Highlights

Version 5.23.0

GK Software – Documentation and Translation

July 6th 2023
Main Features
GK POS Client Main Feature

Multiple Enhancements to the Self Service Scale

The Self Service Scale UI has been arranged to be
more user friendly, more intuitive, and to support
the registration process. It is also possible to
search for items and to switch between languages.
An initial welcome screen allows the user to
choose the correct department, e.g. fruits or
vegetables, so that they are only shown relevant
items for selection.
Furthermore, there is now an item search, which
adapts the available item buttons to the search
results. Non-relevant items and the related buttons
are removed in real-time. The item selection is
faster and with fewer faults.
In addition to these functional improvements, the
user has a new option to switch languages at any
time and the option to have favorite labels visible.
GK POS Server Main Feature

Correction of Tender Pickups

There is a new application in Launchpad that
allows users to see current tender pickups and
correct them. Previously, it was not possible to
make any retrospective changes to tender pickups.
The feature is used for the validation and
correction of tender pickups, which are done in the
current drawer period or after the drawer period is
closed. A drawer period is closed either with the
drawer accounting or end-of-day process and a
new drawer period is opened. The user can correct
the value of the tender pickup entered originally
and see the difference. Once the change has been
saved, the results are summarized in a tender
pickup correction report, which can be printed
afterwards.
GK Employee Hub Main Feature

Introduction of the Employee Hub

We are introducing the new Employee Hub which
will replace the UI5 Launchpad.
The Employee Hub is the new frontend for all GK-
related products and a control center for all
applications that are relevant to a specific
employee. It supports multiple frontend
technologies, such as SAP UI5, VueJS and React,
for the implementation of frontend applications. It
also supports installation on mobile devices, such
as smartphones and tablets.
Benefits of the Employee Hub include that it is
independent from the inner functions from a
technical point of view and that loading times have
been improved. It also provides the next set of new
features such as a connection for messaging,
customizable dashboards using widgets, and much
more.
GK Store Device Control Main Feature

Item Maintenance Home

Item Maintenance consists of several standalone
functions which are difficult to navigate.
There is a special sub-menu containing all item
maintenance functions allowing users to easily
maintain all item data in one place.
The user has to select the item only once and can
then navigate through the various item
maintenance functions. There is also a filter that
enables the user to see only those functions which
are relevant to the specific item type (e.g. empties
are not visible for fashion items).
 GK Store Device Control Main Feature

Reference Store
Items are now stored just once in the database and linked directly from the store. The reference store approach seamlessly
compares the imported items in the background and if the same item is already detected in the database, it is reused for
multiple stores instead of creating a new item entry. If the item is unique to one store, the item is then linked to this specific
store only.
The reference store approach optimizes the space needed to store items, effectively leading to a smaller database and
therefore also lower operational cost. The level of optimization depends on how many items without store-specific changes
are shared among the stores.

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GK Self Scanning Client Main Feature

Shopping List Service Integration with the Basket

Service
The Shopping List Service can call the Basket
Service to get information about an event from the
Event Service.
This increases the capability of the Shopping List
Service, as it can now respond to live customer
events.
 GK Self Scanning Client Main Feature

Rich Content Now Possible on the Customer's Mobile Device

When shopping, the customer will be able to see pictures of items on the detail screen, as well as videos or PDFs.
This will provide a richer and more dynamic shopping experience.

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GK Central Promotion Designer Main Feature

Unit of Measure Codes and Qualifiers for

Merchandise Hierarchy Groups in Reports

Promotion reports that list triggering items or

Merchandise Hierarchy Groups (MHGs) now also
show the Unit of Measure (UOM) code for the
items and the qualifier for MHGs. This is important
information because pure item IDs and IDs for
MHGs are not unique.
 GK Central Promotion Designer Main Feature

Promotions without Store Assignment

In single store mode, a superuser with access to all stores will now also see promotions without any destination stores. They
can create promotions without a store assignment and are able to remove all assigned stores from an existing promotion.
In some use cases, it is necessary to create a promotion but not have any stores assigned to it initially.

