Question

Reprint labels and price tickets

  • 10 March 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 32 views

Hi all, has anyone figured out how to allow users in MES to reprint price tickets, shipping labels, etc?

we know we can do this from Bartender but its not very convenient or timely to find someone to log into bartender and reprint from there.


3 replies

Hi Diann,

The fundamental issue is preserving all the data of a reprint without re-querying the database, which in many instances if always marching on.  I’m not aware of a specific built in feature that facilitates this.

Alternatives, as you’ve pointed out are Bartender and its Reprint Console.  That’s possible because of its separate label focused database.  I do know that Epicor ECM (Docstar) does have the ability to catalog documents and freeze them in time and other data aspects so if you have that, perhaps it could be integrated with MES. 

Perhaps a bootleg approach would be to create a BPM that either captures the data that goes into each label and write that to a UD table with appropriate keys to uniquely find the record you want to reprint and re-render the reprint labels from that, or a BPM solution that perhaps saves out PDFs of the labels at print time and saving those out to a directory system that can be sought by the staff.  The issue with MES is that it is limited by design.  I think it can launch a tracker so maybe that is how you would get to the actual record or PDF to be reprinted.  If you can allow users to launch the full client, then you could create a simple app to do that lookup of the key fields for the label record and find either the data to reprint or call up the correct pdf to then send that to the label printer.  A third option, which is what Bartender actually stores, I think, is to save out the label data that is sent to the printer itself as the UD table content, along with the needed key fields… that would allow you to perhaps just send that payload label data to the printer. Sorry this isn’t THE solution, but perhaps some ideas that might generate your own ideas on an approach.  A developer should be able to provide you some specifics and the details of the solution you decide on.

wow, thanks Henry! Great thoughts!  I will noodle that around with some teammates. 

Userlevel 2

Diann,

I agree with Henry, although he has taken the reprint process further into Bartender than we have.  I found difficult (with my IT skills) to manage the printed files in the BT directory - trying to find the user, printer, part number, lot, etc.

My solution was to duplicate the BT template adding a “T” just the letter I choose.

Then I created a simple Excel file with the fields we need to print and remap the new template to the excel file.  After updating the excel file, one can open BT, select the template and reprint, allowing the user to select the printer, # of labels, etc.  

I will say that the number of reprints today vs. when we started has reduced significantly.  

cch

 

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