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    Search by Barcode

    Technical Questions
    #1

    Hi together
    Right now, I found no possibility to search by barcode (in containers) and wondered, if this is planed as a feature in the future or not.

    We think, that this would be very nice to search also by Barcode. What do the others think about?

    Kind regards
    Daniel

    #2

    Daniel,

    could you describe more about the context of your search by barcode - write a story describing your workflow and current work arounds that the IT solution would replace.

    #3

    Some of our customers are having a name for the boxes (defined by them) and also a barcode on the boxes. They asked me, why it would not be possible to search the box (container) by the corresponding barcode and to be honest, I was surprised that it was not possible.

    I don’t know the exact workflow, but they told me sometimes to take more than one box from the freezer at the same time. After having taken aliquots out from the boxes for analysis, they have to put the boxes back into the correct freezer, shelf and rack. But unfortunately, it is not written on the box, in which freezer, shelf an rack it is placed. (This means, that the boxname contains not the whole storage location)
    So it would be nice to search by box barcode to be sure, where to place the box.

    #4

    Thanks, I can see that this could be a problem. Will be interesting to see what the OS team and other users respond.

    In general it is not good informatics practice to put identifiable information in an identifier code itselft, so a box should have a unique identifier eg. number (which could be represented by a barcode) which is linked to a descriptive name that could contain the shelf location eg Project x, Freezer 3, shelf 2, position 3. That way if the freezer were rearranged then a new label could be printed, while the box ID stays the same. If the number is represented by a printed barcode then a scanner could be used instead of manual look up.

    We are just starting our OS journey so please excuse the above comment if it is not relevant to how OS actually works.

    Peter MacIsaac (Newcastle Australia)

    #5

    Providing search by container barcode is a simple fix. We will try to accommodate it within v3.4.

    ~Sri