Menu helper: edits by voice and text

• What it is and where to open it
• What edits it can make
• Series: one phrase for many dishes
• Voice: hold and speak
• The card, confirmation and undo
• Boundaries and limits

What it is and where to open it

The menu helper turns one phrase — “raise the pho to 180 thousand”, “hide the rolls”, “fettuccine is sold out” — into a concrete menu edit, and a phrase about many dishes at once — “translate the remaining descriptions into Vietnamese” — into a series of edits on one card. Nothing changes by itself: the helper shows “was → becomes”, and you apply it with one button.

It opens inside the menu editor: on a phone — the round sound-wave button over the dish list, on a computer — the “Menu helper” button in the editor header. Only staff with the right to manage the menu see the button; shared devices (a counter tablet) have no helper.

One assistant is open at a time: the menu helper closes the assistant chat, and the other way round. Your conversation with the menu helper is not lost: cards you have not applied yet are still there when you open it again. After a page reload only unfinished series come back.

A question that is not about the menu — “how do I connect a printer?”, “why can’t the waiter see the floor?” — the menu helper passes to the Assistant: it opens and answers your own phrase, no need to repeat it.

The helper is for the daily routine: prices, stop-list, translations and descriptions. Entering a whole menu from scratch stays with photo recognition (AI import).

What edits it can make

One phrase about one dish — one edit on a card (about many dishes — a series, see the next section):

• Dish price — only for dishes with an exact price. A “from” price, a range or “on request” are edited on the dish screen — the helper will show you where.
• Hide or show a dish — the dish disappears for guests entirely.
• Stop-list — the dish stays on the menu but cannot be ordered (“sold out”).
• Name and description — by default the menu's source language is edited, and the other languages re-translate automatically. Name a language explicitly — only that one changes.
• Move to another category of the same menu.
• Badges — “recommended”, vegetarian, vegan.
• Hide or show a category — with everything in it.
• Option price (an add-on, a size). In a surcharge group it is an amount on top of the dish price, in a replace group it is the price itself; the helper says which.
• A whole new option group — “add a hot/cold group to the pho, free, choice required”: the group, its options with prices, the selection rule and the dish attachment are created from one phrase. Sizes that change the dish price become “replaces the price”, free choices get zero surcharges.
• A new option into an existing group — “add cheese for 15 thousand to extras”.

Creating or deleting a dish or a category, deleting a group or an option, editing range prices or per-size price matrices the helper will not do — it shows the screen where that is done by hand.

Series: one phrase for many dishes

When the same thing has to happen to many dishes, the helper prepares a series — one card listing every dish. It works well to:

• translate descriptions or names — “translate the remaining descriptions into Vietnamese”. Texts already in that language are skipped on their own, so there is no need to list “the remaining” ones. This also fixes a common case after recognising a bilingual menu, where a translation of the name ended up in the description;
• write descriptions for dishes that have none — “write descriptions for all the soups”. The helper writes a short sentence from the name and the category and says nothing about allergens, vegan suitability, spiciness or where ingredients come from. It can guess the filling wrong — say, add shrimp to rolls that have none — so the card asks you to check every description;
• rework texts — “make the descriptions shorter”, “take the English words out of the names”;
• mark or hide several dishes at once — “mark all salads vegetarian”, “hide the desserts”;
• hook an existing option group onto dishes — “add these extras to all the soups”. The reverse — “take the extras off the salads” — is confirmed once more: guests lose that choice. The selection rules you set for that group on a dish come back with the undo. A group that prices its options per size only goes on dishes that carry the size group, and the helper names the ones it left out. Creating a new group is still one phrase about one dish.

A series can be limited to a category (“in the soups section”) or to dishes you name. Prices, moving dishes between categories and option groups are not changed in series: those stay separate edits with the exact number on the card.

Texts take a moment to write: the card first shows how many drafts are ready, then a “was → becomes” list appears. Check it: untick a dish that should stay as it is, tap the pencil to correct a text, and press “Apply” — the helper asks once more. You can close the panel: an unfinished series comes back when you open the helper again.

Every dish is checked before it is written. If someone changed it by hand after the draft was written, the dish is skipped and the card says how many were. “Undo all” reverts the whole series at once and also leaves alone whatever was changed after it. When a series writes text in the menu's source language, the other languages re-translate automatically, as after a single edit.

Voice: hold and speak

The microphone button works like a walkie-talkie: hold, say the phrase, release. The recording goes to speech recognition, the text to the helper, and it reads the answer out loud. In a noisy dining room this is more reliable than free dictation: you decide where the phrase ends, not a silence timer.

Recognition can mishear — numbers and Vietnamese names especially. That is why the dish and the price are always on the card in digits: check with your eyes, confirm with your finger. Voice is optional — just type the phrase instead.

The card, confirmation and undo

Every edit is a card with “was → becomes”. Until you press “Apply”, nothing in the menu changes. A card lives for 15 minutes, then goes stale — just ask again.

If the edit hides a dish or a category from guests, the helper asks once more — those are the most visible changes. Undoing a created group or option means deleting it, so that is confirmed twice as well.

After applying, the card grows an “Undo” button: one tap brings the old value back. If someone else changed the menu in the meantime, the card honestly refuses to apply and suggests asking the helper again — it will not overwrite other people's edits.

While the editor holds an unsaved dish or category draft, the card waits: save or discard what you started first.

Boundaries and limits

The helper comes with the "QR order" and "Tourist" plans — on "Menu" it does not answer and offers the upgrade instead. Within the plan it works inside your menu right: whoever cannot edit the menu by hand cannot do it through the helper either. Edits come in bursts, so the limit is generous — up to 20 requests a minute and 300 a day per person (voice transcriptions — the same). How many dishes a series takes, how long its draft lives and how many drafts a day are allowed is on the limits page. If the helper is unavailable (limit reached, no model connection), the menu editor keeps working as usual — edit by hand.