End-User Instructions

At this point, the unit should have been installed, and confirmation given that data is being received by Flow. The Flow installation manual can be located at Flow Gateway v2 Installers Guide  

Login Into the Flow Dashboard

To log into the dashboard, you will need to navigate to https://dashboard.flowcoffee.co.nz/ and enter the login details you have been provided with. Once the correct details have been entered, you will be automatically directed to the main overview page. 

Open

On this page, you can see the overview of your organisation and the performance of each site. The quick overview shows the number of shots and the percentage of shots that have met recipe. 

Under ‘filters’, there is the option to sort by date, organisation, recipe, alphabetically or shot count. There is also the option to ‘Fullscreen’ the tile display, which can be a visually good option for different display applications.  

You can now click on any site on this page to gain a deeper understanding of any given site. 

Once you have clicked on the site you want to investigate further, as per below we can see a breakdown of how this site is performing to the overall recipe. 

Open

• Total Shots

Here we can see the total number of shots poured, and the breakdown of which recipe made up the total number of shots poured. 

• Met Recipe: 

Here we can see the percentage of coffees that have met recipe, and how that total has been formulated from ‘perfect shots’(+/- 1 sec) and ‘OK’ within time variance specified in the recipe. 

• Missed on Time

Here we see the percentage of coffees that have missed recipe because the shot time was above the time target 'too slow' or below the time target 'too fast' 

• Missed on Volume

 Here we can see the percentage of coffees that have missed the recipe based on volume, and how that total has been formulated by each group head. It is worth noting that a small tolerance(under 5%) should be allowed to allow for cut shots etc. 

• Binned

Binning allows the site to remove shots from the dashboard, that they did not serve to the customer because they were outside of recipe. This metric allows you to see the percentage f shots that were binned. This feature can be turned off so that staff cannot bin shots.

• Leaderboard

Here we can see the position of the site against other sites within the same organisation. 

Shot Variance 

• Here we have normalised all of the site’s recipes to show time above or below the desired stot time. The lite green band shows +/- 1 second and the darker the green band shows shots within the specified shot time variance for the recipe. 

• The yellow line shows the trend of shot times and indicates where grinder adjustments should be made as it strays away from the perfect band. 

• You can hover your mouse over any of the coffee shots, and you will see further details of that particular shot. 

• You can click on any of the coffee shots to see a detailed breakdown of that shot. 

Scatter Chart

Here we can see how accurately the site is performing against individual recipes. By clicking on the desired recipe (in this case, small/standard, tall) you can view each recipe against its own time target. 

The scatter chart is not turned on as a standard feature. To turn on the scatter chart you will need to go to ‘settings’ at the bottom left of the dashboard (as per the graphic below) and then tick the box for ‘Display the Scatter Chart on the Dashboard’. Then click the tick box at the top right of the screen. 

Now the Scatter chart will be displayed on your dashboard. 

Note: In this settings area, you can anonymise the data if you are presenting and need to hide your current identifying data. 

Understanding the Side Bar Options

Shots

By Clicking on ‘shots’, you will see the individual extractions for each coffee during that day. 

You can also: 

• Choose a given date range by adjusting the calendar boxes. 

• Purges are filtered out by default and can be added back into the data set by ticking 'Show purges' and clicking 'Filter'

• Click on an individual shot to assess further.
  See Example flow profiles for examples of different shot flow profiles.

This information is critical when we come to set volume. 

Recipes

By Clicking on ‘recipes’ You can see your Active and Inactive recipes. You can turn on or off any recipes that you alternate between.  You also have the ability to add a new recipe. 

Further on in this instructional document, we will address how to add a new recipe. 

Coffee machines

By clicking on ‘coffee machines’ on the side bar you will be able to see a basic breakdown of the usage statistics for each group head. 

Within this area, we calibrate the volumetric settings for Flow to align with your coffee machine. 

Further on in this instructional document, we will address how to calibrate your volumetric settings within the dashboard. 

Performance

The performance area of the dashboard allows you to see any site's performance in an easy to understand graphic form. 

You can either use the date range of the last 7, 30 or 90 days or alternatively you can choose your own date range from the calendar boxes. 

You can hover your cursor over any coloured area on this page to reveal the hidden information. 

E.g: if you hover your cursor over the green portion under ‘shot breakdown’, you will see the percentage of shots that have met the recipe for this site.

You can use this instruction throughout this area to understand the hidden information.   