Single Sign On via App Enablement

Central Promotion Designer (CPD) functionalities are available in the new Employee Hub. For the integration of CPD with the
new Employee Hub, CPD supports Single Sign On via App Enablement.

User Store Restrictions

Up to now, the Central Promotion Designer (CPD) supported the following modes: 1) the “standard mode”, where the user had
access to the promotions of all stores in CPD, and 2) the “store mode”, where the user had access only to the promotions of
the store that were selected at login.
From now on, a list of store restrictions can be assigned to a single login and the user will be able to manage all promotions
of the stores they have access to. Such a feature is useful, for example, in a franchise scenario, where the user needs to
manage only the stores of one franchisee.

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 GK Central Promotion Designer Main Feature

Update of the Exclusion Criteria

Additional options were introduced for threshold eligibilities in the Central Promotion Designer, following the rework of
Exclusion Criteria in the Promotion Calculation Engine (PCE; see FD 2302 Highlights for more information).
With this update, users will have more control of the behavior of promotions with non-discountable or non-bonus-points
eligibilities. The new features (“consider non-discountable items”, “consider non-bonus-point items” and “threshold for single
item” flags) were introduced to match the capabilities of PCE and CPD.

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GK Smart Label Main Feature

Integration of SES Imagotag ESL Solution

There is a new service-to-service integration of
V:Cloud interface from SES Imagotag. The change
events produced by the Label Print Service (LPS)
are converted and pushed to V:Cloud API while
status updates are pulled back to LPS and
displayed in the user interface.
Now there is a standard integration of electronic
shelf labels (ESL) from SES Imagotag into LPS
processes and the maintenance function. The ESL
solution can be used to avoid paper waste by
updating the shelf labels electronically instead of
producing paper printouts.
GK GO Main Feature

Offers and Hyper-Personalized Offers Now Shown

in the Client
In GK GO, the "continue shopping" option is now
supported and customers will now also receive
hyper-personalized offers based on their exact
location in the store.
Once a customer reaches the checkout area and
decides to return to the store, the already started or
finished payment will be dropped or canceled.
 GK GO Main Feature

Customers Can Continue Shopping After Checkout

GK GO will be integrated with the SPOT hyper-personalization service.
This allows the customer to approach the checkout area without having to be automatically checked-out. This will minimize
errors and provide a richer and more dynamic shopping experience.

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Stability
and Security
GK POS Client Stability and Security

JWT Operator Token Authentication

We replaced the obsolete approach of GK-SSO
(Single Sign On) by the JWT (JSON Web Token)
standard. This change ensures a more secure data
transfer and that all communications are verified.
GK Store Device Control Stability and Security

Optimization of Global Configuration Processing

Regular checks for data container updates can be
resource intensive, especially when there are many
data container files on the file system.
The performance of data container processing has
been improved and the database workload is better
now. For this purpose, the data container import
process was completely redesigned to significantly
reduce access to the file system and database.
Data containers on the file system are now
scanned for changes only when 1) a tenant or store
config-refresh happens, 2) a new store is added, or
3) an existing store is assigned to a different
system landscape.
Finally, database access is reduced by loading all
data containers with status data at once and by
caching the state locally.
GK Central Promotion Designer Stability and Security

Handling Large Numbers of Items and

Merchandise Hierarchy Groups
For item eligibilities, merchandise hierarchy group
eligibilities, Mix and Match rules, and Additional
Bonus rules, the Promotion Designer (CPD) offers a
UI where large numbers of item IDs or merchandise
hierarchy group IDs can be pasted. By pasting large
numbers of IDs (1000 or more), it was possible to
crash the application due to poor performance
when processing such quantities.
The background processing of large numbers of
IDs was improved where possible. In addition, the
fields are now protected with a maximum text
length and maximum number of IDs that can be
pasted at once. A dialog informs the user if they
exceed the limits. Also, the total number of items
or merchandise hierarchy groups that can be
configured for a single promotion is limited.
All limits are configurable so that they can be
adjusted according to the capabilities of the
hardware used.
GK Storemanager Stability and Security

