Blog
Sep
Olga Vishnyakova
Senior Support Technician
Olga Vishnakova has been with PCS for 7 years in the Support Department. Everyone appreciates her personal, customer oriented approach, making her a shining star among the support staff.
“Olga is wonderful to work with and quickly solves the problem”
Melva Rodgers, Scottsboro City School District, AL
“As always, Olga is the BEST!!!! She is thorough and makes sure you know what she is doing. She explains all my options and she checks with her supervisor to make sure, if she is not certain about something. Guaranteeing that I am getting the BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE AVAILABLE!”
Janice Jones, Pickens County Schools, AL
Sep
Aiding the School Food Service Community
Joanne Terry
Administrative Assistant II, Food & Nutrition Services
Charlotte County Public Schools, FL
Joanne has been involved in School Food Service at CCPS since February 2006 and has worked at Champ’s Cafe since July, 2008. Joanne served as a Florida Highway Patrolman and was a Corporal with the Sheriff’s department in Charlotte County before joining CCPS! A head on collision on-the-job with a drunk driver resulted in neck surgery and a career change for Joanne.
The special thing about Joanne is that she pays it forward by coordinating relief efforts specifically aimed at members of the school food service community who are victims of disasters. So, instead of sending relief to other organizations, she galvanized her community, which has grown and grown, to focus much needed help to the food service department families affected in disaster areas. She has also been a great help to our PCS Regional Sales director, Denise Lessard, in putting together the Florida User Group.
Joanne shares her story: Click to watch Joanne’s video
Sep
School Lunch Hero Day Project
Children’s book author Jarrett Krosoczka shares the origins of the Lunch Lady graphic novel series, in which undercover school heroes serve lunch…and justice! His new project, School Lunch Hero Day, reveals how cafeteria lunch staff provide more than food, and illustrates how powerful a thank you can be.
Jarrett J. Krosoczka is the author/illustrator of countless children’s books and graphic novels, including the Lunch Lady series.
Watch Jarrett speak about his series and check out the lunch lady graphic novels.
Acknowledgement: Images and links in this blog post were copied from TED.com
Aug
A long time customer, Clayton County Public Schools in Georgia have been with PCS since 1999 and have implemented the full PCS product line, front and back office including PayPAMS.
Director, Audrey Hamilton, M. Ed., is proud of her two CCPS schools that just won the Southeastern Dairy Association’s highest participation award. Lee Street ES won an Atlanta Falcon’s Pep Rally (players and cheerleaders visited the school) and Roberts Middle School won the second place prize of $2,500.00!
CCPS is a progressive district and is the first Metro Atlanta school district to fully implement USDA’s Community Eligibility Program (CEP) where all students receive meals at “no cost” regardless of their family income. PCS software supports CEP, smoothing the transition for all involved.
Clayton County has worked closely with PCS in the development of a special POS Validation Mode to help reduce student debt on their lunch accounts, as well as many TrakNOW menu planning and inventory costing reports, that facilitate detailed cost analysis and we look forward continued successful projects.
Aug
Bhaumik Thaker, Senior QA Technician
Bhaumik Thaker has been with PCS for seven years, starting as a junior support technician and moving up and up, serving as a support supervisor, team leader, and most recently performing Quality Assurance for the development team. “B” as we call him, brings a tremendous amount of experience to every project and support task, and is presently very involved with the roll out of the web based RightNOW upgrade for RIGHTrak.
“Over the last year the FNS staff of the Hernando County School District have gotten to know Bhaumik. He is a really friendly, generous person and fun to be around. He also is a top notch technician. I could not ask for a more helpful, responsive technician. He takes time to listen to to our concerns and does a great job addressing our issues. Bhaumik is a great asset to PCS and we are grateful for all of his assistance in Hernando County.”
Lori Drenth, M.S., R.D., S.N.S.
Director, Food and Nutrition Services
Hernando County School District
Aug
PCS is launching a few test sites this Fall for online Free and Reduced web applications. Utilizing our PayPAMS Parent Account Management System and Web Portal. Parents and guardians will be able to enter family, student, and income information quickly and efficiently, with the completed application being sent electronically to the RIGHTrak or RightNOW for processing and approval.
In addition, parents can check eligibility status online and download or print eligibility status letters through PayPAMS Online Eligibility Check. Stay tuned for information about the general release of these new products.
Aug
In the next few weeks TrakNOW will be releasing a new version. Highlights of the release include:
The ability to create an unlimited number of allergens or other ingredients to be tracked with items, recipes and menus. Newly defined allergens will flow at all reports that currently track the system defined allergens.
Improvements to our Item/Recipe export including all serving types defined will now populate with nutrients, food based components, allergens (including any newly defined allergens), and target temperatures.
Addition of a menu export that includes all nutrients, food based components, allergens (including any newly defined allergens), and target temperatures. This export can be used in conjunction with our partners School Menu, Nutrislice, NutriLink, Epicure and E-Control to publish menus on the web.
Full details on all improvements will be provided in the release notes.
Aug
The SNA Annual National Conference in Boston was the culmination to a busy year and we want to thank everyone who visited with us at the booth. We flew the sales team in from all over the country and many of the support team were able to drive up from the corporate office, making this a great opportunity for everyone to put a name to a face. Speaking of which, we kept our social media audience up to date each day on who was in the booth and the daily winners of the Coach bag drawings.
Don’t forget to check out more pictures from this year’s ANC!
Now onto the new school year! Our support staff is busy answering your calls and the conference room has been taken over by additional staff to handle parent’s “chat” requests online, in real-time.
As always, before you call or when the lines are busy, you have many options to get the information or support you need:
1. Email [email protected]
2. Open a ticket on the Support Portal
3. Visit the On Line Help Center
Have a great year start everyone and don’t forget to check out our new web site!
Jul
This Spring PCS conducted User Groups in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas (Dallas & Houston), Minnesota, California, Delaware, and two webinars online. Based on customer feedback we will conduct a TrakNOW only user group on June 15 for customers in California. Thanks for the idea!
Conducting the user groups is a major operation for PCS and involved 7 people traveling and many others working behind the scenes at the office.The user groups provide an opportunity for districts to collaborate, discuss ideas, and provide feedback on current and new products.
New products discussed included options for upgrading to web based systems and online applications. Feedback regarding the online applications was extremely helpful to determine the direction we will develop this product. A few districts volunteered to be beta sites.
Feedback regarding enhancements to RIGHTrak, FASTrak, and NetPOS was also very helpful. Presenting new features always stirs up even more ideas for more new features, for example, accepting Credit Cards on the POS line or through a NetCash Machine.
Some observations regarding regulations:
- Not that many districts are moving to Community Eligibility. That being said, RIGHTrak reports can assist districts in analyzing their options.
- Customers in Minnesota reported that Breakfasts and meals for students that have a Reduced status will now be offered at no charge.
- Districts in California reported the state claim may change during the summer
- Eligibility rollback is not a hot topic (yet)
We posted User Group pictures on PCS’s Facebook page.
See you next year!
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