Barista Screen Display

To access the barista screen for a particular site, you need to click on the site to gain access to its main page. Then click on the drop-down box ‘view real-time activity’. If your site has two machines, the drop box will give you the option for both machines and you need to click on the machine you are wanting to see the display for.

Group Heads: The Display shows the 3 group heads and the shot time for each group and is colour coded based on whether they have met the recipe or not. Underneath the shot time we provide a further description of each shot.

Bin Function. If you have a touch screen, you will be able to take advantage of the bin function. If staff do not serve a shot because it is outside of the recipe, they can bin the shot and remove it from their daily metrics.

Keep Awake: In the top right-hand corner, you have the option to click on the keep awake tab. This will stop the screen from going to sleep.

Grind suggestion: The needle will slide back and forth across the graph showing the trend of your shots. E.g as your shots get faster, the needle will slide towards the right hand ‘too coarse’, giving the barista an indication to make an adjustment to the grinder. If staff do not make a change, an image of a grinder will appear, and if still no change is made, the grinder will start flashing, making it hard to ignore that a grinder change needs to be made.

Resellers - Onboarding New Customers

The first course of action is to create a new Organisation.

• From the main dashboard, on the left-hand side of the screen, you need to click ‘Organisations’

• Then in the top right of the screen, you need to click on the 'plus’ and then ‘add organisation’.

• Then you will need to add the organisation Name, and if required, any description required. 

The other fields are pre-set and do not require change unless you specifically want to change the optional parameters.  

You can now either finish this page by clicking the tick box at the top right of the screen or enter details for the maintenance thresholds below.  

• Maintenance Thresholds

Here you can set the service intervals for different items in your equipment. Once complete, you need to click the tick box in the top right of the screen.

Adding a Site to the Organisation

• From the main dashboard, on the left-hand side of the screen, you need to click ‘sites’

• Then in the top right of the screen, you need to click the ‘plus’ box at the top right of the screen.

• Fill in the appropriate fields, while paying special attention to set the organisation that you want this site to belong to, and then make sure the time zone is set to the local time. 

• Scrolling further down the page, we need to add the coffee machines(s) to the site. Click on ‘+coffee machine’

• Now you need to fill in the name for the Machine e.g Front Counter and then click on ‘add grouphead’. You need to click on add grouphead to set the number of group heads on your machine. E.g you will need to click 3 times for a 3 group machine.

• If you have a machine with preinfusion enabled, you need to tick the appropriate box and let your reseller know that you want preinfusion added to this machine.

• If you are loading one machine only, you now need to click on the tick box at the top right of your screen

• If you are wanting to add further machines e.g a drive-through machine, you need to click add coffee machine and repeat the process. 

Associating a Unit (Flow Device) to the Coffee Machine

• On the left-hand side of the screen, you need to click ‘Units’

• This will take you to a list of units that you have permissions to manage. To find a specific unit, begin typing it’s serial number into the search box in the top right, and the list will auto populate with results, once the desired device comes up in the list, you can click on it to select it:

• Once you have clicked on the desired Unit, it will take you to the unit details page. This page will show some initial info, like the organization, site, and coffee machine the unit is already associated with (if any), and information like the last data received timestamps, As well as other useful diagnostic information about the unit.

• In order to assign the unit to a site (or change it’s assignment), you must click on the Edit icon (pencil and page) in the top right:

• On the Edit Unit page, you will need to select the Coffee Machine you wish to associate it with on the right-hand side. This dropdown includes all the coffee machines in your organization, and supports type-ahead search, allowing you to type part of the name of the site or machine you wish to associate with to quickly shorten the list.

• Once you have selected a Coffee Machine, please us the Notes filed, to add a date stamped note explaining the change (this is only to create a log, so we know why this association was made or changed).

• Finally, click the tickbox in the top right corner to save your changes

Adding Users to the Site

• From the main dashboard, on the left-hand side of the screen, you need to click ‘users’

• Then in the top right of the screen, you need to click the plus box. There are also options to import or export bulk users or invite a user directly.

• As per below, enter the user’s email address and select an organisation to add the user to. Use the tick boxes on the right to make the user ‘notifiable’ for the email reports. It is also important to set the correct organisation and the local timezone for the user. 

• Click Generate to create a password for the user. If this password is going to be emailed to a user, copy and paste the password into an email now, as you will not be able to find this password again after navigating away from this page. For security reasons, it's advisable when emailing a password, that you recommend to the client that they change their password when logging in for the first time. 