Secure Client Onboarding

This feature is a game changer for the way in
which Edge Clients communicate with Cloud
Services (Central Services). The times in which an
anonymous Edge Client could communicate with
Cloud Services have gone.
With this feature, an Edge Client must always be
properly onboarded to get its own unique access
and refresh tokens which are dedicated to this
Client only. Access tokens are used for
authentication and authorization, while refresh
tokens are used to get a new access token
periodically. This functionality also provides
increased security for Edge Services, a complete
overview of the Clients that are capable of
communicating with Cloud, and an easy way of
disabling Clients that might have been
compromised.
 GK Storemanager Stability and Security

Password Secured Storage

Security is one of the key factors for successful Cloud computing. Therefore, it is vital to harden the entire solution, including
the way in which passwords are handled.
If applications or services need to use passwords (or other secrets), for example to communicate with another service, to
connect to a database, or in some other scenario, it is important to store passwords in a secure way and not in plain form.
The way to achieve this is to use industry standard algorithms for encryption, such as AES. The new functionality provides
secret management for all applications in the GKR Suite, secure key management including key rotation, end device secret
encryption, and the utilization of secure storage for mobile devices.

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Cloud
GK Basket Calculation Service Cloud

Initial Release of the Basket Calculation Service

Basket Calculation Service version 1.0.0 has been
released. As a standalone microservice, it provides
the functionality to calculate promotions and totals
for a basket. The API is compatible to a similar
functionality previously offered on the POS Service.
Please consult the documentation for further
information.
General
Improvements
GK Cloud4Retail General Improvements

Cloud Deployments in On-Premise scenarios –

OpenShift
We would like to use the benefits of cloud-like
installation also in on-premises scenarions in the
future. With this in mind, technical documentation
and delivery support packages for running
Cloud4Retail in customer data centers with
OpenShift (or self-managed Kubernetes cluster)
were prepared and are ready to use.
 GK Cloud4Retail General Improvements

Client Onboarding – Cloud Support

Secure client onboarding, one of our biggest product features, has been integrated into the cloud environment. The cloud
solution enables an easy rotation of encryption keys, a critical aspect of security processes. Moreover, “zero configuration”
has been enhanced. But what is that?

Zero Configuration
With a “zero configuration”, the technical setup of all applications after a clean installation or upgrade is automated.
Encryption processes used in client onboarding and additional configuration capabilities have been leveraged for an
automated setup and an easy rotation of service-to-service communication credentials, and any other technical parameters
that can only be configured at deployment time. The workload initialization feature now supports multi-tenancy.

Better Platform Version Control for Edge Applications

When installation packages are uploaded to the cloud storage, the correct versions are written to the installation metadata.
For this, a central maintenance of versions of JRE and Tomcat packages for edge applications are used.

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 GK Cloud4Retail General Improvements

Improvements on Data Containers Initialization

A fully automated process of importing all data in the cloud had certain disadvantages, since all existing data containers
were refreshed at each release. With the help of the Backend team, the data container packages have been divided into two
parts. The first package contains the initial setup of the new system, where further maintenance will be done via Employee
Hub only. The second package: contains the mandatory technical data for the updates, which needs to be imported with each
new release (e.g. new roles, etc.).

Atlas MongoDB and Azure Cache for Redis Now Supported

Terraform receipts and relevant infrastructure pipelines were prepared for future cloud core components. They provide setup
of Atlas MongoDB and Azure Cache for Redis. Cloud applications, which would need such databases, can easily turn on
support of Mongo/Redis due to seamless integration in Application BuildKit.

Migration to PostgreSQL
Following a company strategic decision, we have switched our database backend from MSSQL to PostgreSQL, now
supported with infrastructure pipelines for easy data migration.

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 GK Cloud4Retail General Improvements

Sizing Tool and Performance

Database connection parameters for better performance were added to the default setup. Many performance tests were
executed during the research of database latencies, job manager optimized parameters and for collecting fresh figures for
the sizing process. Load testing was enhanced with new tests, and the automation pipeline was optimized for better
robustness. The Sizing tool got new calculations, corrections, and enhancements - fiscalization, simple pump, premium
series databases.

General Improvements
As usual, there are many smaller but significant improvements in the areas of security, compatibility, performance, and
monitoring. All involved applications were upgraded to the latest available versions, all relevant components were tested and
migration procedures were prepared for various needed upgrades.

