Below are some frequent questions about Barcode that where answered. These are questions that a lot of people have and so the answers should help all.
a. How many changes can be made at the barcoder level before syncing?
The design of the application is to sync fairly regularly, ie not to save thousands of changes between syncing. This tends to make data more manageable for verification and reduces the chance of losing data before it’s saved to the server. The actual limit is related to the amount of storage on the device, so the changes store the same memory space with the downloaded items in the profile. A working rule of thumb is to sync 2000 items and use it normally. In modification intensive scenarios you could reduce the amount of downloaded items to make more space for modifications.
b. How to improve the barcoder (MC55) from freezing and requiring a soft reset after 5-6 changes? Recommend a hard reset of the device, and trying another device
Try a hard reset to factory settings, and if that doesn’t fix it try to test on another device of the same model to see if it also occurs.
The application should not do that, and that device is on the certified list and we have fully tested it so the issue may be a hardware problem on that device or perhaps some other software incompatibility.
c. Recommended resources to be synced with a barcoder at one time.
2000 is usually the recommended limit, some more is usually possible but it depends on the size of the items (ie number of data classes) and the performance of the device. The MC55 has only 128 MB SDRAM/512 MB Flash which is a lower spec device.
Note – the web console can handle much larger data sizes, we have tested 80,000 items, because the desktop computers have much better capability than the handheld devices.
d. Recommended profile configurations for different types of barcode uses. Specifically permissions configurations for locked down use of the barcoders. Here is what I have been working on and/or utilizing already:
i - Stockroom profile
ii - In the field profile
iii - All in one profile
This seems like a good approach. Profiles are typically organized function and/or locations. Where the profile is filtered by both function and location you could name the profile accordingly, e.g. receiving stockroom 1, or inventory audit stockroom 1, or all stockroom 1.
Note - sometimes an All in one profile is too large for handheld devices, and can only be used in the web console.
e. Best way to utilize the barcode solution when our Barcode is not the same as our serial numbers / service tags, or our computer names. In other words we have 3 different fields to key off of: BGSU barcode, Computer name, and serial number/ service tag number. I am currently keying off mostly serial numbers or names, but the names requires manually entering in the computer name to find in the barcode solution. As of right now we only have less than 2% of our entire inventory with their barcodes assigned. This is because we do not have time right this second to scan in these all over campus. We have begun to scan in all new, gently used, and refurbished systems going forward in our stockroom.
Again, this sounds reasonable where there is a barcode or serial you can use it to automatically and absolutely identify the asset to key off, and that is the best way but requires those fields populated. With the name it generally doesn’t guarantee the same absolute identity, and hence asset scan won’t work with name, you have to search instead.
This leads you to typing in the name, however one possibility that may speed up data entry of names is the option to create a special barcode containing the name of an asset, or the prefix of common names. E.g. if computers in room 101 were all named PC101-123 you could create a barcode whose value is ‘PC101-‘ and scan that into the name field, then manually add the unique suffix.
To scan directly into a text field for name (e.g. in search) look for ‘scan mode’ on the menu and change it to ‘direct mode’ to scan. To print names as barcodes you can use common online services, such as http://barcode.tec-it.com/ or just google print barcode online.