The workstation

Stockly → Warehouses → Workstation is a page, not a modal, and that is deliberate: it is placed on the desktop of each packing PC, opens in kiosk mode and is never closed. Because it is never closed, there is always a live page listening to the scanner. A packer holding a printed invoice has a sheet of paper rather than a wave, and this page is the entry point for it.

The desk

The page belongs to a desk, not to a person. The bench it stands at is stored per device: three PCs in one hall each keep their own answer, regardless of who logs in, and the hall follows from the bench. The bench decides which printer the labels are sent to, so an incorrect setting prints a label at a bench two positions away. The device is asked once, on the button above the page, and the answer can be corrected there at any time. → Terminals

Where the machine has never been told, the floor plan provides the answer: the bench whose Assigned users name the operator. Where the plan names more than one bench, no assumption is made.

The scan

Scan the barcode from the invoice or delivery note, or the order number. What identifies an order is configured under Packing settings → Barcode Scanner; prefixes and suffixes that another system prints around the number are stripped according to the Packing station tab, and input shorter than the minimum length is ignored as a stray keystroke.

A recognised order is placed in a run and goes directly to the step this desk is configured for: packing (the invoice-first flow, with the goods already at the desk) or picking (scan first, walk the shelves afterwards). The run page is the same one every other entry point uses, with its article check, its sounds and its state transitions unchanged; Back to scanning returns to this page.

An order that is already in somebody else’s live run is offered, not taken over. A blocked order (cancelled or unpaid — see the shipment preconditions under Shipping settings) is refused, and the reason is stated.

When the warehouse cannot cover the order

The workstation asks the same question as the order list: pack what is covered, pack everything anyway, or put the order aside. A shop that does not track its stock in Stockly sets the Packing station tab to pack everything without asking, because in such a shop every order counts as uncovered and the question always has the same answer. The shortage is reported on the wave in either case.

Quick pick

The second way work reaches this desk: plan a wave for the warehouse of this desk and run it. This is the same action as Quick Pick on the order list, without the question about the warehouse.

My work

Located next to Quick pick, in its menu. It lists the runs assigned to the current operator and still unfinished, regardless of where they were started, and opens the selected run on this screen, in the dialogue, so that the desk remains on the same page.

This is the third way work arrives at the desk, and the one used for returning to work already started: a scan starts something new, a rule offers work automatically, and this option covers the case of work begun on the tablet in the aisle and continued at the bench. The screen that was left behind releases the work automatically, as described below.

Which device is working on it

A run belongs to a person, so the same operator on two devices is not two operators. Until the screen could distinguish between them, a desk and a tablet both behaved as though each of them were the device in use: both used the packing assistant and both wrote data.

The device that opened a free run first is the device working on it. Every other screen showing the same run states this in a bar at the top, follows the run read-only, and offers Continue here to take it over. Nothing is taken from anybody: it is the same person’s work, and the button is always available. For a few seconds after a take-over the work stays on the device it moved to, because otherwise two people pressing the button at the same moment would move it back and forth. The screen that loses the run returns to following it within a few seconds.

There is one exception, which requires no action: work opened on the device whose step it belongs to takes the lead immediately if the device currently holding it does not belong to that step. Collecting belongs to an aisle terminal, packing to a packing station, receiving to unpacking. This is what makes a wave planned at the desk and opened on the tablet a run the tablet performs from the first second rather than follows. The rule does not apply in the opposite direction, so a desk does not take collecting from an aisle terminal automatically but only through the button, and two devices with the same role fall back to the first-come rule.

A device that disappears in the middle of a run, whether through a flat battery, a closed tab or a reload, stops counting as the device working on it as soon as it stops answering. Without that, a run would remain held by a machine that cannot be found, every other screen would stay read-only behind a Continue here button nobody knows to press, and marking an item off would appear to be a function that had stopped working.

Closing a run

Closing a run discards nothing, and what happens next depends on one condition the closing screen cannot determine on its own: whether any other screen still has the same run open.

another screen has it open — the work becomes assigned to that screen immediately, without it having to detect the change itself. This is what makes it sufficient to walk away from the tablet: the desk that was left on the run takes it over;
this was the last screen — the original rule applies unchanged. A wave from which nothing has been picked returns to the queue; a wave that has already been worked on stays where it is, and the screen states this, so that a closed window is not mistaken for work handed back.

Neither who started the run nor who took it over determines this. The desk that planned a wave may well be the first to leave it, and closing a window is not a decision about somebody else’s work.

Two consequences follow from this:

the packing assistant speaks only on the device being worked from. A desk that has handed the run to a tablet does not speak, so the same bin is not announced twice;
a hand-over that a rule is about to perform is known before it happens. When an automation rule is going to open a run on another device, the screen that started it stays silent for a few seconds rather than speaking over the tablet that is being carried away. Where the hand-over does not happen, because the tablet is asleep or lying face-down on a trolley, the work stays at this desk and the guidance starts. → Work automation