Mobile App Part 2

[Paul]

I'm using the Profound UI Mobile Client on iPad. I have amended screens for iPad using the layouts and all is looking good. This is being beta tested in a couple of locations and a couple of points have been raised:

1) To launch the app, the user selects the Profound UI icon and from there selects a connection. At this point the user can go into the config and change/delete the connection. Is there a way to have the connection as an icon so the user can only launch the connections, rather than have the ability to configure them directly? iOS, I know ....

2) Is there a way to use a barcode reader from within the mobile client? e.g. to launch a barcode reader that will populate a rich display field? I've read the docs on using Scandit and PhoneGap, but before I waste too much time is what I'm wanting to do possible from within the Mobile Client?

Thanks,

Paul

[negley]

I have designed/developed a mobile application to utilize a Bluetooth scanner. It scans and auto enters the form. Not sure if Ipads will support the auto entry, but you could always try the auto advance property on a text field. Intermec makes a android based unit with a built in bar code scanner. I found that this unit works very well with profound.

[Scott Klement]

Paul,

In the Profound UI mobile app, there's no way to prevent the user from deleting (or otherwise changing) the connections. Remember, this is a generic app that can be used by any/all of Profound's customers, and they need the change/delete functionality in order to create, delete, modify, etc their connections.

If you want an app where you can control that sort of thing, you have to use PhoneGap so that you can generate an app with your settings, et al, already built-in. With PhoneGap it's no problem to make it so that they cannot delete (or even view) the connection settings.

There is a barcode scanner that is built-in to the Profound UI mobile app. It's not Scandit (which we could not include due to licensing) but an open source one, found here:
https://github.com/wildabeast/BarcodeScanner

To use it, you would code something like this in your app

Code: Select all

  function success(result) {
    changeElementValue("scanval", result.text);
    pui.click("btnScan");
  }
  function failure(error) {
    pui.alert("Scanning failed: " + error);
  }
  
  if (window.cordova != null) {
    var scanner = cordova.plugins.barcodeScanner;
    scanner.scan(success, failure);
  }
  else {
    failure({});
  }

Of course, the "changeElementValue" and "pui.click" code would need to be adjusted for your particular app.

[Paul]

William,
Thanks for your suggestion. For this app I want to use the iPad camera rather than a separate device as it is for quick inventory look-ups on a shop floor. However I can see a need to use a bluetooth-connected device in the future, so this would be certainly apply then.

Scott,
Regarding the app deployment, this is as I understood it. Its fine for now, maybe we'll look at a more bespoke PhoneGap app later
Regarding the barcode reader, this is excellent and works perfectly. Just one suggestion ... in the docs the only reference I can find is by Antonio (Nov 2012) regarding Scandit. Should this be method be added?

Thanks,

Paul