Barcode Required Scans

What Are Barcode Required Scans?

A Barcode Required Scan is a rule that forces an employee to scan or type a specific piece of information before Standard Time® will let them start or stop a timer. Where a Barcode Rule reacts to a scan and decides what to do with it, a Required Scan works the other direction — it stands in the way of a scan that would otherwise succeed, and refuses to let it through until the required information has been collected.

This is how Standard Time® enforces data collection that a shop cannot afford to skip: a lot number before material is consumed, a quality-check result before a job is closed out, a machine or work center ID before time starts accumulating. Instead of trusting employees to remember a separate step, the system simply will not proceed until the answer is provided.

Overview of the four Barcode Required Scan property groups: Name and Description, Conditions, Rules, and Scan into Field

What End-Users Experience

From the shop floor, a Required Scan looks like a popup dialog that appears in the middle of an otherwise normal scan sequence. The employee scans their username, then a work order, exactly as always — and if a Required Scan applies to that work order (or category, or task), a dialog opens asking for the configured information before the sequence can continue.

The timer will not start or stop until the dialog is satisfied. While the Required Scan dialog is open, the employee cannot start a new timer and cannot close out a running one. The dialog blocks the sequence in place — there is no way to dismiss it, skip it, or scan around it. The only way forward is to scan or type a value that satisfies the rule's conditions.

Once a valid value is entered, the dialog closes immediately and the original scan sequence resumes exactly where it left off — the timer starts (or stops) right after, with no separate confirmation step needed. If the entered value does not satisfy the rule's Rules properties (wrong character type, wrong pattern, not in the allowed list of choices), the dialog stays open and reports the problem so the employee can try again.

How to Open Barcode Required Scans

Barcode Required Scans are configured from the same Scan Barcodes page your employees use on the shop floor — through the same toolbar menu that opens Barcode Rules and Scripts.

Menu open on the Scan Barcodes page showing the Barcode Required Scans menu item

Start at the Home page — Open Standard Time® and go to the main Home screen.
Click Scan Barcodes — This opens the scanner page used on the shop floor.
Find the Menu icon in the toolbar — Look for the ☰ icon in the toolbar at the top of the Scan Barcodes page.
Click the Menu icon and choose Barcode Required Scans — The Barcode Required Scans list opens, showing all existing required scans.
Click the green "+" button — This creates a new, blank required scan ready for configuration.

Creating a New Required Scan

When you click the green + button, a new required scan is added to the list with default values. Select it to open the properties grid, which groups every property into four categories — Name and Description, Conditions, Rules, and Scan into field.

Barcode Required Scan Properties grid showing the Name and Description, Conditions, Rules, and Scan into field property categories

Give the required scan a clear Name and Prompt, decide when it should interrupt the scan sequence, narrow it down with the Conditions properties so it only fires where it should, and use the Rules properties to validate whatever the employee enters. If the value needs to be recorded somewhere, use the Scan into field properties to route it onto the time log or an inventory transaction.

Tip: Start narrow. A Required Scan with no Conditions applies to every scan on every project for every employee — which is rarely what you want. Assign it to the specific project, category, or task where the extra data is actually needed.

Name and Description Properties

These six properties identify the required scan, control the popup wording, set its position relative to other required scans, and decide whether it is active at all.

Name

A short label for this required scan, displayed as the title of the popup dialog when it appears on the scan station. Employees see this name, so use something they will immediately recognize — for example, Lot Number or QC Inspector Badge — rather than an internal reference code.

Prompt

The instruction text shown inside the popup dialog, telling the employee exactly what to scan or type. A clear prompt means the employee never has to guess what is being asked for — for example, Scan the lot number from the material tag or Enter the batch quantity produced.

Order

Controls the sequence in which popup dialogs appear when more than one Required Scan applies to the same scan sequence. Required scans with a lower Order number are presented first. If two required scans both apply, the employee resolves them one at a time, in Order sequence, before the original scan can complete.

When

Sets whether this required scan interrupts the sequence before work begins or after work ends.

Choice	When the popup appears	Typical use
Before work begins	Interrupts the scan that would otherwise start a timer	Collecting a machine ID, work center, or setup confirmation before time starts accumulating
After work ends	Interrupts the scan that would otherwise stop a running timer	Collecting a quantity produced, a quality result, or a completion note before the job is closed out

Either way, the employee cannot proceed — the timer will not start, or will not stop, until the popup is satisfied.

Entry method

Determines how the employee supplies the required information in the popup dialog:

Choice	How the employee responds
Scan	The employee scans a barcode label — a lot tag, a machine ID label, a QC pass/fail code — into the popup field
Type	The employee types the value directly on a keyboard or touchscreen — useful for free-text notes or quantities with no barcode label available

Active

Controls whether this required scan is currently enforced. When set to Yes, the popup interrupts matching scan sequences as configured. When set to No, the required scan is skipped entirely and no popup appears — useful for temporarily suspending a requirement (a seasonal QC step, a rule still being tested) without deleting its configuration.

