Dynamic Csv Data Source Updates For .btw Files?

Legacy Poster

• February 15, 2016 18:50

I would like to use BarTender's Web print portal services, and have a trial of BT 2016 for Automation that I'm testing. However, I cannot seem to find a solution for the workflow I desire. I have a bunch of data in a CSV, such as the following (first line is titles):

 

database.csv:

"Device Name", "Department", "Team"

"Epson 2650", "Culinary", "A"

"Dell 1234", "Shipping", "B"

"Epson 2345", "Receiving","B"

"Epson 1010", "Shipping", "C"

...etc.

 

My labeling goal is to have a list or grid of the device label previews presented to end users, who just search for and select the one they want, choose a quantity and potentially a printer device, and then submit the print job. To do this, I have a .btw label template file that I have created which uses the CSV file as a database source; however, this only shows a single label in the Print Portal since there is only one .btw file being served.

 

To split this up, I can use Integration Builder or another workflow/scripting routine to parse out the CSV into separate ones on a per-record basis, so we have a series of files such as the following:

 

epson2650.csv:

"Device Name", "Department", "Team"

"Epson 2650", "Culinary", "A"

 

dell1234.csv

"Device Name", "Department", "Team"

"Dell 1234", "Shipping", "B"

 

epson2345.csv

"Device Name", "Department", "Team"

"Epson 2345", "Receiving","B"

 

...etc.

 

My effort has been to duplicate my .btw file template and then have each access the separate .csv files as data sources, so for instance "dell1234.btw" would access its data from "dell1234.cvs". With this approach I could have all the .btw files and their corresponding .csv files in the same directory, host it and filter it to only show .btw files, and be off to the races. However, I cannot seem to find any way to duplicate a .btw file and update its data source name accordingly. It seems the only way to do this is to create subfolders for each device, in which we would have a single .btw file and its .csv with a generic name such as "data.cvs" so the .btw would pick it up when opened. However, this results in a list of folders and no label previews to choose from.

 

If the BarTender Print portal could do a search along the hosted folder tree and then reveal a flat list of results, then that would be one solution, but this does not appear to be possible.

 

Are there any known approaches or creative workarounds that can do this? I believe I would need to either find a way to update the .btw's data source dynamically, or find a way for the BarTender print portal to flatten a tree of folders and display all contained .btw files on a single page.

 

If another data storage solution would allow this, I can update my workflow to include it, but so far have just looked at using .csv files as they are easier for my team to implement and use with Integration Builder to create a dropbox submission folder for generating labels.

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  Ian Cummings

  Moderator

  ★ BarTender Hero ★

  • February 27, 2016 10:14

  The problem here is that Print Portal and Print Station use the document and then printer selection as the start point before you then get to product selection.  There is no way around that right now short of creating your own .NET application to manage the user interaction in exactly the way you want and then control a BarTender process to print the labels.  Does not the eventual use of the record picker in the data entry form for record selection not give sufficiently close enough behaviour? 

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