Reliability and data.
A till that stops costs a shop money. Muster is built to keep the shop trading on its own, and to raise an alert when it cannot.
When something goes wrong
A power cut
The shop PC switches itself back on when the power returns, and the till starts without anyone signing in. Tested by pulling the plug at the wall.
The till stops answering
The shop PC checks the till every ten minutes and restarts anything that has stopped. If that does not bring it back, the PC restarts itself, at most once every six hours. If the till stays down, Muster gets an alert.
The internet goes down
The till runs on the shop PC, so orders, cash sales and kitchen dockets carry on. A phone hotspot can be set up in advance as a backup line: when staff turn it on, the shop PC joins it by itself, and online orders, alerts and remote support come back.
A printer or the bank's card terminal drops off
Every staff screen shows a red notice, and a docket that could not print waits in a reprint queue until the printer is back.
Updates and checks
Updates that check themselves
Updates install after close. The tests run before the till is touched, and an update that leaves the till unhealthy is rolled back automatically.
Checked after every restart
The shop PC checks the till, the ordering page as customers reach it over the internet, its clock and the remote connection, and sends an alert naming whatever failed.
Windows updates
Security updates install automatically, and the PC restarts for them early in the morning, before the shop opens. Larger Windows upgrades are held back and installed by hand.
Silence raises the alarm
The shop PC checks in regularly. If it stops checking in at all, the missing check-in raises the alarm, so a machine that has died outright is noticed too.
Where the data lives
- Sales and customers
- In a database on the shop PC.
- Backups
- Every night, kept on the machine for a month and copied off site. Each one is read back before it counts.
- Restore test
- Four times a year the newest backup is rebuilt into a test copy of the shop, to prove it restores.
- Exports
- The owner can export orders and customers to CSV from the reports screen.
What is exposed
- On the internet
- Only the customer pages: ordering, order tracking, loyalty and the privacy page. The till, admin and reports answer only inside the shop.
- Card numbers
- The full card number never reaches Muster. The bank terminal reads the card, and online customers pay on Square's own page.
- Staff sign in
- Each staff member has their own PIN, and the manager and owner screens ask for a manager or owner PIN.
- Remote support
- Over a private, encrypted connection that is not open to the internet.
Reporting a security issue
If you find a security problem in Muster POS or on this site, email [email protected]. Please include enough detail to reproduce it, and allow time for a fix before publishing anything. The same contact is listed in security.txt.