Each line in the Connection Manager display shows information about one POS terminal. Connection Manager can control up to 64 POS terminals simultaneously.

Connection manager automatically connects to each active POS terminal and continuously checks for updates that need to be sent to each terminal, and information that must be retrieved from the terminals.

When connections to a terminal break, the terminal is able to continue processing offline, and Connection Manager continually tries to restore the connection. When the connection is restored, Connection Manager resumes the communication, updating any changes that have been made since the connection was dropped, and retrieving any transactions that have been processed by that terminal.

The following Headings appear in Connection Manager, and the information that appears in these columns is a follows:-

Computer Name
This is either the name of the computer or the IP Address of that machine. If this is a computer name, the name must be a name which can be resolved through a TCP/IP name resolution service. Any name that can be resolved through local network name resolution, or remote resolution through DNS is acceptable. Connection Manager can communicate with a POS terminal anywhere on the internet, provided that the name for that machine can be resolved.

Whether name resolution is used or an IP address is used, the computer running SELLmatix Control must be able to ping the name shown in this column.

Name resolution can be a slow process, particularly for remote name resolution, and if name resolution servers fail, this can have a significant performance hit on SELLmatix Control.

Comment
This is a user defined comment that can be entered in terminal record, but is typically used to identify the POS terminal, and is particularly useful if IP address are used or the computer name is not meaningful.

Listening Port
SELLmatix POS and PocketPos programs running on the terminals, need to listen for incoming connections on a "Port". Connection Manager attempts to connect to the POS terminal on that Port.

The Port can be any number up to 65535, however a number of ports are used by other TCP/IP services and protocols. If other software also attempts to use the same port, conflicts will occur and communication will be unsuccessful. The default Port used by SELLmatix is 20000 because this is rarely used by other software and a conflict unlikely. In the event where this port is used by other software, it can be changed so that SELLmatix uses a different port, through setting is the configuration file.

Status
This column shows the connection status. While a connection is active, this column will show "On Line". If the connection breaks, then you will see a series of changes to the Status column such as "Connecting" (trying to connect), "Connect Failed", or "Refused". Note that Connect Failed indicates that a network error occurred, while Refused means that the computer could be contacted via the network, and it actively refused to make the connection because there was no software running to accept the connection. In other words, the POS software was not running.

Task
This column shows which task in the updating process has just been completed. This will cycle through the various tasks repeatedly while the terminals are on line.

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Edit Terminal
Allows you to edit terminal details.

Delete Terminal
Allows you to delete a terminal.

Disconnect
Breaks the connection to that terminal.

Send Message
Allows you to send a message to the terminal which is displayed for the operator to see and send a response.

Locate
Is used mostly for Pocket PC's running PocketPos, and if the Pocket PC is online, it causes the Pocket PC to play a series of sounds repeatedly until some activity occurs on the Pocket PC. This is designed to assist if someone has put down the Pocket PC and forgotten where they out it.

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If the terminal is SELLmatix POS running on the same computer that control is running on, then you should either use the name "localhost" (without the quotes, or the IP address 127.0.0.1 which the TCP/IP local loopback address.

Port
This is the TCP/IP Port number to use for the connection. This can be any value between 1 and 65535 that does not used by other software on either system. For example, Web servers usually use Port 80, FTP servers normally use Port 21, SMTP servers usually use Port 25 etc. In most cases, we use Port 20000 for connections between POS and Control, and Port 30000 for connections between Control and Control running on other machines, because these Port numbers rarely conflict with other software.

Comment
is anything you want to appear in the Connection Manager display. This is helpful if you use static IP addresses to help identify terminals. This field is not used by control, and you can enter whatever you like.

Price Level
is the price level in use by that POS terminal. In most cases leave this at "Normal".

Term #
This is the terminal number. You must use a different terminal number for each terminal in Connection Manager. You can have a maximum of 64 terminals connected to Control.

Track Stock
This box should normally be checked. Have this box is not checked, then sales from this terminal will not be deducted from stock.

Listen
This box should only be checked if a head office or remote terminal will connect to this copy of Control. When this box is checked, Control "listens" for an incoming connection on this terminal, and waits until an incoming connection is received. If this box is checked, the Computer Name/IP Address field is ignored. This field should not be checked for connections to POS terminals.

Active
This box allows you to quickly enable or disable a terminal without re-entering the connection details. If a terminal is not available, then you should uncheck this box, otherwise Control will repeated try and connect to the terminal even though it is unavailable.

Database Group
This group of controls shows information about the databases on this terminal.

The modified date shows the date when the most recent update was made to the database.

The Update box indicates whether this instance of Control should update the records on this terminal. Control normally would update records on POS terminals. But if this "terminal" was a connection to head office and the head office maintained the product file, then this box should be unchecked.

Resend tells control to delete all the records on that terminal, and resend the entire database.

Data Encryption
As a general rule:-

• Don't bother to encrypt data to terminals on a wired LAN within a store.
• You may want to encrypt data over an unsecured WiFi Lan that does not already use encryption.
• You should encrypt data passing over the Internet, unless you are using an already encrypted VPN.
• You can use a different encryption key for each terminal.
• If you are really paranoid, you can encrypt everything.

In SELLmatix, the key is used as a means of authentication as well as encryption. If a public key was used, there would still be a need to verify that the user was authorised to access the system. It is very important to keep the encryption keys secret.

Printable characters are a small subset of the characters that can be used in an encryption key. To enable the full range of key possibilities to be used, in SELLmatix, the key is entered using 16 decimal numbers each of which is within a range of 0-255. This is similar to entering 4 X IP addresses.

If you are going to use encryption, then it goes without saying that you should choose numbers that are difficult to guess, and if anyone was trying to access your data, then the first key they would try to guess is what appears in the sample screen above... Or a progressive sequence as is used in this screenshot.

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