• Once fields are populated, you need to click on on the tick box.

Add the user roles to each user

Now we need to click on users on the left hand side of the dashboard. Now you need to find the user through the search box by starting to type the email address of the user into the search field. Once the appropriate user is located, click on that username. 

The available access to each user is on the right-hand side of the dashboard. 

Now you need to choose and set the level of access for each user by using the drop boxes. 

Multiple roles can be set for each user. 

Once you have selected the role, organisation and site, you need to click ‘add’ to complete the process. Any of these selections can be edited in the same format. 

Note: If you leave the site box empty, this will give the User the chosen ‘role’ over the whole organisation that has been selected. 

At this point, your user will have login details and will be able to navigate the dashboard to the appropriate user level that you have set. 

Setting Recipe 

We measure the recipe of the espresso extraction primarily through time and volume. 

First, we need to set the time parameter. Log in to the dashboard and click on the site you are wanting to work with. 

Then, on the left-hand side of the screen under your site, click on ‘recipes’.  

Now we can see your recipe page. You can see (if already added) your currently active recipes, previous inactive recipes, and the ability to +add new. 

Click on ‘add new’. Then we simply need to fill in the available fields. 

• Add a name to distinguish the recipe

• Add target time and the acceptable variance that you are happy with e.g 3 seconds. 

• Then click add Recipe to complete the process. 

• At this point, if the site is part of a larger organisation, you can click on ‘inactive’ and the recipe’s for that organisation will be visible. You will need to turn on the recipes you wish to use for the site you are loading details for. 

Recipes are organisation wide so you'll see all the available recipes for an organisation in the inactive tab

• Recipes cannot be edited or deleted once created as historic shots may be associated with those targets.  If the targets need to be changed deactivate the recipe and create a new one

You now need to Calibrate the volume for the recipe. 

How to set your Volumetric settings in Dashboard

The unit will need to have had a reasonable number of coffees run through the machine so that accurate data will be able to be determined through the calibration process. 

Ideally, the volumetrics have been checked and adjusted by the location prior to Flow being installed. The accuracy of Flow is determined by the accuracy of the volumes on site. We can only determine the data coming from the machine, not whether that data is correct or not.  

• The first key is to set the volumetrics on the machine and make sure they are pouring the desired volumes. 

• After running a number of coffees through the machine on each recipe, the calibration process can begin. 

• Choose the site on the left of the dashboard. 

• We now need to click on ‘coffee machines’ on the left-hand side under the site we are looking to set the volume for. Then we need to click on calibrate on grp head 1.  

• You will now see the below page. We should now see the shots you have poured on the shots by volume/pulse count graph. 

• Using this example, and excluding any outliers, the average shot pulse count is 200. Volumetric targets are set to a 10 pulse window, so in this case, the range would be 195-205. Enter the minimum and maximum count in the below Volumetric Target table and click ‘update’. You need to do this for each recipe. 

•  Update values for one recipe at a time and click update, otherwise your previous recipe changes will not be saved

• Repeat for each group heap and recipe by clicking forward button in the top right-hand corner.                  

• The important part of this process is setting the volume correctly on the machine, and then being sure that you have run enough coffee through the machine to see accurate volume pulse counts in the Flow dashboard. This will enable you to see the new trend and set the pulse counts accordingly as per above. 

Re-Calibrating When missed on volume is increasing

Volumetric settings can go out of calibration due to human or equipment error".  When this happens you can use the following procedure to identify and fix the problem. 

1. Follow the identical process as above. Key is starting by making sure the volumes on the machine are correct. 

2. You can identify when volumes are being changed by:

   1. Click ‘coffee machine’ on the left hand side of the dashboard. 

   2. Choose group head and click calibrate. 

   3. Depending on the number of recipes, look for clear trends within a 10-second pulse count for the same number of recipes. E.g if the site has 2 recipes there should be 2 clear bands. 

   4. The below graphic shows shots sitting within the desired recipe bands. 

By clicking each date, you can understand where trends start, or when changes have been made. 

Below we can see that on the 15th, the volumetrics was changed accidentally, and as a result, most of the shots missed on volume. 

In these cases, either the machine volumes need to be recalibrated, or Flow needs to reset by resetting the volumetric settings as per point 5 above. 

Further Assistance

If you require further assistance, please contact the Flow Reseller within your area.