Hi this is Travis from POSguys.com. We got an ask the POSguys question about attendance
tracking. So generally when you’re doing attendance tracking, you’re going to have
something like this. You’re going to have a set of labels or cards or tags and it’s
going to have some kind of number on it and then a name. So in this case in this sample
we have ‘1234’ and that correlates to 'first name’. So all that is is a number,
when you scan the barcode you just have a number. So generally people like to look up
information when they scan a barcode. Normally you tie it to a database. Here I have Access
and I’ve set up a very simple database. We have a users table and in the users table
we have a scan ID which is the '1234' over there, it has the first name, last name, phone,
address, city, other data. And then I have a scans table. So in the scans table is the
scan ID and then a time stamp. Basically you scan into this table, record all you scans,
and it cross-references the users table and it gets the information on it. Then you either
create a form that'll look something like this where you're scan ID goes in to here
and then it'll look up the people's information over here, or you can create a web form or
an app. But in any case, you have a database that relates the number that you're trying
to scan in into the information that you're trying to look up. So that's normally how
barcodes work. One alternative to doing a database lookup if you're resources are limited
is to use the power of a 2D barcode. So in this example I've taken a 2D barcode and I've
expanded upon the numbers, so instead of including just a number, I've actually embedded a name
of the person that's scanning. So if you take a look at this barcode, basically we're seeing
'first', 'last', '123', and then a number so I can change this instead to be '1234'
and then it would match. The data on this barcode now is 'first' 'last' '123 Street'
and then the number. Between each one of these fields I've put in a comma. The comma is the
important part, because what we're going to do here is we're actually going to scan into
just plain old notepad. I have basically notepad here, and we're going to scan and we're going
to create what's called a CSV or 'comma separated value' document. I'll take my 2D barcode scanner
and I'll scan. If you have multiple barcodes each time the barcode comes in you get a scan.
And then you have first name, last name, street, and then there's the code that we're looking
for. You then save this document as a CSV. I'll go to 'Save', go to my Desktop and I'll
save it as scans2.csv. You can then open up Excel, and then I'll go to 'Open' and then I will go to my Desktop
and find scans2.csv and I'll open it up. And then because you used a comma to divide each
one of the cells, there's the information. You've captured the information that you wanted
to see on the screen, you've captured the number, but you didn't tie it into a database,
you just scanned it into a plain text field, saved it in the correct format, and now you're
able to open it in Excel and take a look at who came in and who didn't. Also, while you're
in the middle of doing your scanning you can see in notepad or textpad the information
that is in that barcode. There's basically two alternatives to looking up database information,
either: 1) Using database like Access or a website, or 2) encoding the information into
a 2D barcode. The first way, using Access, you only need a 1D barcode scanner, so a less
expensive scanner. Using a 2D barcode you'll need a more expensive 2D scanner, and if you
get a 2D scanner that has some advanced data formatting, that can parse a drivers license,
you can get a little fancier and you can skip the notepad step, and you can scan straight
into Excel, and you just program a rule that every time it picks up a piece of information
it sends a tab between the information. Those are some alternatives and a good way to do
attendance tracking. For more information on 2D barcodes and barcode scanners, please
visit us at POSguys.com. Thanks!