CoinOp

The waiting list

A queue per kind of thing you rent, tonight’s bookings beside them, and calling people forward on WhatsApp.

How does a waiting list work on a busy night?

There is a queue for each kind of thing you rent, because the people waiting for a pool table and the people waiting for a PS5 are not interchangeable. Add a walk-in with a name and a phone number, and call them forward with a WhatsApp message when their table is ready.

A queue for each thing

On a Friday night the tables have a queue and the consoles have a different one, and the people in them are not interchangeable. So there is a queue per kind of thing you rent, taken from the kinds you set up in Settings → Stations.

Each queue is in order, with how long each party has been waiting and how many of them there are. A queue can exist for something CoinOp does not run at all — the gaming PCs here belong to ggLeap, and the queue for them is still yours.

A kind can be left out of the waiting list entirely when a queue makes no sense for it — a cinema room that is only ever booked, for instance.

Tonight’s bookings, on the same screen

Bookings sit here beside the queues, because they are the same question — who is getting the next table. If the venue takes its bookings at the counter rather than on a website, the New booking button is here too; see Bookings.

The number on the Waiting button counts both, and it keeps counting while somebody is on the floor screen or the till — so a booking arriving at a counter nobody is watching is still noticed. A party due about now raises an alert on whatever screen is in front of somebody, and their session can be started straight from it, on the table they were promised.

Adding somebody

A walk-in goes on the queue for what they came to play.

Name, phone number, how many people. The number is optional — some people would rather wait in the room than be messaged — but a half-typed one is refused, because a number that looks like it will work and does not is worse than none.

Calling them forward

Notify sends a WhatsApp message telling them their table is ready. Seated takes them off the list. × is for the party that left or never came back, and both are kept for a while afterwards so somebody who was removed by accident can be put back.

Settings → WhatsApp. Until this is set up, parties can be added and managed but not messaged, and the waiting list says so rather than failing silently when somebody presses Notify.

Messages go through WhatsApp’s own Business API, which means they must use templates approved by WhatsApp — the wording is configured here, and CoinOp fills in the name and the venue.

This is one of the few things that genuinely needs the internet. If the line is down, the list still works and the messages are what stop — which is why the button says what happened rather than pretending it sent.