Work, handing over and no connection

My work

My work in the menu lists the waves this person has open, wherever they left them: on a bench, on another handheld, in the administration. Each row states what state the run is in and when it was last worked on. The time is what a run left before a break is recognised by. Newest first.

Tapping a row opens it. Pulling a row left hands the wave back.

Handing a wave back

hand back removes the owner from the wave. Everything collected so far remains on it. It is the second response available when a run cannot be finished; before it existed, the only way out was to cancel the wave, which breaks it apart and discards a walk that was half completed.

No confirmation is requested, because nothing is taken away: the wave appears on Work to take the moment it is released, and whoever released it can take it back immediately.

Work to take

Work to take lists waves nobody holds. Pulling a row right, or tapping it, takes the wave and opens it.

A wave that somebody else is holding is not on this list and cannot be: releasing it is a decision made by the person holding it, on their own screen. If somebody reaches a wave first, the app displays That work could not be taken — somebody may have reached it first. and refreshes the list instead of opening work that belongs to another operator.

The list is filtered by the purpose of the device, so a packing bench is informed that nothing is waiting instead of being offered work in the aisle.

When a wave belongs to somebody else

Two different sentences, because they lead to two different actions:

• This wave is not yours yet. Pull right to take it. — the wave has no owner. The banner itself takes it.
• This wave belongs to somebody else. It can be taken once they hand it back. — no gesture and no button are available; there is nothing to press here.

In both cases the screen is read-only: rows do not move, the buttons that change the state of the wave are not displayed, and the packing controls are dimmed.

Two screens, one wave

The same person can have the work open in two places, such as a desk and a tablet. Only one of them leads: the other follows in read-only mode and states where the work is, with Continue here to take the lead back. Opening a wave never removes it from a device that somebody is standing at; that button is the only way to take over from a device that currently holds the work.

If the lead moves while work is in progress, the app states it once: This work is now being led somewhere else. Your scans will not be taken. A screen that stopped accepting scans without a message would be indistinguishable from a broken scanner.

Pausing, cancelling, finishing

The buttons in the footer are whatever the shop currently allows for this wave and this person:

• Pause — the wave stops accepting work and displays This wave is paused. on every screen on which it is open. Resume is the way back and remains available while it is paused.
• Cancel wave — breaks it apart; its orders return to the planner.
• Finish run — only while packing. A wave ends when its last box has been dealt with, so the button is not offered in the aisle.

The print queue

Print queue in the menu lists what has been sent to a printer, newest first. A row is read from the top down: the printer, when it was asked for and in what format, the order number if the job belongs to one, and its status. A failed job also states the reason. Scrolling to the bottom fetches the next page rather than the whole table.

Both acts are gestures on the row, the same two directions as the work lists:

• pull right — Print it again, for a label that jammed, a slip that was printed blank or a printer that was briefly offline.
• pull left — cancel, for a job that will not be produced. It applies to a failed job as well: cancelling is how a job that will never print ceases to count as work waiting at the station.

A direction with no action available does not respond. A job that is in the printer at that moment cannot be sent again, because the request would compete with the station holding it and the same label would be produced twice. A job that is already on paper cannot be cancelled, because it has already been produced. Everything else may be printed a second time: this is an ordinary request, which is why the two gestures are not the reverse of each other. While the shop is answering, the row displays the waiting indicator and the rest of the list remains usable.

No connection

The app continues to work. What was taken from a shelf is held on the device and goes out by itself once there is a connection again.

• The bar says Offline and, beside it, how many scans are waiting.
• Tapping it opens Waiting to be reported: Taken from the shelf, not yet accepted by the shop. It goes out by itself once there is a connection.
• With nothing waiting: Nothing is waiting. Everything taken has been accepted.

Two details govern this state:

• Online means that the shop answered, not that the radio is on. A device on a warehouse access point with a dead uplink reports offline, because that is the state that matters.
• Nothing is lost by closing the app. What is waiting is written on the device before the request leaves and remains there until the shop accepts it. A scan whose answer never came back is still held, and a repeat cannot count a piece twice.

What the app does not do offline is answer questions that require the shop: taking a new wave, opening the pictures for an article it has not loaded, or moving orders on.

When somebody else changed the same line

Somebody changed this line at the same time — the count from the shop is shown. Nothing is lost: the row is replaced with what the shop confirmed, and the message is shown once per batch of records rather than once per row.