Terminals

A terminal is a device, not a person: the tablet in the aisle, the PC at bench three, the laptop somebody occasionally opens in the office. One operator can use all three in a day, and each of them is in a different place. The module needs this information to offer the correct work and to print to the correct printer.

A device can also run the module as an application of its own, without the shop administration around it: see the terminal app.

The question, asked once

The first time a warehouse screen opens on a device, the module asks What is this device?:

• This device is — what kind of work happens here;
• Standing at — the bench it stands at, if it stands at one.

The dialogue appears on the screens where work is actually carried out: a run in progress, the workstation, My work, and the operation dialogue opened from an order. It is not shown when the admin loads, and it is not shown twice.

A third field, Warehouse, states which building the device is in. It is filled in automatically whenever a bench is chosen, because a bench stands in a hall, and it is a question only for a device that stands at no bench, such as a tablet carried through the aisles.

This device is	What it means
Aisle terminal	a device carried through the shelves — picking, put-away, stocktake
Packing bench	a screen standing where orders are packed
Unpacking bench	a screen standing where goods are received
Till	a counter in a shop — selling, returns over the counter, the drawer
Not a terminal	a machine that does no warehouse work

Till replaces Standing at with Shop: a counter stands at no bench, and the sales channel it sells for decides prices, tax and order numbering. A till with no shop behind it cannot price anything. What the device then does is described under Selling at the till; what a cashier may do there is set in the till profile of that channel.

Not a warehouse terminal answers the question permanently: that browser is never asked again. Select it on a machine that will not be used for warehouse work, not on a device that will later stand at a bench.

The button

Once the question has been answered, the answer is visible: a button on the same screens shows the role and the bench — Packing bench followed by the bench name. Clicking it reopens the dialogue, which is how a tablet carried to another bench is corrected: by the person who carried it, in one click, without an administrator.

On a narrow screen the button is shortened first: the role is hidden, then the whole label, leaving the icon. The hidden text is shown in the tooltip.

Note

A device that has never been asked shows Not set up, and one that stands nowhere in particular shows No bench. Neither value is an error: a cart tablet has no bench and still performs picking.

What the answer changes

Which work is offered, and where it appears. The role narrows what My work proposes: a screen set to a bench is not offered picking waves. It narrows the offer but never blocks access; everything remains reachable from the order list and from the warehouse.

Where the printing comes out. The bench decides which printer a label or a pick list is sent to. The tablet of one operator at the bench and their desktop at the desk therefore print in two different places, and the operator alone does not identify the printer. → Default printers

Which bench the work is recorded at. Confirmations record the device and its bench as they were at the moment of the scan, so the record remains correct after the device has been moved.

Tip

Where no terminal answers, which is the case for a scheduled task, an external system or a browser that stated it is not a warehouse device, the module falls back to the floor plan and takes the bench whose Assigned users name the operator. If the plan names more than one bench, no assumption is made and the question is put to the operator.

Moving a device by scanning the bench

Benches can carry a printed label with a scan code, which reduces moving a device to one scan instead of a dialogue.

In Stockly → Warehouses → warehouse → Elements, the Floor Elements list has a Scan code column and three actions:

• Print scan label — the label for one station;
• Print station labels — the whole set, for a hall being labelled in one go;
• Assign missing codes — gives a code to every station that has none.

Scanning such a label on a warehouse screen moves that device to that bench. A code the module does not recognise leaves the device where it was, so an unreadable label does not change the bench.

The list

Stockly → Warehouses → Terminals contains every device that has ever done warehouse work:

Column	What it says
Device	the name given to it, or Unnamed device
Role	what it is for
Standing at	its bench, or No bench
Warehouse	the building it is in
Last seen	when it last did something

The row for the machine the list is being read on carries a This device badge. Twenty unnamed browsers look identical in the list, and the badge identifies the one currently in use.

Edit opens the same questions plus a Name. It is worth filling in, because a name such as Aisle tablet 1 identifies the device in the list. Forget device removes the row; the device is not switched off, it simply registers again, without a role, the next time somebody opens a warehouse screen on it.

Note

Last seen keeps the list maintainable. After a year it is the only way to distinguish three benches from twenty browsers that were opened once; removing the latter keeps the list a description of the hall.