Welcome to this Multi-Go Data Formatting training for Zebra scanners. Today I'll be covering
what is MDF, what's required to use MDF, a list of supported scanners, and I'll be demonstrating
MDF. I'll also show you how to program MDF using 123Scan. And what's best of all is when I'm
done with the training, you have access to all this information and detailed step-by-step
instructions on how to program it. Just Google Multi-Go Data Formatting and Preferred Symbol
User Guide. MDF enables a 2D imaging scanner to scan all the barcodes within a label in
one trigger pull. So what does that really mean? You're looking at a label from an iPhone cell
phone box. I can pull the trigger once, decode every barcode in that label, output them in
the order my host needs, and even do ADF on each one of those barcodes to meet my host
requirement in one trigger pull. That's what MDF does. What's required to use MDF? Two things,
123Scan and an MDF enabled scanner. 123Scan is used to generate the MDF rules, and the
MDF programming is saved within your 123Scan configuration file. And you have two programming
options. You can scan programming barcodes or do a USB download to your scanner. And you
can use Zebra's SMS, the scanner management service, to remotely deploy MDF chain-wide.
Now it's time for a real world example. From the user guide, appendix A, page A20, example
five, we're gonna go ahead and scan that iPhone label we were looking at before. And our scanner
is at factory defaults and what you're gonna see is whatever label, whatever barcode is
in front of the scanner, that's the data that's gonna show up in Notepad and it's gonna keep
scrolling to the right because there's no ADF going on, no data manipulation. The user guide
explains how to program your scanner using 123Scan, and I'm kind of showing you the details that
are in the guide, but we're gonna fast forward to the answer. At the end of each example,
and there's five examples in the user guide, there's a programming barcode. If you scan
this barcode, it will program your scanner to perform whatever it's supposed to for the given
example. So in this example, we're gonna scan that label we saw earlier, the iPhone box,
and all the data is gonna come out in one scan. So I took my scanner and I scanned those programming
barcodes. Now I'm scanning the iPhone box label in front of you. And as you can see written
up in notepad, this is the way the data will come out. First you'll see a UPC barcode, then
an enter key, a part number and enter key, a serial number and an enter key, the IMEI data
and an enter key, and we're gonna leave out the ICC ID barcode. That won't show up at all.
And there's your data. I'm gonna hit enter. Put it down a little bit and do it again. and
that's MDF in action. One trigger pull, I output multiple barcodes, I ordered them in the way
I wanted, and I even manipulated the data. If we look at the serial number, see the S in
front of this? If you look at the data that comes out, I've stripped the S off, and I start
with the C. So I'm able to manipulate the data of a given barcode within all the barcodes
scanned. You have a lot of power with MDF. And now we've completed the basic overview of MDF.
The remaining part of the video will be a deep dive into hands-on programming using 123 Scan.
If you are looking for just the basics, it's a perfect time to exit. If you'd like to see
how to program in 123 Scan, continue viewing. In this MDF example, example four from the
user guide, I'm gonna scan two barcodes on opposite sides of a box with one trigger pull. So the
scanner's gonna stay active while I keep the trigger pulled. and we're gonna glue the data
together, put it out in the order that we need, even if we scanned it in the opposite order.
Let's say I needed figure A12 first, that's the first barcode, and then A13. I could scan
A13 first, then A12, but the scanner will reorient the data and output it the way it needs to
be output. And I'll be doing this example from 123 scan. Now, If you want, you could just
use the guide and it'll walk you through all the things. These are all screenshots from
inside 123Scan and it even has a programming example barcode at the back. But we're actually
gonna walk through this process. So I've started 123Scan. We're gonna click create a new configuration
file and I've already plugged my scanner in. So we're gonna say my scanner is connected
by USB and the scanner I've got connected is a DS3608. So I'm gonna select that scanner.
and we're gonna click modify data, program complex data, and you're gonna see a new option, MDF,
multi-code data formatting. We're gonna click that and say insert an MDF rule, and this pop-up
pops up and it explains what some of the different fields and boxes are on the screen. Example
four, there's two barcodes. The first barcode that we wanna output is a code 39, and we're
gonna call this one label A.
and it has certain criteria that are unique for MDF. So the first is, it's gonna have a
set length. It's three digits long.
it's required for the pattern match. So the pattern match, the definition is right here,
but what it really is when you scan and you're trying to create an MDF rule and it needs two
labels, is this one of the labels that you require for you to say you found a pattern match, you
found the label you were looking for? It is.
We want to output all the data.
and we want to send an enter.
So that's the first barcode on one side of the box. Now, we're gonna keep the trigger depressed
on the scanner while we do this. And that means the time between MDF codes needs to be set
for 10 seconds. The time between MDF codes allows you to set how long you can take between scanning
one barcode to the next barcode. And in this case, it's 10 seconds. Let's go ahead and add
label two in here. Insert MDF rule. Label B.
It's going to be a code 128.
It's a set length and it's four digits long. And we're gonna keep it set for required for
pattern match. You could also say it's not part of the match, which means it's ignored totally.
Or as I did in the iPhone label, you could say discard barcode. So you remember I had one
barcode that was scanned, but wasn't even output? That's because we set it this way, required
for match. So you had to have the barcode there so you knew it was the right label, but you
discarded the barcode. But in our example, we are going to be transmitting it. Now let's
program the actions for label B.
Send all the remains, so we're going to send all the data. Then we're going to send an Enter
key.
Now the way the MDF rules execute are from left to right. So rule one will always go first,
then rule two. So even if I scan label B, which is the code 128 first, and then I scan label
A, which is the code 39, I'm still gonna output it in the right order. So this has a lot of
value, and if you're scanning a bunch of barcodes with one trigger pole using MDF, but you want
it output in the right order, rule one will always output first, then two, then three,
and so on. And you can program up to nine different labels into a scanner. So all you do is create
a new MDF group and now we're into group two. So this is group two, I haven't programmed
anything there. But I'm gonna go back to group one, which is the one that you've seen. And
now we're ready to program this to the scanner.
So I have the program scanner in my right hand and in my left hand I'm holding the box just
like that picture on the screen. The box has two barcodes on it one on top one on the side.
I'm gonna pull the trigger and you'll be able to hear it. It's aimed at label B. As I rotate
it over I just scan label A. It beeped and the data was transmitted. Now I'm gonna hit enter
a couple times and go down. Now you saw me scan label B first then A. but the data was output
in the opposite order. Rule one was output first, which was label A, then rule two, label B.
Will always be that way because that's how the MDF was programmed. Now it's gonna happen much
quicker. I was trying to show you as I approached 10 seconds, you can keep the trigger pulled
for a while. Now I'm gonna wand over this much faster. I'm gonna pull the trigger on label
A and rotate it to B pretty quickly. pulling the trigger, and what you see is a very quick
beep occurs from trigger pull because I was wandering over things pretty quickly. I wandered
over label A and B so quickly the data was sent out in no time at all versus the first example
where I was holding the trigger for a while. So you can imagine if you have a larger box
and you need to get from side A to B and it's a big box, you can program more than 10 seconds
and you can get to it.
This concludes our MDF training. For more detailed training and programming examples, see the
Multicode Data Formatting and Preferred Symbol User Guide, available from Zebra Technologies.