Conditions Properties

Conditions properties narrow down exactly which scans this required scan applies to. Leave a condition blank to apply the required scan to everything within that category — for example, leaving Project blank means the required scan applies to every project.

Users · Project · Category · Task · Condition script

Property	Limits the popup to…
Users	Only the specific employees assigned here — leave blank to apply the required scan to every employee
Project	Only scan sequences for the one project selected here — leave blank to apply the required scan to every project
Category	Only projects assigned to the one category selected here — leave blank to apply to every category
Task	Only scans that reference a task with this specific name — leave blank to apply regardless of task
Condition script	A saved script that runs at scan time and returns whether the popup should be shown — for logic too specific for the Users/Project/Category/Task properties alone (for example, only requiring the scan for work orders over a certain dollar value)

Tip: Combine conditions to narrow further. A required scan with both Project and Task set only interrupts scans that match that exact project-and-task combination — everything else on that project proceeds without the popup.

Rules Properties

Rules properties validate whatever the employee scans or types into the popup dialog. If the entry fails a rule, the dialog reports the problem and stays open — the employee cannot proceed with an invalid value.

Allow letters · Allow numbers · Allow special characters · Allow spaces · Allow 0 values

These five Yes/No properties act as character-type filters on the entered value.

Property	Controls	Set to No when…
Allow letters	Whether an entry containing A–Z (upper or lower) is accepted	The value should be a purely numeric code, such as a lot number made only of digits
Allow numbers	Whether an entry containing digits 0–9 is accepted	The value should be alphabetic only, such as a pass/fail result code
Allow special characters	Whether hyphens, slashes, dots, or other non-alphanumeric characters are accepted	The value should be plain alphanumeric text with no separators
Allow spaces	Whether space characters are accepted	The value should never contain spaces, so an accidental space-padded entry can be rejected
Allow 0 values	Whether an entry of `0` (or a value that resolves to zero) is accepted	A zero would represent a meaningless or skipped entry — for example, a quantity produced should never legitimately be zero

Condition type · Condition value

Property	What it sets
Condition type	How the entered value must relate to Condition value for the entry to be accepted — one of the nine choices below
Condition value	The comparison value used by Condition type. What this field means depends on the type chosen

Condition type	Entry is accepted when…
None	No pattern check is applied — any entry that passes the character-type filters above is accepted
Starts with	The entry begins with the Condition value — for example, `LOT-` accepts `LOT-4471`
Contains	The entry includes the Condition value anywhere within it
Ends with	The entry ends with the Condition value
Equal to	The entry is an exact, character-for-character match of the Condition value
Less than	The entry, interpreted as a number, is less than the Condition value
Greater than	The entry, interpreted as a number, is greater than the Condition value — useful for requiring a quantity produced above zero
Character length	The entry is exactly the number of characters given in the Condition value — useful for fixed-length lot or badge numbers
Contains multiple values	The entry contains the Condition value as a separator, indicating it packs more than one piece of data into a single scan

Must contain these choices

A comma-separated list of exact values the entry must match one of. Use this when the valid answers are a fixed, known set — for example, a QC result popup limited to PASS,FAIL,HOLD — so an employee cannot type anything else through.

Leave blank if you are using Condition type / Condition value for validation instead.

Rule script

A saved script that runs against the entered value and returns whether it should be accepted — for validation logic more complex than the built-in Condition type choices can express, such as checking the entered lot number against an external database before allowing the employee to continue.

Scan Into Field Properties

Once an entry passes validation, these two properties decide where it gets recorded.

Information type

Sets what kind of record the entered value belongs to:

Choice	What it does
Time log	The value is written onto the time log entry created by the scan sequence this required scan interrupted
Inventory	The value is written onto the related inventory transaction — useful when the required information is about material consumed or produced rather than the time entry itself

Field name

The specific field on the time log (or inventory transaction) where the entered value is stored — for example, Text 1. Standard Time® provides several general-purpose text fields for exactly this kind of custom data; pick one consistently for each required scan so your reports always pull the value from the same column.

Example Setups

Goal	When	Entry method	Rules	Scan into field
Require a lot number before material is logged against a project	Before work begins	Scan	Character length = 8 (fixed-length lot tags)	Time log, Text 1
Require a pass/fail QC result before a job can be closed out	After work ends	Type	Must contain these choices: `PASS,FAIL,HOLD`	Time log, Text 2
Require a machine ID scan before time starts accumulating on a specific category	Before work begins	Scan	Condition type: Starts with, value: `MACH-`	Time log, Text 3
Require a quantity produced above zero before an inventory build is recorded	After work ends	Type	Condition type: Greater than, value: `0`; Allow 0 values: No	Inventory

Tip: Keep required scans focused on data that genuinely cannot be skipped. Every popup adds a step to the employee's scan sequence — reserve them for compliance, quality, and job-costing data your shop cannot operate without, and use Barcode Rules for everything else.