This functionality would be incredibly helpful for us in managing stock items with barcodes as they move through various stages of our workflows, such as updating status, changing location within the warehouse, checking items in and out, and more.
My approach would be to introduce a new type of action button that automatically activates the barcode scanner. Within this scan action, we would need to specify which field the scanner should target in the records. When a record matching the scanned barcode is found, a sequence of actions defined by the user (similar to existing action buttons) would be triggered on that specific record. These actions could include updating records, creating new records, deleting records, navigating to different pages, and more.
A specific use case for us would involve allowing customers and field service agents to configure and activate products directly through our portal. However, I can envision countless other use cases for this in stock management as well.
Interesting suggestion, and honestly I think you could very easily do this!
Add a âScan a Barcode Actionâ that creates a new record
It should create a record thatâs linked to the âProductâ (in your case), such as âActivityâ
Use an automatic link to link the activity record to the Product record (via the unique barcode field)
When one of these records is created, trigger a workflow that updates/creates new records etc (it wouldnât be able to navigate pages of course)
You could also have different buttons for different sequences, and they could be saved into the âActivityâ table, and your workflows could depend on those
This is definitely a good workaround! I might implement it. It would also be great to have visibility into the scanning history of a record.
The only downside is that the âscanning activityâ table will likely accumulate a large volume of records, and this implementation will significantly increase our workflow count.
Still, I feel like we will give this a try. Thanks @darragh !