Error message for blank item barcode (rather than system-assigned number)

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 20

Description:
Although the “barcode” field is considered mandatory when filling out the fields in the Item Information tab of the Catalog Record and Create Item screen in Circulation, if the user doesn’t enter a barcode, one fills in automatically.
We anticipate that over the next several months, we will be checking out many items that have physical barcodes but missing item records in Aleph, and we’d like to change this behavior so that staff have to scan the physical barcode from the item, rather than having a dummy value fill in automatically if they forget to do that. Has anyone found a way to turn off the auto-fill for the barcode field on that screen?

Resolution:
There are two variables which come into play here: (1) tab_checksum CSCR-Z30-BARCODE and (2) tab100 CHECK-BARCODE.

As distributed, the USM50 tab_checksum has the following lines:

CSCR-Z30-BARCODE checksum_create_z30_by_doc_no
CSCR-Z30-BARCODE-ISS checksum_create_z30_by_doc_no

(The second being for serial/ISSUE items.)

With these settings, when the item barcode is left blank the system assigns the Z30 record key as the barcode.

Or you may have:

CSCR-Z30-BARCODE checksum_create_z30_by_seq
CSCR-Z30-BARCODE-ISS checksum_create_z30_by_seq

With these settings, when the item barcode is left blank the system assigns the util g/2 "last-barcode-number" + 1 as the barcode.

If the "CSCR-Z30_BARCODE" and "CSCR-Z30-BARCODE-ISS" lines are commented out (or deleted), then tab100 CHECK-BARCODE comes into play:

(a) if CHECK-BARCODE=N, the system permits the item to be saved with a blank barcode;

(b) if CHECK-BARCODE=Y, the error "Missing Barcode" is issued when you attempt to save an item with a blank barcode.

It would seem that the latter --with the tab_checksum CSCR-Z30-BARCODE commented out-- is the setting which you want.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013