Health check for POS peripherals and services
This article describes the health check operation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce point of sale (POS).
Retail stores can be complex environments where many applications and devices are used. As operations grow, it can become difficult to ensure that operations always run smoothly, because of dependencies on, for example, peripherals that can break or accidentally become unplugged over the course of a day. Troubleshooting for issues that are related to devices and services can be costly for larger merchants and equally frustrating for smaller operations.
Dynamics 365 Commerce includes a health check operation that can help prevent some of this cost and frustration. The health check operation can help retailers detect issues before they occur by providing a method for testing devices directly from the POS outside of normal operations, and two tests for network-related issues.
Key terms
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Peripheral | Any device that the POS application uses to facilitate transactions and other operations in the store. Examples include cash drawers, bar code scanners, and payment terminals. |
| Service | In this article, a service is an ancillary application that the POS application depends on to perform transactions and daily operations. Examples include apps that help with tax or shipping calculations. |
Health check operation
The health check operation is operation 717 on the POS Operations page in Commerce Headquarters. It can be used while the POS is in non-drawer mode. However, a hardware station must be active.
The health check operation can be accessed by point of sale users in two ways:
- By selecting the Health check button on the Settings page.
- By adding a tile to your screen layout button grid and associating the health check operation with that tile.
Peripheral health checks
By default, the health check operation only tests devices that are configured in the hardware profile for the hardware station that is currently active for a register. If a register uses multiple hardware stations over the course of a day, to do health checks for all of them, it must connect to one hardware station at a time. There's no store-level health check. However, it's possible that this type of check can be done through Commerce Server extensibility.
Out-of-box health checks
| Type | Connection | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Printer | OPOS | This check tests basic object linking and embedding for POS (OPOS) functions. Here are some examples:
|
| Line display | OPOS | This check tests basic OPOS functions. Here are some examples:
|
| Dual display | Windows | This check ensures that the operating system detects a second Windows display. |
| MSR | OPOS | This check tests basic OPOS functions. Here are some examples:
|
| Drawer | OPOS | This check tests basic OPOS functions. Here are some examples:
|
| Scanner | OPOS | This check tests basic OPOS functions. Here are some examples:
|
| Scale | OPOS | This check tests basic OPOS functions. Here are some examples:
|
| PIN pad | OPOS | This check tests basic OPOS functions. Here are some examples:
|
| Payment terminal | Payments SDK | This check tests basic payment terminal functions provided by the Payments SDK.
|
Use peripheral health checks in the POS
When the health check operation is initiated in the POS, a pane on the right lists the configured devices and shows the status of each device. To do a health check for a single device, select the device, and then select Test selected. To do a health check for all devices, select Test all. The Test all function tests all the devices, one at a time, and updates the status of each device in the Status column.
The Last check column shows when the health check was last done for each device.
If a device passes the health check (that is, if no errors are encountered), the device's status will display as OK. If the health check fails, the status will indicate that there was an error. In this case, the pane on the right provides details that are related to the error, or it instructs the user to contact the system admin.
Some devices, such as the OPOS keylock, don't have out-of-box health check tests. If a health check test isn't detected for any device that is used, the status will be Not supported.
Network health checks
The two out-of-box network health checks listed below are always included in the health check list regardless of the peripherals configured for the terminal. The Retail Server connectivity and network latency health checks can be run individually or together.
| Name | Details |
|---|---|
| Retail Server connectivity | The Retail Server connectivity health check verifies that the terminal can communicate with Retail Server and the channel database, and verifies that real-time service calls can be made to Commerce headquarters. |
| Network latency | The network latency health check tests the network latency between the terminal and Retail Server. The test returns the average latency for 10 calls to Retail Server in a five-second period. |
Network latency health check
Network latency health check results are categorized as shown in the following table.
| Latency range | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0-50 ms | Good - Your network latency is low and not likely to be the source of any performance related issues. |
| 50-100 ms | Acceptable - Your network latency is in the acceptable range, but may be degrading performance for network-intensive operations such as offline sync. |
| Greater than 100 ms | Poor - Your network latency is likely degrading your point of sale operations. Latency in the 100-150 ms range may not cause noticeable performance degradation for common operations, but latency above 150 ms will slow down most operations. To further diagnose network latency, run an internet speed test on the register. If the internet speed test result latency is high, notify your system administrator that you're experiencing high latency with your internet connection. |
Extending health checks
The out-of-box health check tests are configured to provide some user-friendly messages for typical errors. However, not all scenarios are covered. Through extensibility, merchants can map user-friendly messages to errors that might be specific to their environment.
Custom health checks can also be created to test devices that aren't supported out of the box, or to test any services that the POS depends on.