- What is a Personal Menu?
- Opening a Personal Menu
- About the Personal Menu Screen
- Display Options
- Expand/Collapse Meal Period Sections
- Viewing How a Final Serving is Calculated
- Viewing Personal Menu Customization Grid
- Printing a Personal Menu
- Copying Customizations of Past Diet Orders to Current Diet Order
What is a Personal Menu?
The system automatically generates a personal menu for each person in the system based on the person’s service type, diet order, any diet restrictions set against the diet type, their allergens, and their personal menu customizations. A personal menu adjusts its offerings in real-time based on the item selection logic applied by the system.
Opening a Personal Menu
From the People listing screen, the personal menu for a person can be accessed by right-clicking the cogwheel in the Actions column and selecting Go to Personal Menu.
Another means to open the personal menu is by opening the person's profile and clicking the Personal Menu link at the top left of the panel.
About the Personal Menu Screen
The personal menu screen uses a week-at-a-glance (WaaG) view, which displays the menu items being served each day of the week for each meal period.
Scheduled Menus Used as Base for Personal Menu
A personal menu uses as its base the scheduled menus in a menu service location (MSL). A person is associated with the MSL via their assigned dining area (including a residence area enabled as a dining area for in-room service). A menu service location can be thought of as the “connecting piece”: the menu is assigned to the menu service location and the dining area is assigned to the menu service location.
If the diet order of the person is different than the regular diet type/regular texture type, then the items in the personal menu are taken from the extensions of the items in the base menus.
Navigating
The personal menu opens to the current week of the scheduled menu’s cycle, as indicated at the top left of the personal menu screen. You can navigate to the different weeks in the menu cycle by clicking Prev Week or Next Week respectively.
Special Event Menu
If there is special event menu scheduled, then the menu items from the special event menu will be used for the scheduled day. An orange calendar icon appears on the date header for the date the special event menu is scheduled, as per screenshot below.
Display Options
The display options are available from the monitor icon at the top right to allow you to select what is displayed on the personal menu views throughout your MealSuite account (i.e., you change the display options via a person’s personal menu view, and those changes apply to all personal menu views for the persons in your MealSuite account).
Include Also Available
If an Also Available (AA) menu is scheduled at the same time and at same menu service location, then its items appear at the bottom of each meal period in the personal menu.
Include Snack
- The person's assigned residence area is enabled as a dining area (by default all resident areas are enabled as a dining area to allow for in-room delivery).
- A snack menu is scheduled at the same menu service location (MSL) of the residence area set up as a dining area.
If selecting Include Snack, then its items appear in the personal menu in the separate Snack AM, Snack PM, and Snack HS sections (screenshot below):
Show Portion Size
Displays the portion size beside each item.
Show Excluded Items (i.e., Do Not Serve Items)
Select this option if you want to see excluded items (i.e., do not serve items). Excluded items are displayed with a strikethrough and are due to the person’s diet order settings, allergens, manually marking an item as do not serve, or if they have the advanced ordering service type and chose to skip a meal.
Display By
Display the menu items by their display name (i.e., user-friendly name) or lookup name (i.e., system name).
Sort By
Groups items in a meal period by their assigned menu category or their assigned choice. Grouping by choice offers a cleaner view, and many long-term care homes use this view.
Select Menu Category
For each meal period, you can select what items to display according to menu categories the items are assigned to on the base menu.
Note: If a new menu category had been created for your account, then that new menu category is not automatically selected to display in the personal menu view. You will need to select the new menu category from its respective meal period(s) in order for it to display on the personal menu view with any of its assigned items.
How Choices are Listed when Sorting by Menu Category
When sorting by menu category (via Display Options), the choices are listed as follows:
- If the service type is table select or advanced ordering, and a menu category has multiple items of different choices, then the choices are listed in order. Note that a choice 2 item presents with a red highlight. The items in a menu category will adjust accordingly based on diet restrictions set against the person’s assigned diet type, their allergens, and personal menu customizations.
- If the service type is non-select, then the system shows all items in a menu category if they can be served. The items offered are the result of validation logic the system performs based on the person’s diet type, any diet restrictions set against the diet type, their allergens, their personal menu customizations, and other calculations. To understand how the system chooses the item to be served, see Item Selection Logic for Non-Select Service Type.
Apply or Apply & Save?
The Apply button applies your settings, but does not keep the settings the next time you visit the personal menu.
The Apply & Save button will apply your settings and keep the settings the next time you visit the personal menu for any resident or patient profile. Note: At this time, the Apply & Save function is applying and keeping the settings across all login IDs who access the MealSuite account, meaning your changes are not specific to your login ID, but also any of your colleagues who also access the account with their separate login IDs.
