Help Needed Für General Db Setup (New To Bartender)
Hello everyone,
I'm hoping to find some help and inspiration here :)
If this is not the right forum the friendly admin might please move this post accordingly. Thanks.
Please let me introduce shortly the current situation, and then my questions will follow below.
Thanks already for your support!
We are currently using a different Label software than Bartender.
We have quite a lot of different label designs with diffent values (mostly Names, MFD, EXPD, Serial Numbers (counters) with different Präfixes, Batch Numbers, some come with Data Matrix Codes (some of them GS1), Logo, Lines, Rectangles and such things).
We use a tiny bit of "database"(excel lists).
We also have some "standard" layout labels with an entry form.
Printing the labels is a manual job: opening up the label, entering the data, printing a number of 1-100 as needed. We have maybe 5-7 printing places with 10-15 printers, not everyone prints the same stuff.
The label files a stored in the company network (windows based).
I think a lot of you might recognise this situation.
I am now thinking of changing over to Bartender.
What I would love is to have all my different fields (like "Name" oder "SN" or "S/N" - yes, we have different designs for the same field on different labels :( ) in one database.
Then I would also like to somehow have the information about the layout for a certain label somehow stored (Database too?).
I would then like to have a prompt in Bartender asking the label ID, and then load up the layout with the fixed values for that label, and give me a prompt or form to enter things like start-serial number (with counter), manufacturing date etc.
Then how many of them, and off to the printer.
Is that a possible way? Or does "storing different layouts" means for me to just create the label in Bartender and insert fixed values and objects with database sources?
Is the whole prompting thing realistic?
Or - how would you tackle the problem we have (many labels with many layouts) in a freh and new setup??? I am open for suggestions!
Looking forward to your responses,
Cheers
Steph
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I think you should watch a few of the help videos on Seagulls website ..
http://www.seagullscientific.com/label-software/barcode-label-software-training-videos.aspx
You should also look into the companion application called Librarian. This application stores label designs in a SQL database and tracks versions. You can also set up security on who can do what to a label. Form my understanding of what you have written above, It sounds like you want to have one label document lets call it Name, and within Name you want to have many different layouts (called templates in a bartender document). This is standard functionality in BarTender design. You can set which template to be printed based on some database field value.
Hope this helps
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Hi,
I do not really know what I want because I do not know what Bartender can do.
Librarian sounds interesting though.
About your suggestion - not sure, you might have gotten a wrong impression...
What we have here is a ton of different labels that are printed: different sizes (length and width), different materials (textile, paper, laminate..) with also a ton of different layouts (of the contents that are on the label as well as different names/praefixes for the content, for example "SN: 12345" and "S/N: 12345")
That makes it quite difficult for me to decide what would be the best approach to organize all this. Despite our efforts to standardize some layouts we will still have to stick with a uge amount of unique labels, each with their own ID/drawing number.
What I want is a concept that makes sense and then see if we can realize this concept with our label software or with bartender.
Hope that clarifies the situation a bit more.
Cheers,
Steph
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First off it's difficult for me to visualise what you're after based on the description so I'm stabbing in the dark with the below response.
You should take a look at the Print Station companion application as it presents BarTender documents to print operators for selection, data entry (if prompting has been enabled in the document), and print to a printer of their choice. Documents are presented with thumbnail image, alongside a text description, and are searchable by the user. See the following white paper: http://www.seagullscientific.com/label-software/whitepapers/print-station-201406.pdf
Librarian is the document version and control system which stores document resources in an SQL Server database repository. This might be useful to your needs but not necessarily so: http://www.seagullscientific.com/label-software/whitepapers/librarian.pdf
Slickson drew your attention to the "Template" feature of BarTender documents which I think you might wish to explore. Basically it allows for many label designs, of the same label dimensions, to be contained within a single BarTender document. Conditionality can be set over these templates so that depending on business data, or data entry selections, only one of the template designs actually prints at print time. This allows you to cut down the number of document files when the label design that you wish to print is highly related in some fashion to many variations of the same thing.
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Here is a screen shot of the templates feature that I hope illustrates the point we're making.
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Hi Ian,
thanks for your reply.
I think I have to take a deeper look into the things I can do with Bartender and its other programs.
Also I think that maybe I am using the wrong terms for some things so understanding me is difficult for you all? OR I have to match the Bartender nomenclature with my one...
Would it help if I quickly draw some example Labels with a few descriptive comments?
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I just draw a quick example, hope it helps.
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I think the info given thus far addresses much of your requirements. Take a look into it and let us know how you get on.
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Do you have the same label layout but with different variable data within the label? So each variation is it's own label?
This is crazy!
BarTender, and I would imagine any label software would allow you to create a template that has placeholders for the variable data and tie those variable data fields to a database that stores the data. At print time the user will be asked for some key field that will allow the label to get the right label data.
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Crazy it is! Well, at least a bit.
- Each product we have has its own label that is created from a technical drawing which defines the layout and the content of that label.
- Depending on the product and the customer requirements - and the developers mood that day -, two labels can have a more or less identical layout, but the variables may be named differently ("SN" vs. "S/N" for serial number).
Or they have the same variables but a different layout (first "name" the "SN" and reverse).
So what we have now is one label file / template file for each drawing we have. The file usually has the same name as the drawing number.
Upon printing, the user opens the file he wants to print by searching for the drawing number stated in the work paper, then - if needed - enters a serial number and/or manufacturing date or so, and prints the needed number of labels.
In the past 2 years we have started to stick to standard layouts when creating new drawings and labels:
for example we defined a label "standard 20x75", which has an entry form for most of the variables.
But this is quite prone to mistakes when entering a lot of variables.
And this is not always possible, and we still have all the old labels, and still its all stored as single files in a folder.
So for one I want a proper database for all the variables (but I am unsure of how to set it up smartly) and my dream is to have the possibility to print labels just by entering the needed drawing number, the layout (or template) is loaded (from a db?), needed variables are entered and the amount - or read by scanning my work papers??? - and done.
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Sorry, forgot to answer that one
BarTender, and I would imagine any label software would allow you to create a template that has placeholders for the variable data and tie those variable data fields to a database that stores the data. At print time the user will be asked for some key field that will allow the label to get the right label data.But then I still would need to create a template for each different layout AND have to link each drawing number with the corresponding layout?
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