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GK POS Client General Improvements

Multiple Add-ons - OmniPOS

This feature makes it possible to use several Add-
on packs at once. In the past, different Add-on
packs could access the same parameter and
configure it. This generated conflicts between the
Add-on packs and the POS system. It was not
possible to load the POS system or run it with the
wrong configuration.
This new enhanced functionality allows better
handling of several Add-on packs at once. This
technical improvement provides conditions to
avoid conflicts with configuration parameters,
which are accessed by more than one Add-on
pack. Each Add-on pack has its own range of
parameters, which can be used for configuration
and to set the priority.
GK Store Device Control General Improvements

Business Unit Search according to Address

The business unit search did not contain all the
criteria required by the mobile clients.
Now, the business units can be found using criteria
like street, city, and postal code.
To do so, there is a new REST API for the business
unit search, allowing the extended criteria to be
used.
 GK Store Device Control General Improvements

Improvement of Item Statistic Pump Performance

If there is a high number of item records per store, the item statistic pump creation can take a long time.
The item statistic pump is now created much faster, even for bigger stores.
The underlying database access layer has been re-implemented to load the records from the database in a more efficient
way.

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GK Self Scanning Client General Improvements

Payment with a Gift Card or a Gift Certificate Now

Available
Customers using the Self-Scanning client (SSC or
GK GO) can now pay for their purchases with a gift
certificate or a gift card. These can be used in
different purchase scenarios: 1) the amount of the
gift card or certificate matches purchase amount,
2) the amount of the gift card or certificate is lower
than the purchase amount, and 3) the amount of
the gift card or certificate is higher than the
purchase amount (note that gift certificates cannot
be reused, so the money would be lost in this
case).
Payment with gift card or certificate is now
available to all Self-Scanning clients through the
Stored Value Server (where gift cards and
certificates are created and stored).
 GK Self Scanning Client General Improvements

Customer Can Redeem Tier Rewards with Self Scanning Client and Self Scanning Service
Up until now, promotions could not be linked to a specific target group within a loyalty program on the Self Scanning Service.
Customers who sign up to a loyalty program that has different tiers (e.g. gold, silver, bronze) can now redeem tier-specific
rewards when shopping.
The Self Scanning Service will retrieve the loyalty information and pass it on to the Promotion Calculation Engine to apply the
discount in the total price calculation.

Customer User Interface to Display Loyalty Information and the Digital Loyalty Card
Customers who sign up to a loyalty program expect to be able to access their loyalty information in the Self Scanning Client.
Therefore, customers can now see their loyalty card and loyalty information in the profile settings menu of the app.

Integration of the “Shopping List” Application with the Self Scanning Client
Shopping list functionalities are now available during a self-scanning shopping trip.
This includes opening the shopping list and removing items from it. It is also possible to switch between the Self Scanning
Client (SSC) and the shopping list, and scan an item from the shopping list detail view. Furthermore, consumers can now add
generic items to the shopping list.

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 GK Self Scanning Client General Improvements

Shopping List: Store Selection

When using the Shopping List application, the user can select a store in the “List Details/Edit List” screen.
The user can change the store for a more flexible shopping experience. It may be the case that a specific item does not exist
in the new store, so it will then be saved as the generic item.

Specific Items Can Be Added to the Shopping List

Customers can now manually look up items when using the Shopping List Service to add items to a shopping list.
The Shopping List Service is now able to communicate with Store Device Control (SDC) to retrieve individual items and
display them in the Android/iOS device.

Migration of the Employee App to the New Employee Hub

Employee App functionalities were not present in the Employee Hub. With this feature, the Employee Hub will include the
functions of Employee App.
To make this happen, a few changes were necessary. Employee App functions had to be decoupled into separated projects.
Maven jobs for publishing the dependencies on nexus had to be created.
Functions that include similar functionalities (e.g. POS Service Events like SCO States, Events List, Help Requests) were
merged into one project.

