👋 Share your feedback with us about this documentation. Highlight a word or a whole paragraph and click the plus icon that appears. We keep improving this knowledge base based on your comments.

Catering in IBSS is designed to streamline the dynamic configurations, ordering, and order management of the catering serviced to space bookings. Depending on how organisations choose to configure the catering module, employees can conveniently order catering in advance with their space booking, inherit automated catering orders for repeatable hospitality (think teas, coffees and water), or order on the day items (such as a drinks refresh). Menu availability can be tailored to specific user groups, and order options dynamically align to operational policies, such as preparation times, time ranges, date availability and more. Customisation options exist for different menus, order cut off limits, preparation times and availability of catering items allowing for flexibility in catering operations and service provisioning. 

Catering high-level overview

Catering provisioning falls into three distinct levels:

1. Organisation level. At organisational level, principal configurations and decisions are available per building for the following:
   1. If the catering feature should be available for the organisation at all and, if yes, to what user roles.
   2. What roles or users are allowed to bypass the cut-off limit for a catering menu (for example, the IgnoreCutOff API permission). 
   3. What roles are part of the operational teams configuring and servicing catering orders
   4. In what spaces will catering be offered upon booking.
   5. Whether catering orders must be approved by a Catering Manager or not.
   6. Whether cost codes should be applied to catering orders or not.
2. Operational team and kitchen level. This is where the operational team configure the specifics of:
   1. Catering items (what is available to order)
   2. Menus (a collections of catering items and the ordering lead times, plus which spaces is the menu available to, and which user roles can see/order from the menu)
   3. Order policies (rules to aid the usage/management of catering by end users)
   4. Dietary terms (allows catering items to be clearly labelled with allergy information and diet types)
   5. Catering order management screens
   6. Order delivery timeline screens
3. Non-Operational User level. After everything is set up organisation-wide, and operations have configured the options and policies, users with appropriate permissions can add catering orders to their confirmed space bookings. This may be limited to:
   1. Allowing one or many orders to be created for a single booking
   2. Ignore ordering lead time restrictions 
   3. Only being able to see certain menus assigned to a space based on their roles within the system

Permissions and settings

Organisational level permissions

Building parameters are used to apply certain organisation level permissions on a per building basis. These are:

• Spaces Catering Flag: Allows space search filtering by the additional Catering criteria and enables further catering options once selected.
• Auto-Approve: Building parameter (AlwaysApproveCateringOrders) to automatically approve all catering orders created within an organisation.
• Catering Currency: Building parameter (Cat_Crncy) to set the currency unit for catering menus.
• Building Catering Cut-Off: Building parameter (Pre_Book_Cat_Time) that can be applied for your building to define the minimum time ahead of a booking when catering can be added. It gets overridden by the Catering Menu Cut-Off setting.
• Cost Codes: If separate cost codes for catering are required, they need to be imported in the system. Contact IBSS Customer Support for this.
• System Filters: For dedicated views on the Catering Order and Pantry Timeline pages, system filters need to be configured.

Data Security and Role permissions

Data Security permissions in the IBSS platform determine exactly which records a user can see and modify.

While Data Security models control fundamental access to records, Role Permissions control the specific actions a user can undertake within the platform. These permissions are assigned directly to user via the roles they are assigned and enable specific system behaviours, ranging from basic multi-ordering capabilities for standard employees to administrative overrides and operational tools for operational users. The permissions are:

API.Catering.V2 | API.Catering.MultipleOrders | API.Catering.Approve | API.Catering.AssignCostCode | API.Catering.IgnoreCutOff | API.CostCodes.V2 | API.CateringMenuItems.Export/Import | ONELENS360.OperationalServices.Catering | ONELENS360.CateringReports.Download | Catering Manager Role Assignment (embedded within Space Booking Policies)

For details about all required permissions, refer to Role Permissions and Data Security Settings for Catering Scenarios 

Catering scenarios per role

Catering team

The Catering section of the operational web app provides a central location for Catering team to create and manage room services and pre-bookable menus. 

The Catering team does the configuration work in to make catering options visible to the organisation and to then manage, deliver and clear up catering orders. There are the following separate areas that can be managed by a single team or different groups of employees:

1. Analyse catering orders and download summary reports.
2. Set up catering items, menus, suppliers, catering templates etc.
3. Operate catering orders, have the Pantry Timeline page displayed with catering orders and service time slots for the current day.
4. Deliver catering orders and clean up after.
5. Define availability of catering items and their cost, label them with allergens or other dietary restrictions for filtering.
6. Define catering policies: what is the catering item availability timeframe and catering item preparation times.

Setting up catering for organisation

You can setup catering for your organisation using our Operations Web App. We suggest you do so in the following order because every subsequent setup depends on the previous one:

1. Dietary Terms
2. Catering Suppliers
3. Order Policy
4. Catering Items
5. Catering Menus
6. Catering Template

In this way, you will have set up menu items bookable by others, defined menu policies to set preparation time required, and selected other important limitations to be able to manage orders effectively.

Catering Manager is defined in a booking policy to be notified about new or amended catering orders for the spaces that the said booking policy is applied to. Read more about assigning a Catering Manager here: Catering Manager and Floor Manager roles 

All users

When the catering service is set up, users with appropriate permissions can add catering order(s) to their confirmed space bookings.

1. Create a booking for a space where catering service can be delivered to.
2. Add catering order(s) to the booking after it is confirmed. The catering items available will depend on how far ahead the booking is being made and whether there's enough time to prepare the catering order.

Catering Items Availability

Catering items will only show in a menu based on the following time factors:

• Catering item availability times (available from time / available to time) controls if the catering item is shown in the menu, based on the requested service time of the order. For example, breakfast items will not be shown for a booking in the afternoon.
• Catering item preparation time controls if the catering item is shown in the menu, based on the time difference between the requested service time, and the time ‘now’, ensuring there is enough time for the item to be prepared.

Catering Order (creation / amendment) Menu Cut Off

On top of the catering item availability rules, Menu Cut Off time is displayed to the user under the selected menu and works as a ‘last chance’ for the booker to make or edit any order associated to a space booking. If a catering order is attempted after the catering cut off, a menu with a cut off in the past, will not allow order additions, amendments, or deletions.

Catering menu cut-off is set by the catering teams configuration of a menu, on a dynamic basis (allowing cut off to vary across non-working days), so to allow catering teams sufficient time to manage a catering order.

Status changes depending on the booking or catering order updates

If the user edits a booking that has one or more associated catering orders or edits the catering order associated to a booking, the status of the catering order(s) will change depending on what has changed about the booking / catering order.

In all scenarios, the following applies to the approval status upon booking change, regardless of the current status where the order has been before the change:

• In organisations where Automatic Approval is applied, the state of an amended order becomes ‘Approved’.
• In organisations where Catering Approval is mandated, the state of an amended catering becomes ‘Pending Approval’, and the user is notified about this.