Configuring your barcode scanners in WATS

To be able to use a barcode scanner instead of typing serial numbers, part numbers and revision is a good way to increase both efficiency and accuracy. As barcode scanners in general only sends keyboard-input, a simple barcode with only one value will work with no configuration, but you will miss out on some valuable features unless you take the time to configure this properly.

Barcode scanner configuration

The first step in configuring the scanner, is to make sure it sends a prefix before the code, and a suffix after the code. By configuring this on the scanner WATS will also be able to pick up barcode scanning when the cursor is not placed in the input field.

The prefix and suffix is usually any key combination that does not conflict with any default OS-keycodes and by default WATS is set up to look for the prefix Ctrl+Q and Suffix Ctrl+Y.

Avoid using "enter" as suffix.

Configuring the scanner in the OI configuration

Once the scanner has a valid prefix and suffix you can configure this in the OI's configuration page. Note that the OI-config is station-specific, not user, so the setup must be done on every station and can be configured differently for any station.

In the OI configuration page, click configure scanning.

This will open a pop up containing a barcode. Scan the barcode with your bar code scanner.

This will open the configuration popup, where you can see every input from the scanner as individual lines.

In this case, the scanner uses Ctrl+Q (the two first lines) as prefix and Ctrl+Y as suffix, and the code 12345 is entered in between.

From here make any changes or click save to save and exit.

Now the barcode scanner should trigger a scan anywhere in the OI, regardless of your cursors position.

For information on barcode identifiers and how to split the content of the barcode into serial number, part number, revision and batch, please see this article: https://support.virinco.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017446159-Extract-serial-number-when-scanning-with-barcode-identifiers