We are looking at replacing our Loftware software and are looking for recommendations.
Take a look at this. We implemented it at my last company, worked out pretty well.
Man, I remember Loftware, this is much simpler IMO
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Jeff,
Are you using this with Gov Cloud?
We were on-prem when we implemented this
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Has anyone in Gov Cloud done an implementation recently? Trying to get a feel for how difficult this is going to be.
Hey Dylan,
I agree with what Jeff posted above that Bartender is likely to be your best bet. We’re still in the implementation stage and have started to get things moving to get Bartender integrated and configured with our DB the past few weeks. I’ll caveat that with we are pub cloud rather than Gov cloud, but I can’t imagine the integration is very different between the two.
The setup is tricky at first because you guys’ll have to figure out where you want your trigger points to be for the label printing job to be executed. This is probably where we’ve spent the most time because our current/soon to be previous ERP uses Loftware as well. We’ve basically built the Bartender profile from the ground up as a result because with Loftware we just got it to a point where it was functional and left it at that for a long time.
You’ll likely need to work with Bartender consultants pretty closely the first few weeks of planning because there will be a lot of customizations within your environment to set up the trigger points and build out the logic. If you guys can do some of this in house it’d likely save a lot of time in the whole process.
It’s been messy for us at times, but we’re starting to get on track. The automation of the label print process that Bartender offers can really help down the road and we’re starting to see the benefits it could offer, and it’s MUCH easier to use than Loftware, that’s for sure haha.
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Out of curiosity how is your bartender implementation done?
Does it use ODBC, Rest, or file detection?
Do you have a recommendation for a consultant?
We used REST to initiate print requests. Here are their API docs:
https://support.seagullscientific.com/hc/en-us/sections/8100511687447-Rest-APIs
The trickiest part was their auth methods. You can use basic, but you have to rotate the pw every 30 days. They also offer authentication via auth0, which is the route we took to avoid having to reset the service account password every 30 days.
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I’m pretty sure with cloud implementations that currently FTP is the standard. You put in a request with support and they’ll set up the FTP site and provide the user/pass details. They’ll also provide a UNC path to set up report styles as well.
After that’s all done they’ll want a Net/Web drive set up to house the FTP site and for all the Bartender file drops.
The consultant I’ve worked the most with is Brad Childerhose. He’s done a great job at explaining the whole process and is very knowledgeable on the logic development and mapping trigger points effectively!
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A couple of years ago, I was bitch…, er, complaining on their community site about the lack of support for token authentication for on-prem users. Their cloud API does indeed support modern authentication but on-prem only supports the weaker legacy methods. They said at the time that there is no roadmap for it. Seems like a play for the cloud product.
I couldn’t find any references to auth0 for on-prem. Do you have a direct link for that?
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@Rick_Bird I take it you have had a less than ideal experience with BarTender? @Mark_Wonsil I think Auth0 authentication is only available on their cloud offering
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Indeed, to me it seems like just another layer.
Other than PCID I’ve been able to just modify and use the SSRS Forms.
Is this an issue to work with Loftware? We are looking to implement PCID label and we have Loftware.
Loftware has some of it’s products going end of life, you may what to check out what you have.
We have cloud version. So version it’s the only possible issue?