Lets talk about Scanning

Our setup:
Scanners: Symbol mc50 pocket PC's
2 wireless antennae
1 web server (an old dell running server 2000, has PE installed on it),
some customized asp and sql.

An overview of how it works:
Scanner reads barcode, sends it via web form to web-server. The web server processes the asp page and sends the info to a Stored proc on the ticket server.
The stored proc validates it (using also included stored procedures) and returns a result code and message to the web server. The result is included on the scanner web page. the page plays a background noise depending on the result-code (either pass or fail)

A few problems we ran into from the start:
The scanners send the 'enter' key after a scan, but the web page does not submit the form if there is more than 1 form field. I customized the page so that it only has 1 field (barcode), and a submit button - The selection for check and scan is hardcoded to be only scan. Now it works.

Our logic as to who passes and who is denied entry, when it relates to reprinted tickets, differed from Blackbaud's defaults. For this I made custom validation sp's, so that reprints are handled exactly right. To do this, you need to first have a look at barcodes_checkticket and barcodes_checksubsticket to get an idea of how it works. There is a table named scanningconfig that points pe to the sp to do the actual validation. Note that there is one for single tickets and one for subscription. As of the last version (3.3.10), the default logic between the 2 is consistent.

There is another table called Barcodes_ResultMessages, which stores the text for the reurn message. This is probably an easier customization that most people could do. Just don't change the number field ;-)