Skip to main content

Label and locate

You will give your space some locations, print a QR label for a bin, and scan things into that bin without typing where they went. By the end, "where is it" is a scan instead of a memory exercise. This builds on the scanner you set up in Capture by scanning; a 2D scanner or a phone camera is what reads the QR labels.

Add a few locations​

Locations are where things live, and they nest. Add a handful that match your actual space: a room, a shelf inside it, a bin on the shelf. You can set a location on a record directly, but the payoff comes next, when a label carries the location for you.

Labels is a stock module that isn't on until you turn it on, so enable Labels under Configuration → Modules first. That gives you a Labels page with a print queue.

On that page, the Add labels panel below the queue has a tab per collection you can label, and the Locations tab shows your areas and bins as the same tree you already navigate. Find the bin and hit Add. Pick your paper and label size at the top (the sizes on offer are the ones that fit the paper), use the ×N buttons on the row if you want more than one copy, then Print for a browser print sheet or Send to printer to go straight to a configured printer. Stick the label on the bin.

Before a big batch

The link inside a label is baked in when you print it. For a few labels this is nothing; reprinting is cheap. Before labeling a hundred bins, read QR label URLs and pick an address that survives your setup changing.

Scan into a bin​

Now the funnel. Do this from the Scan page, which is where scanning a location label aims the session at that place. Scan a label from anywhere else in the app and Cobblr offers to jump to that record instead, which is handy but is not capture.

With location labels stuck on, working a shelf is a run of scans down the location tree:

  1. Scan a room's label. You are now working in that room.
  2. Scan the bin's label. The bin is filed into that room, and becomes where this session is aimed.
  3. Scan an item's barcode. The item is captured into your scan inbox already stamped with that bin, so you never type the location.

The scanner itself never files anything, and that is on purpose. Everything you scan waits in the inbox, which keeps capture fast enough to do a whole shelf without stopping to make decisions. The location you scanned rides along with each item until you get there.

Confirm the session​

Open the inbox and work the session you just captured. Each item already carries the bin, so confirming it is one decision (which category it belongs to) instead of two, and the record lands with its location already set. Confirm them one at a time, or file the whole session at once.

If some items came in with no place on them, the inbox says so before it files anything and lets you set one location for the batch. For a bigger pile, Putting things away covers the sorting plan and the put-away walk.

You now have​

A labeled bin, and items scanned against it and confirmed into your workspace with their location filled in. Scanning that label later also jumps you straight to the bin's record. Next, let the workspace act on its own with a wire.