Expand/Collapse Meal Period Sections
You can expand/collapse a meal period section by clicking its down arrow on the right of the meal period header.
Viewing How a Final Serving is Calculated
For each meal period on a person’s personal menu, you can view the calculation sequence the system performs to reach the final servings to be offered.
By clicking the Show Calculations link for the meal period, a separate browser tab opens displaying the sequence of calculations. The first box at the top left shows items from the base menu before any calculations are applied, and the last box shows the final items after all the calculations have been applied. Each box in between shows a specific calculation involving either a diet type restriction, allergen or personal menu customization.
Viewing Personal Menu Customization Grid
The personal menu customization grid allows you to view the customizations on a person’s personal menu in a list format. The settings tool at the top right of the personal menu screen (first screenshot below) opens the customization grid in a slide-out panel (second screenshot below).
- The following filters are available to narrow down what you want shown on the customization grid:
- Customization - select the specific customizations to display.
- Days - select the specific days to view any customizations for them.
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Meals - select the specific meal periods/snack times to view any customizations for them.
- The Add New button at top right allows you to add specific customizations; refer to the articles on the left for instructions on customizations that can be added via the Add New button.
Customizations Added from a Diet Intervention
Customizations can be added as the result of a diet intervention assigned to the person. If a customization is the result of an intervention, then hovering your cursor over the customization icon states “[From Intervention: [Intervention name]”.
Diet Order Field
- The Diet Order field contains every diet order (i.e., diet type and texture type combination) the person is currently assigned or has been assigned in the past.
- The blue user icon indicates the diet order is the person’s currently assigned diet order. When customizing the personal menu for a person, you can only apply those customizations to the person’s currently assigned diet order.
- If the person is assigned multiple diet types, their primary diet type presents with the blue user icon. The person’s other assigned diet types (combined with the currently assigned texture type or types) can still be selected from the Diet Order field for view-only purposes; they do not present with the blue user icon and therefore personal customizations cannot be added to them.
- If the person is assigned different texture types for meal periods and snack times, then those texture types are part of a person’s currently assigned diet order, and as such each display the blue user icon (combined with the primary diet type), as per screenshot below. Therefore personal customizations can be added to them.
- If the person is assigned different texture types for meal periods and snack times, then you can view what meal periods and snack times a currently selected texture type is assigned to by hovering your cursor over the info icon to the right of the Diet Order field.
- There is the ability to copy the customizations of past diet orders to a person’s currently assigned diet order. See Copying Customization to Other Diet Orders for more information and instructions.
Printing a Personal Menu
With the personal menu of a resident open, click the Print button at top right corner, which navigates you to People Reports screen, where that single resident is automatically selected for you to print their personal menu report.
The report that can print the resident's personal menu depends on the resident's service type:
- For a resident with the table select service type, print their personal menu via the Person-Specific Select Menu report. When you run the Person-Specific Select Menu report, ensure that all menu categories are selected.
- For a resident with the advance ordering service type, print their personal menu via the Person-Specific Select Menu Report or the Tray Menu Tickets Report. If running the Person-Specific Select Menu report, ensure that all menu categories are selected.
- For a resident with the non-select service type, print their personal menu via Tray Menu Tickets Report.
Copying Customizations of Past Diet Orders to Current Diet Order
The system remembers a person’s past diet orders and any personal menu customizations applied to them. This allows you to copy customizations of the past diet orders to a person’s currently assigned diet order. To do so, complete the following steps:
- Open the person’s personal menu.
- Click the settings tool at the top right of personal menu screen (first screenshot below). The personal menu customization grid opens in a slide-out panel (second screenshot below).
- From the Diet Order field, select the past diet order (diet type and texture type combination) whose personal menu customizations you want to copy to the current diet order. Note that a past diet order does not present with the blue user icon. (For more on what diet orders are displayed in the Diet Order field, see Viewing Customization Grid > Diet Order Field above).
- Click the Copy to Current Diet Order button.
- If the current diet order does not contain different texture types, a success message appears stating that the customizations were successfully copied to the diet order.
- If the current diet order contains different texture types for meal periods/snack times, a confirmation pop-up appears that lists the diet type/texture type combinations and their associated meal periods/snack times for you to select if the personal menu customizations are to be carried over to them. Make your selections as needed and then click the Yes, Copy to Current Diet Order button. A success message then appears stating that the customizations were successfully copied to the diet order.
- If the current diet order does not contain different texture types, a success message appears stating that the customizations were successfully copied to the diet order.