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GK Central Promotion Designer General Improvements

Delete Promotions in Store Mode

In “Store Mode” of the Central Promotion Designer
(CPD), users with access to the current store
(selected in Launchpad) only are now able to delete
multi-store promotions from their store. This is
done by removing the current store from the
destination stores of that promotion only. The
promotion remains unchanged for all other
destination stores (for which the single store user
is not allowed to edit promotions).
A single store user now has more control over the
active promotions in their store, including
promotions that were created for multiple stores by
a superuser.
 GK Central Promotion Designer General Improvements

Unique IDs for Templates

Promotion templates are now created with a unique ID, similar to promotions that have a unique ID. As a result, the template
name does not need to be unique anymore.
In particular, when Central Promotion Designer (CPD) is running in “Store Mode”, where a user has no access to templates for
a different (not visible) store, the user can create a template with any name that they want.

Store-Specific Item Descriptions

The Central Promotion Designer (CPD) was saving item descriptions only for the store which was selected in Launchpad
when item data was most recently loaded. After changing the store in Launchpad, it was therefore possible that CPD was
showing item descriptions of a different store. In particular, when running CPD with the option to restrict the visibility of
promotions by store, aka “Store Mode” introduced in FD-2205, a user could therefore see item descriptions that did not match
the descriptions of their current store.
CPD now saves all item descriptions with the relation to the store from which item data was loaded in Store Device Control
(SDC). In the user interface and reports, item descriptions are now always shown for the store currently selected in
Launchpad.

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 GK Central Promotion Designer General Improvements

Store Assignment Indication

In store mode, the user can only see promotions for the current store. They also cannot see other stores that a promotion is
assigned to. If a promotion is assigned to stores which the current user cannot see, they cannot perform any operations on
that promotion, such as activation or deactivation.
For this reason, a column was added to the promotion (and template) overview tables which indicates the store assignment
with an icon: no stores, single store, more than one store. Now the user is aware that a promotion is assigned to additional
stores that they cannot see.

CPD Language Change Possible in Employee Hub

Users are now able to change the language of CPD in the Employee Hub.
Before, CPD was using the language settings defined for a user in the user management function. Now, from the moment a
new CPD function is opened, CPD uses the language selected in Employee Hub.
Note, however, that changing the language while CPD is in use may take some time to update.

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GK GO General Improvements

Empties Receipts in GK GO
Support for the handling of empties receipts in
scanless scenarios is required by our partners
(Hitachi/Shekel) in GK GO.
Consumers expect that they can return items in a
scanless store, too. This could either be individually
(having the returned empties added one-by-one to
the basket) or by generating an empties receipt
which is registered to the basket and resolved later
on.
To do so, an empties transaction is now created on
a reverse vending machine. The reverse vending
machine provides the empties transaction to the
transaction pool and the Item Registration Service
will then request it from the transaction pool
together with its state (Active, Redeemed, Voided).
The line items from the transaction are taken over
to the basket. The configuration and process flow
determine whether each line item is taken over or if
the amount is booked to a collective item.
 GK GO General Improvements

The GO Client Displays Personalized Offers and Item Recommendations

Using the new Customer Engagement backend services, GK is able to deliver highly personalized offers and product
recommendations according to the customer activity in the store. The GK GO client is now able to send customer activity
data and, in return, retrieve the generated recommendations. These offers and items are displayed to the customer in a
prominent UI element.
This improves the user experience. When browsing the app, the customer is specifically informed about offers and items that
match their purchase.

Age Stored in Customer Profile in GK GO

A customer can now request that their verified age stays stored in their profile, reducing the number of times that the age
verification needs to occur. With this, the number of customer interactions with employees in-store will be minimized.
The Employee Hub can now communicate directly with the Customer Profile Service to update a dedicated table that stores
the customer's verified (instead of self-declared) age.

