​It is no wonder why the National Park Service is so much busier during the Summer. Everyone is vacationing and what better place to go than our beautiful parks! But with the influx of visitors, our Fee Programs take on a huge burden. The increased use of the systems can cause more equipment, network and software issues. We want to make sure that we can all continue to meet the expectations of the visitors for the rest of the season, so here are a few tips to keep everything running smoothly.

1. Remember that your registers are computers and just like you they don't like to overheat.  Make sure they are not smothered by other pieces of equipment and keep them out of direct sunlight. If you have a modular keyboard or touchscreen register, the silver CPU gets pretty hot naturally so don't panic. Avoid making it worse.
   
2. Now is also an excellent time to clean the dust bunnies out of the vents and card swipes. Keeping it clean will reduce any shorts internally and credit card misreads.
   
3. If you are using touchscreens and you see some obvious wear starting to form on the most popular buttons, it may be time to consider screen protectors. We have tested several different protectors and we have found some solutions that work great.
   
4. Increased sales volume means increased data being sent to your Advantage software. If your file size becomes too large, the functions will not work properly.  This file is usually in the C: Advantage: Data file. If you have any issues with this, please give us a call and we will check on it for you.
5. Finally, we want to let you know that there are some updates coming up for Advantage that will make your Fee Program even more efficient. We will post more details in a couple of weeks and the update roll out will be soon after that.

Just doing a little bit of maintenance can really help reduce your register downtime. We also recommend that you speak with your IT staff to check if they have any other maintenance they would like you to do. We've made it this far through the season and we want the rest of Summer to go just as well. As always, give us a call if you have any issues and we will work with you to resolve them.

​Here at NPS Support, we answer over 7000 support calls a year. Some of these calls last only a few minutes while others can last several hours. Through this experience we have learned a few things about what makes a support call go smoother and how to make it less stressful. We want to share some of these things with you so that the next time you call in for support, we will be able to fix the issue faster and with less stress.

1. I have brought this one up in a previous post, but it really helps. When you are calling in for a support issue in Advantage or anything else on your office computer, it is likely that we will need to see what you are seeing. Having a remote meeting ready to go before you call really speeds things up.
2. For hardware, make sure that you are at the unit that is having the issue and plan on not being able to process transactions while we are working on it. We understand that some locations can't be shut down and don't have a backup so we can definitely be flexible.
3. If you are not 100% sure of how to fix an issue, call us immediately. If you play around with buttons or hardware before you call us, you run the risk of making the issue worse.
4. With hardware or register program issues, we very often are not able to see what you are seeing. We depend on your descriptions of what's going on during the troubleshooting and repair process. The best way to make this process go smoothly is to only do what we ask you to do. We will give you step by step instructions on what buttons to press or other things to do. Please don't press anything else than what we tell you to, even if you think you know what the next step is. It throws us way off track on what is going on and makes it difficult to proceed. We will sometimes give a code to type in, hear the person we are working with type that code in, hear them say "Oh, I see", and then hear a bunch of other keys being hit. This will most often be followed by a question of what they should do next, but we have to start over because we don't know what they did.

We understand that every support issue is unique and that some of these things may not be possible for each call in to us, but they will make the process of fixing the problem much easier. Don't hesitate to call us for any support issue or questions you may have. We love to help the National Parks and the amazing people who work in them!

In the National Park Service, personnel changes can happen fairly often. As people move in and out of Fee Programs there are certain procedures that need to take place to insure a smooth transition. Especially when Fee Managers are changed, we highly recommend that you call us to help you with the change.

Things that need to be updated include:

1. Adding them as a new employee in Advantage.
2. Setting them up as an Administrator in Advantage.
3. Adding them as a new user in Comm2000.

If the new employee coming in has never used Advantage before we are more than willing to set up a time to do a training with them. We want to make sure that they are as comfortable as possible with the software so that their job is more manageable. 

​When we form a License and Support Contract with a National Park, we do our very best to make our services as valuable as possible. We provide specialized software that has been created specifically for the National Park Service Fee Programs called Advantage 5. This software has many tools that can make the job of Fee Manager much easier when it is used to its full potential. That is something that we can help you with.

​We encourage any of our clients who have any questions at all about Advantage 5 to not hesitate to call us. If we are unable to assist you in that moment we will be more than willing to schedule an appointment to teach you whatever you need to know. We will take the time to guide you through every step. It is our goal for each Fee Manager to feel completely comfortable with the software and understand how it can help their program more. We also encourage any of our clients who have ideas for improvements on the software to let us know and we will certainly take them into consideration for the next update.

We are proud of the Advantage 5 software and all the many things it can do, but we understand that each park is different. Please let us help you use this tool to move your park forward and we will always work hard to improve the software.