Venue Offline: FocusLink

Background

FocusLink is the official connector between Focus POS at the store-level and the Focus Cloud. FocusLink represents a massive leap forward in connecting the ever-reliable Focus POS store-level system to a series of truly cloud-based APIs, databases, and tools.

Problem

When attempting to perform a FocusLink based request, the response body indicated Venue Offline.

Resolution

The Venue Offline response indicates that the FocusLink Connector did not respond to a FocusLink API request within the expected timeout period and thus the request has "timed out".

Once a request has been "sent" to the store for local processing, it passes through several steps, each expecting a response within an allotted timeout:

1. The request is received by the FocusLink WebSocket
2. The request is parsed and validated as genuine
3. The request is presented to the store-level Focus app for processing
4. The store-level Focus app completes it's processing and responds to FocusLink
5. Based on several factors, FocusLink will return the store-level response to the FocusLink Cloud
6. FocusLink will notify the FocusLink Cloud that the request has been successfully processed and where FocusLink Cloud should retrieve the response.

If any steps in the above were to fail, and FocusLink is not able to complete step #6, the response would be Venue Offline.

To resolve this:

1. Restart the store-level Focus app
   1. This allows the store-level Focus app Mobile Thread to refresh and process new requests
2. Restart the FocusLink Connector Service
   1. This allows the WebSocket to reopen with a clean connection.