Alarms and sounds
The KDS watches the board for three things that should not wait — a new ticket, a ticket nobody has started, and a dish that is late — and tells the kitchen with a chip in the alarm bar, a sound, and a mark on the ticket. All three are driven by the thresholds set per station in SSP Manager.
The three alarms
| Alarm | Fires when | Chip reads | Sound | On the ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New order | A ticket this screen has not seen before arrives | New order 7KQ2M9XA | A short rising chime | — |
| Not started | Every dish on the ticket at this station is still Sent / Ordered, and the ticket has waited longer than the station's Alarm if nobody starts an order for this long (default 10 min; empty in Manager = off) | 7KQ2M9XA not started — waiting 12 min | A low double knock | Pulsing red ring, red clock |
| Late dish | A Preparing dish is past its due time by more than the station's Grace period before the late alarm sounds (default 0) — or SSP's own stall detector flags it | Burger is late (7KQ2M9XA) | An urgent triplet | The row's timer turns red and pulses |
Rules that keep the bar useful:
- Each problem sounds once. A late dish does not chime every 5 seconds; it chimes when it becomes late. If it is plated and later recalled, it can chime again.
- Nothing chimes on load. When the board first appears, every ticket already on it is taken as known. Switching tabs or stations does not re-chime either.
- One sound at a time, most urgent first: late, then not started, then new order.
- Dishes on hold, held courses and dishes with no prep time never raise the late alarm.
- Cancelled and voided dishes are ignored by the not-started check, so a ticket whose only remaining line was voided does not alarm.
The alarm bar
Sits above the board.
Sound. Browsers refuse to play sound until the screen has been touched, so after every reload the bar shows an amber Sound is off — tap to enable. Tap it once. It then reads Sound on; tap again to Mute. Mute silences the sounds only — chips and ticket marks still appear — and is forgotten on reload, so a screen cannot stay muted by accident overnight. Sound must also be allowed for the station in SSP Manager (Play sounds on the kitchen screen, on by default) and the new-order chime has its own switch there.
Chips. The three newest alarms show as chips; late dishes in red. Tap a chip and the board scrolls to that ticket (opening Ready for handoff if it has moved there), rings it for a moment, and removes the chip. Clear removes them all. Chips never clear themselves — a chip you did not tap is a ticket you did not look at — and a ticket with an untapped chip sorts to the top under Most urgent.
Where the thresholds are set
Per station, in SSP Manager under Kitchen → Capacity, section Alarms and timing for this station — see Kitchen Capacity & Load:
| Setting | Drives |
|---|---|
| Warn before ready (minutes) | The amber early warning on a cooking dish's timer. Empty = no early warning |
| Grace period before the late alarm sounds (minutes) | How far past due a dish may be before it turns pulsing red and chimes. 0 = the moment it is due |
| Alarm if nobody starts an order for this long (minutes) | The not-started alarm. Empty = off |
| Play sounds on the kitchen screen | All sounds for this station |
| Chime when a new order arrives | The new-order chime |
A station with nothing saved uses the defaults: no early warning, no grace, not-started at 10 minutes, sounds and chime on. A station with settings saved but a field left empty has that rule off.
A screen showing several stations follows the strictest of them — the earliest warning, the shortest grace, the shortest not-started wait — and sounds if any of them allows sound. All Stations combines every station at the location.
The thresholds that colour a waiting dish (sent but unclaimed, or plated and waiting for a runner) are location-wide and live in KDS settings on the Stations tab.
Station load gauges
A prep screen with specific stations ticked shows one gauge per station above the board: the station's name, its load level — Low, Medium, High or Critical — and how many items and orders it has in hand. (manual) means a manager has pinned the level from the Monitor tab.
Load counts the dishes currently cooking at the station and decides the multiplier that stretches every prep time there, which is why the line timers get longer during a rush. The gauge follows the live load feed and matches the Monitor tab in SSP Manager. Pre-orders that have not fired do not count. See Kitchen Capacity & Load for the thresholds.