E-WorkBook Label Printing

The E-WorkBook platform is designed for enterprise deployment.

Researchers expect that data can be transferred between systems, to reduce the overhead of transcription and to ensure consistency and quality. With E-WorkBook Integrations, IDBS provides frameworks to seamlessly connect the data management platform with your research systems, leveraging feature-rich APIs and extension points to facilitate integration to instruments and third-party data systems.

Barcodes are widely used in scientific environments to label and track samples. The Label Printing integration component is integrated with E-WorkBook Advance and E-WorkBook Inventory using BarTender™ technology, allowing end users to easily create labels from within the applications.

How is the tool used in practice?

In E-WorkBook Advance, templates can be configured to amalgamate the relevant data fields that will be included on the label. Key information such as a sample ID can be converted into a 1D/2D barcode using a font provided by BarTender™. The administrator can configure the layout of the label using a BarTender™ design tool. From the spreadsheet action panel, the user can trigger the label printing event.

In E-WorkBook Inventory, example BarTender™ label templates are pre-configured for use with data from Inventory properties, which can also be edited within BarTender Designer™. Clicking on the print icon sends the data to the BarTender™ for printing.

How does it work?

In E-WorkBook Advance, administrators can configure printing templates which specify the data fields that are required from the spreadsheet content. In E-WorkBook Inventory, users can choose to print labels from dedicated options throughout the application.

The data from either the spreadsheet or Inventory record is used to create a message sent to a queue within E-WorkBook, this is then consumed by an agent co-located with the BarTender™ application on the customer network. The information in the message is used to specify the number of copies, printer location and the design template to be applied (to format the fields on the label) as well as populate the label with data.

To facilitate usage, lists of BarTender™ printers and templates can be configured in the centralized E-WorkBook catalog for easy availability for selection from within E-WorkBook.

How is it deployed?

E-WorkBook Label Printing is built around Seagull Scientific’s BarTender™ technology. It uses a BarTender™ ‘agent’ deployed on the customer network which retrieves print requests from E-WorkBook and passes them to BarTender™ to be printed. The following steps outline the process of printing a label using E-WorkBook:

1. A print request is triggered from either the E-WorkBook Spreadsheet Web Editor or Inventory for E-WorkBook.
2. The print request is passed to a message queue in E-WorkBook.
3. The BarTender™ agent retrieves the request from the message queue and passes it to BarTender™, via the BarTender™ SDK.
4. The BarTender™ software prints the labels.

What services/software does IDBS provide?

IDBS Professional Services team can deploy the BarTender™ agent, configure and test the integration.

What does the Customer need to provide?

• BarTender™ 2016 Automation or Enterprise Automation, or BarTender™ 2019 Automation or Enterprise Edition (64-bit version only).
• Availability of the system administrators to install and manage the Bartender software and agent

The BarTender™ logo is a copyright of Seagull Scientific Inc.