Asset Tracking

Text, CVS, Excel, Plugin

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Overview

The text file interface provides a mechanism for the ATT software to communicate with an Asset Register that supports data export to and data import facilities as illustrated in the diagram.

The text file interface is most commonly used to interface the ATT software with Microsoft Excel or a third party management software package that supports data exports to text files and data imports from text files.

Diagram

The diagram below displays the components involved in the communication between a generic text host and the ATT software.

Text Interface Diagram

Text File Interface Configuration

The text file interface is configured using two different files, the “attconf” file, and the “flexmessconfig” file.

File Format

The table below describes the “toscanner.txt” and “fromscanner.txt” file default formats for the ATT software. Note that all fields are character fields, and have fixed length. It is recommended that the field names supplied here be used. However, other field names should function correctly.

Field Name Length Fld # Comments
key 30 0 The primary key. This must have the exact contents of the item bar code. Typically this is copied from the “assetnum” field or the “inventorynum” field.
laststocktake 8 1 The counted date in “YYYYMMDD” format. The contents of this field are overwritten with the current date when scanning an item.
time 6 2 The counted time in “hhmmss” format. The contents of this field are overwritten with the current time when scanning an item.
counted 1 3 Flag to indicate if the item was counted.
multi 1 4 Flag to indicate multiple records. Used internally by ATT.
inventorynum 25 5 The inventory number or tag number of the item. Often used as the bar code of the item. Copy this value to the “key” field to use it as the bar code with ATT.
assetnum 12 6 The asset number of the item. Sometimes used as the bar code of the item. Copy this value to the “key” field to use it as the bar code with ATT.
compcode 4 7 Company code
description 50 8 Description
costcentre 10 9 Cost Centre
respcostcentre 10 10 Responsible Cost Centre
location 10 11 Location
detailedloc 40 12 Detailed Location
serialno 18 13 Serial Number
room 8 14 Room
plant 4 15 Plant
class 8 16 Class or type
inventorynote 15 17 Inventory note
validitydte 8 18 Validity date
sublocation 4 19 Sub location
controllertext 30 20 Controller text
assetsubnum 4 21 Asset or item sub-number
equipmentnum 18 22 Equipment number
equipcategory 8 23 Equipment category
functionalloc 30 24 Functional location
workcentre 10 25 Work centre
status 4 26 Status
maintext 50 27 Main text
internalorder 12 28 Internal order
userid 20 29 User ID. If blank, this is automatically populated with the identity of the scanner that performed the scanning. The scanner ID is the PalmOS “user name”.
controlid 5 30 Controller ID
spare2 5 31 Spare field
caretaker 10 32 Caretaker
spare4 10 33 Spare field
spare5 10 34 Spare field
licenseplt 20 35 Licence Plate. This is sometimes used as a serial number if the “serialno” field is not long enough.
spare7 20 36 Spare field
spare8 20 37 Spare field
subloctext 30 38 Sub location text
spare10 49 39 Spare field
scanstatus 1 40 Scanned verses keyed input status. Non blank for scanned input.
Customising the File Formats

If your Asset Register software already has data export and data import capabilities, then you will need to customise the “toscanner.txt” and “fromscanner.txt” data formats. The type of file, along with the field lengths and the order in which the fields appear may be edited.

The ATT software supports a number of file types. The relevant ones are:

  • FIXED_FIELD – Fields are of fixed and known length.
  • DELIMITED – Fields are separated by a delimiter character.

There are also a number of variants supported by the ATT software. These are:

  • NO_VARIANT – No variations to the data.
  • UNDELIMITED_RECORDS – There is no separator between the end of one record and the start of the next record. Normally there is a new line between records in text files.
  • QUOTED_STRINGS – Strings have double quotation characters around them, which is not part of the data. This is typical of data exported from Excel.