(713) 479-7300 [email protected]

SAP Barcoding Integration with LabelLIVE Printing

Introduction

Following a successful NLINK ADC to SAP Solution deployment, our customer asked if we could incorporate label printing into one of their SAP Barcoding screens. They wanted to use their existing label printing software, LabelLIVE. They had already built a label, and knew how to provide a list of label data via a spreadsheet, but the process was manual (typing entries, or at best some cut-and-paste from one computer to another) and prone to errors.

LabelLive Screen

Research

Our research revealed that LabelLIVE offers a few options for remote / automated printing. Given our customer’s environment, we chose to use the LabelLIVE REST/JSON API, wherein the LabelLIVE software acts as a REST Server, listening on a dedicated url and port while the software is running. The NLINK Server running the NLINK ADC to SAP Solution could easily act as a REST/JSON Client to send the label contents to LabelLIVE through this API.

Solution

We installed a copy of the LabelLIVE software in our lab and created a new version of the customer’s existing label with the changes needed to work with data provided through the API. We added a Print button to the screen, and set up the configuration to build and send the label contents to LabelLIVE through the API. This configuration combined existing data from SAP, current data scanned by the barcode screen user and some requested calculations to create the desired label contents.

Conclusion

Finally, we worked online with our product champion and his IT team to help set up the new printing feature in their environment. We also added documentation for the new process to our customer’s project in Basecamp, the project management tool we use for all our deployments. Now the warehouse users can pick and print from a single screen, without worrying about moving files across computers or making typos, and they know the labels will match their pick ticket perfectly.