Had a look around some other topics with similar issues but I can’t quite see what I’m looking for. We are working on Kinetic MES - web version - and have been trying to crack getting barcode scanning working for employee login.
What I am seeing is that, if I try and scan a barcode for the employee ID, it will pick it up however the login panel remains on screen and the employee cannot complete any transactions. Seems like the Kinetic MES likes it best when you enter the employee ID and hit tab (if using keyboard), or click/tap elsewhere on the login panel.
If you manually enter the employee ID and hit enter, it’ll appear to be logged in but the login panel remains on screen. This is the same behaviour as I’m seeing when I scan a barcode. The barcodes are setup to be the employee ID only.
If it wasn’t obvious already I am a bit of a novice with this so I’m guessing I’m missing something either in the barcode format / setup, or the behaviour linked to the employee ID field in MES itself - we can scan barcodes fine into other areas on MES e.g. indirect codes, resource groups etc…
We are working around this with on screen keyboard, but this isn’t an ideal solution, we are working on touch screens - so we only really want to use a physical numeric keypad for inputting production qty etc, the on screen keyboard is OK as a temporary measure but it’s far from ideal.
The cool thing about barcodes is that it is just a font. In most cases you use font Bar39 or an equivalent. Take a look at the code reference for bar 39. For example, you can enter the text $I (that’s dollar sign, capital i), if you barcode that text, it should read in as the key.
Having said that, some barcode readers have their own flavor they like to use. Many barcode scanners come with a setup sheet (or you can find one online) that includes a bunch of setup codes that you scan to configure the barcode scanner. What hardware are you working with? I would look up the codes for that model and try to use the code 39 font reference I linked above. You should be able to string together barcodes, or at least, create a sheet with distinct barcodes for or .
I would run the login process in the browser with debugging turned on and watch the log-in events. I can’t remember what the last one is… "End"something… I can’t remember. But you could create an event to trigger after that final “login” event with a simple “Slider-Close” widget. That is supposed to close the most recent slider window.
Our MES is heavily customized already, so I can’t really test this out for you easily. For me, that log-in slider closes after the ID is accepted… whether I hit tab/enter, etc. I tried to test using the “base” layer of MES and the slide still closes on its own after log-in is complete. So… I can’t reproduce the behavior you’re seeing.
But, assuming your slider is stuck open… I would try adding a slider-close widget as an after event and see if that gets rid of it for you.
@NateS
Thanks a lot for this, I will take a look and see if it’s down to the reader doing something quirky!
@dcamlin
That is a great suggestion and one I should probably have thought of - we’ve done a fair bit of customisation in our MES as well, and more to come, so we’re really keen to make sure it all flows correctly… I will take a look at the debug console and see what’s going on.
Much appreciated both, gives me something really solid to look at! Thanks a lot!
We are just picking up on this again now actually at the moment. For various reasons, our team are just manually entering the employee num currently but hope to change that imminently…
What I have tried most recently is to programme a vertical tab suffix into the barcode scanner itself, this seems to be doing the job but does need a bit more testing. I’ll report back!
I am a bit of a novice with this so I’m guessing I’m missing something either in the barcode format / setup, or the behaviour linked to the employee ID field in MES itself - we can scan barcodes fine into other areas on MES e.g. indirect codes, resource groups etc…