry Maintenance pages. The site will also show in the “Pantry Location” drop down on the clients MC Intake form.
4. Warehouse Location - Determines which warehouse location to pull inventory from when member orders are placed against menu's created for the site.
5. Case Management - A flag that determines whether or not the pantry is utilizing the case management portion of the system. Modifying this value currently has no effect on the system.
6. Point Period - Point Period - Determines the length of time that points will keep rolling over before resetting.
7. Start of Week - This option affects the Week, BiWeek(Even) and BiWeek(Odd) options of the point period. For the Week option, the member points will reset on the day that is selected for Start of Week. For the BiWeek options, the first week will start on the first day selected for Start of Week within the year. The following (even) week will be seven days from that first date.
8. Limit by Category - Whether unused points should be made available for an entire order or just for items in the same category as the category the points were used from. For example, if I use 30 out of 50 available points on a dairy category, if “Limit by Category” is checked, on my next order within the period I’d only have 20 points left available for the dairy category. I wouldn’t be able to use those 20 unused points on items in another category. If, however, “Limit by Category” is unchecked, I would be able to use those 20 points on items of other categories up to the category limit set on the menu.
9. Pantry - Similar to Case Management, this is a flag to determine whether or not the site provides pantry services. Modifying this value currently has no effect on the system.
How sites are used by Pantry Maintenance
There are a few different pages in Pantry Maintenance that can be filtered by sites. These are the Menu's page, which will allow you to see all menus that are currently active or have been active in the past for a certain menu, the Fill and Manage Orders page which will allow you to filter orders based on the menu that was used to place that order (Selecting site A will only show orders that were made using the menu that was created for site A)