automatically select traveller to be printed at operation

[Former Member]

Hello,

I want to set up automated printing of SFC travellers in ME 6.0

Each material number has its own label template. Therefore I create one document per material number (create document in document maintenance and assign it to material in material maintenance)

The travellers shall be printed automatically on starting SFC at operation OP01.

For this scenario according to how-to-guide it seems to be necessary to attach activity SY521 to POST_START of operation OP01. Additionally the document hast to be entered as user argument for SY521.

As operation and routing are used for multiple materials the definition of all the documents as user arguments is not an option (several hundred material numbers which all have different documents --> several hundred user arguments would be necessary)

Is there another way for automating the printing feature?

Thanks for your help

Ulrike

[alexander_teslyuk · Accepted solution]

Hello Ulrike,

You may also hook SY520 activity. The difference between SY520 and SY521 activity hooks is in the way they accept a document name. The SY520 activity has the rule DOCUMENTS, which contains document names separated by a comma. The SY521 activity takes a document name from the hook’s user argument and there is can be only one document name.

Does SY520 suit your needs?

Regards,

Alex.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello,

have the documents a completly different layout or are there only parts changing? We have realized various labels for different materials by using extented scripting in the Adobe Live Cycle files based on only a few templates.

Regards

Roland Essmann

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,

I am not sure if I fully understand the difference between SY520 and SY521.

Can you please confirm/correct:

SY521 does not have activity rule to define which documents to print

SY521 retrieves the info which document to print from master data set up (document assigned to material master)

SY520 allows specification of documents to be printed via activity rule DOCUMENTS

Maybe it's simpler with a little example:

• routing with 2 sequential operation OP01 and OP02
• routing applies for material A and material B
• material A has documents LB11 and LB12 assigned in material master
• material B has documents LB21 and LB22 assigned in material master
• on starting SFC of material A at OP01 document LB11 shall be printed automatically
• on starting SFC of material A at OP02 document LB12 shall be printed automatically
• on starting SFC of material B at OP01 document LB21 shall be printed automatically
• on starting SFC of material B at OP02 document LB22 shall be printed automatically

Does this example work by just attaching SY521 to POST_START of the operations? And system than determines the correct documents to print for that SFC at these operations?

If not, would it be possible to hand over the documents that shall be printed to either one of these activities (SY520 or SY521) on rum-time?

Thanks for your help

Ulrike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello,

labels can have completely different layouts per material number, e.g. different fields to be placed, location of field and barcodes as well as size,...

Do you have any experience to what extend such differences can be handled by scripting?

Thanks for your help!

Best Regards

Ulrike

[alexander_teslyuk · Accepted solution]

Hi Ulrike,

1. SY521 does not have Activity Rule, but accepts User Argument in Hook Point.

2. You have to set User Argument in Hook Point for SY521.

3. Yes.

In Activity Rules of SY520 or in User Argument of Acivity Hook of SY521 you specify Documents can be printed. So, if you have a Material with 4 Documents attached, but in Activity Rules of SY520 3 of them listed only, only 3 documents will be printed.

You can create many copies of SY521 activity, attach them as Hook Points at different Operations with different User Arguments and print different Documents at different Operations for the same Material.

Or you list all documents in Activity Rules of SY520 and then all listed documents printed once SY520 trigered.

If any doubts, just play with different configurations and let us know what suits you best

Br, Alex.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,

thanks for the explanation. Now I understand the difference between SY520 and SY521.

Is there any limitation on the length of the activity rule DOCUMENTS of SY520?

Putting the example in a realistic scope: its not only material A and B but some hundred materials. If each of them need at least one material specific document printed at one of the operations (e.g. OP01) we're talking about some thousand characters the activity rule has to be filled with.

I also see some limitations to maintenance of this activity rule:

• user who defines which label is printed at which operation needs acces to 'activity maintenance' (which can be very harmful, if other settings than the actvity rule of SY520 are modified)
• keep track of all 100+ documents in this small field, e.g. if one document needs to be exchanged for another one

It might be better to use a 100+ copies of SY521 and attach them to the according operation.

But also from a maintenance point of view this seems quite awkward (a lot of scrolling etc.)

The copies of activities SY520 or SY521 sure work on a small scale. But for our scenario we would need this all a bit more automated.

Do you know if there are any plans to extend ME core, document maintenance in a way to also have an 'attached' tab. That way it would be very easy to define when which document is to be printed (comparable to data collection maintenance where you define for which attachment combinations the DC group applies.)

Best Regards

Ulrike

[alexander_teslyuk · Accepted solution]

Hi Ulrike,

I think it will be limited by the length of ACTIVITY_OPTION.SETTING field, which I believe is 1024 charachters.

Yes, you may consider a copy of SY520 as mentioned above.

Yet, I have not heard about such plans to extend ME core.

But I would also think about the need in a separate document for each Material. Since a document is printed by its template, why do you need so many documents? Do you really have different templates for each document?

Br, Alex.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,

it is the customers who specify how the labels are supposed to look like.

Unfortunately this results in quite some differences regarding label size, barcode content, fields displayed, icons displayed etc.

I agree that the templates used should be kept to a mimimum. However, even if one template might be used several times I am afraid this mimimum will still be quite some number

Best Regards

Ulrike