Continue Shopping After Checkout

Customers in GK GO stores can now return to the store and continue shopping even after the checkout process has been
triggered.
If the customer is already in the checkout area, but has forgotten an item, or wants to put an item back in the shelf, they can
now go back to the store and continue shopping without having to open a new basket.
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GK Promotion Calculation Engine General Improvements

Rework of Exclusion Criteria

Promotion Calculation Engine (PCE) handling of
non-discountable and non-bonus points items was
unified and made consistent across different
eligibility and rule types, for line-item related and
transaction-related promotions.
For all threshold eligibilities, it is now possible to
allow non-discountable or non-bonus points items
to trigger a promotion, although such items are still
never allowed to receive a benefit.
Since the behavior of some promotions may
change due to the rework, it is possible to
deactivate the feature to ensure backward
compatibility.
 GK Promotion Calculation Engine General Improvements

“Total” Privilege Types for Manual Trigger Promotions

Manual promotions, which are usually added to a line item by the cashier, are no longer limited to a single item privilege type.
All “total” privilege types are now supported as well, allowing the cashier to grant a total discount amount on a line item
independent of the quantity of units of the line item.
This allows the cashier to specify a manual discount for a line item more easily than before, since the cashier does not need
to calculate the discount amount per quantity of 1 or per unit anymore.

Threshold for Single Item Flag for Generic Product

The Promotion Calculation Engine (PCE) now supports the "threshold for single item flag" on item eligibilities. If set, the
threshold quantity or threshold amount of the eligibility, depending on the selected threshold type of the eligibility, needs to
be fulfilled by a single variant of a generic product to trigger the promotion.
For items that are not variants of a generic product, the flag has no effect.
It is possible to achieve similar behavior for variants of a generic product that is available for Merchandise Hierarchy Group
and Merchandise Set Eligibilities.

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GK Promotion Validation Service General Improvements

New Validators for the Promotion Validation

Service
Further validators were added to the Promotion
Validation Service, covering some inconsistent
promotion definitions with the threshold type
codes AMT, AMTI, QUT, QUTI and AMQU, and the
corresponding threshold values. See validators 47,
48, 49 and 50 in the Functional Guide for more
details.
Validator 51 was also added and covers cases
where a combination eligibility has only one child
eligibility.
 GK Promotion Validation Service General Improvements

Additional Validations
Unexpected behavior of a promotion, which is usually caused by copy/paste errors when creating the promotion, can be
avoided.
Some additional validations were added, meaning more invalid combinations of promotion data are detected when the
threshold type of the eligibility does not match the provided thresholds and interval sizes of that promotion.

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GK Translation General Improvements

User Interface Now Available in Japanese,

Chinese, and Thai
As part of GK's plan to increase its market
presence in additional areas of the world, our user
interface is now available in three more languages:
Japanese, Chinese, and Thai. These languages are
ready to be rolled out from Product Suite Version
5.21.0.
 GK Translation General Improvements

User Interface Also Available in Vietnamese and Korean

Following the successful translation of the user interface into Chinese, Thai, and Japanese, we have now added Vietnamese
and Korean to our offer. These languages are ready to be rolled out from Product Suite Version 5.21.0.

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GK I18N
GK I18N Main FeatureGeneral
5.23.0 Improvements

Release of Hungary Country Package 2.3.0, and

New Versions of the Slovakia & Bulgaria Country
Packages

After overcoming several challenges over the past

few months, Hungary Country Package 2.3.0 has
been released! The initial version of CP_HU 2.3.0 is
now ready for the integration with the fiscal partner
Prior Cash. Prior Cash is one of the first companies
to achieve certification with a reduced scope: fiscal
printer only and no POS certification is required.

Slovakia Country Package version 2.2.3 & Bulgaria

Country Package Version 2.3.0 now also offer
product support for the existing fiscal printers
(Diebold TH 250 SK and TH 250), and the new
fiscal printer Diebold Nixdorf P1200.
Hardware
Integration
GK POS Client Hardware Integration

Mettler Freshway Hardware is Now Supported

In a hardware-related topic, the available scale
devices were enhanced and Mettler Freshway is
now also supported with the known, full OmniScale
functionality.
Compliance
GK Self Scanning Client Compliance

Improvements to Meet French Fiscalization

Requirements
Since January 2018, all cash register systems in
France must meet the so-called ISCA (Inalterability,
Security, Conservation, Archiving) requirements.
The client can now obtain all additional transaction
information that needs to be included in the receipt
and the export. This is available on both the
industrial device and the Self Scanning Client Bring
Your Own Device (SSC BYOD).
The fiscal certificate's information is downloaded
to the client and can be accessed by shoppers.
The Retail Innovators