We've come across a couple of potential customers that are looking to track physical objects in Laserfiche through a workflow process. To do so, they require the use of a mobile barcode scanner (like the kind FedEx uses, seen here: http://goo.gl/ONF94z).
This is essentially package tracking, with Laserfiche as the back-end. So for example, they want to track a box through a five-stage processing workflow. The box is represented by a folder in Laserfiche. As people in the warehouse move the physical box through various processing stages, the corresponding folder in Laserfiche would move between queues (where a "queue" is just a parent folder in Laserfiche). The obvious benefits to tracking the box in Laserfiche is that you can store all of the box's associated files inside of a robust document management system. Plus you can send out notifications, track trends and analytics, etc.
Without a mobile barcode scanner though, Laserfiche is too difficult for the warehouse people to work with. Instead of logging into a computer, they just need to scan a barcode, and have that trigger a Laserfiche workflow to move the folder to the next queue.
Has anyone ever built (or seen) a Laserfiche system like this? Any feedback would be helpful! It's come up a couple of times now with our customers, and we'd love a way to tackle this type of use-case.
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LF + Mobile Barcode Scanner
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Jonathan,
We have a similar need and your post made me sit down to map out what this could look like. This would require the use of Forms as well as Workflow. I've give it a broad brush layout in the attached spreadsheet. It would require use of a form into which you scan barcode for the location and the item barcode. Form captures date/time of scan and is saved to LF repository.
Workflow picks up and evaluates the location number and location is one, it creates a folder in the Location 1 folder and moves the saved item form to this folder. If location is >1 then it does the item lookup in location -1 folder. Finding a match it moves the saved form to the item folder followed by the item folder move to the new location folder. Repeat until you get to location 5 when you move to a Finalized folder.
Thinking use of tablets with barcode guns attached on which the form could be accessed. Might even create a form per location to eliminate the need to do the second scan for the location barcode. Would this work for your environment?
Michelle
Hey Michelle! Thanks for the ideas. Much appreciated!
What your describing makes sense, and seems like it would work.
My concerns though are:
- How would the customer initially generate the barcodes and get those printed onto a piece of paper that will later be scanned? In other words, we'd need to purchase a solution that would generate unique barcodes at the beginning of the process (or use some sort of OSS solution), since Laserfiche does not generate barcodes.
- I'm concerned about the usability of this approach. That is, let's say the customer has five boxes that they need to move on to the next stage in the workflow. They would pick up their tablet (with the attached barcode gun), then open the Web-based form and wait for it to load, then scan the barcode into a text field, and then click submit. Next they would move on to the next box. It sounds a bit slow and clunky to me, since it would take a number of clicks to process one box (that said, I might be over-thinking this part).
- I'm wondering how you would handle exceptions, where the box was accidentally scanned and now needs to move backwards in the process (which will likely happen).
I guess my biggest concern is that there may better systems to handle this type of use-case, and it might be trying to force a round-hole into a square-peg to use Laserfiche. I'm hoping someone in this thread might be able to provide some stories about actually trying this out in a production capacity, and letting us know how it worked out.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Jonathan,
Great questions!
1. Not sure what the barcode represents in your system, but you could pursue the use of pre-printed barcode labels.
2. Could develop the form to accept multiple barcodes and output individual folders/documents to identify each barcoded item.
3. Would have to revise prior search logic to look w/in all locations for the item, then reassign the location based on read of a barcode or manual input.
We haven't done this yet, but I'm glad for the discussion and I'm also interested to see who may have tried this out already.
Michelle
I have never done this before, but I could give you a few ideas...
- If they have existing software or data capture from the barcode scanning today, then find a way to export (batch or in real time) the data and trigger the corresponding workflow activities. A web service call to initiate a workflow with some input parameters should work.
- might be processing a CSV
- a scheduled WF to query a database of what was processed during the day
- Could be QF processing a PDF of what was processed can calling the proper WF
- Build a custom app using the LF SDK or a something that makes a simple web service call to start a workflow with input parameters to pass the bar code values and anything else the WF would need.
Its an interesting problem that I have little experience with. I hope these suggestions help and spark some ideas for you!
Hey Kenny! Thanks for the ideas!
#1 wouldn't work fort us, since our customers don't currently have any barcode software.
#2 though is an interesting idea. Your post got me to thinking.. What if we built a custom Windows forms application with a very basic UI that just had a text box. A barcode gun would be attached to the machine hosting the custom application, and they would scan a box, which would insert the scanned value into the custom application's text box. The custom application would then trigger off of that event to leverage the Laserfiche Workflow API to trigger a workflow, which would in turn move the box onto the next step in the workflow. The custom application would then show a success screen and then return to the state where it is ready to accept the next barcode That approach seems a little faster and more user-friendly than using forms for barcode ingestion.
Of course, we'd still have to invest in barcode scanners, and we'd only have to find a way to generate unique barcodes at the beginning of the process (since the customer doesn't currently have any such solution available). But, it's an interesting idea.
I'm going to think more about this. I'll let you know if I come up with anything.