Bin Checks

A bin check is a walk around the shelves with a scanner. You scan everything you find; Pluraprint works out what you did not find.

That last part is the whole point. A scanner on its own can confirm what is on a shelf. Only a bin check can tell you what is not because it records what it expected before you started.

Bin checks are always available. Run one every week, once a term, or whenever the shelves look wrong; you do not have to be set up any particular way to have one.

What a check concludes about a print it cannot find is your setting to make, in Settings → Pickup handling. If you record collections as they happen, at a counter or with a scanner by the shelves, a print that has vanished is a discrepancy and the check flags it as missing. If nobody records collections and people take their own work off an open shelf, the check is the only thing that will ever find out, and it records the print as collected. See Turning pickup on.

Running one#

From the Pickup page, or from a pickup counter station by the shelves:

1. Press Bin check. It opens a window of its own, which tells you which shelves a check would cover and what finishing one will conclude about anything you do not find.
2. Press Start a bin check.
3. Walk the shelves and scan every print you come across. A scan means this is still here. The window is already listening. You do not need to click into the box.
4. Press Finish.

Each scan appears in a running list beside the box as you go, saying whether the print was expected, was not expected on this shelf, or was not recognised at all.

From the keyboard#

Key	Does
↵	Records the scan, which is what the scanner presses for you
⌘↵ / Ctrl ↵	Finishes the check
Esc	Pauses and closes the window, leaving the check running

Finishing is behind a modifier on purpose. Enter belongs to the scanning box and gets pressed a few hundred times on a walk; the key that resolves everything you did not find must not be one a barcode can produce.

Say which shelf you are at#

Above the scanning box you can name the bin you are standing in front of. It is optional, and it is the single most useful thing you can do on a walk: a scan on its own says the print is somewhere on the shelves you are covering, while a scan at a bin says which one.

When the two disagree, the shelf wins. You are standing at the rack with the print in your hand, which is better evidence than anything already in the system, so Pluraprint files the print where you found it and tells you what it changed:

Still here — it was filed under B-04, and is now recorded in B-09.

Nobody is asked to carry the box back. The record now matches the room, which is the entire point of walking the shelves.

The same happens to a print that was not recorded on any shelf — one nobody ever confirmed putting away. Scanning it at a bin puts it there:

Still here — it was not recorded in any bin, and is now recorded in B-09.

This works even onto a shelf Pluraprint thinks is full, and onto an overflow shelf. Being “full” is a rule about where new prints get sent; it cannot make a print that is visibly on the shelf be somewhere else.

A bin check never collects, hands over, or throws anything away. It only ever answers where is it — and finishing the check answers what about the ones I did not find.

Scanning the shelf’s own code sets it. If the code is written on the shelf where a scanner can read it, scan it and you are now scanning at that bin: no need to put the scanner down and pick from the list. You can still pick from the list, and you can still leave it unset.

Pick the shelf once and it stays picked while you work along it; scan the next shelf’s code when you move on.

Prints always win. Scanning a print’s label never changes the shelf you are at, whatever a bin happens to be called, because a print label that quietly moved the shelf instead of recording the print would leave that print unscanned, and finishing would then record it as collected.

The list belongs to the check, not to the screen you started it on. If the browser reloads or a station reboots part-way round, come back and the check is still open with everything you have scanned so far still on it.

Stopping and picking it up again#

A check is not tied to the window you started it in. Pause and close puts the window away and leaves the check running; so does closing it any other way. The Bin check button on the Pickup page then says a check is in progress and how far it has got, and opening it again shows you who started it, when, which shelves it covers and how much has been scanned: before handing you back the scanning box. Press Resume the check to carry on.

That screen is deliberately in the way. A check somebody else started an hour ago has a live Finish button on it, and finishing a walk you have not been on is how prints get resolved before anybody has looked for them.

Two checks can never cover the same shelf. Two people walking one rack against two sessions would each conclude that the other’s finds had been taken. Two people walking different shelves at the same time is fine: Pluraprint only refuses when the shelves actually overlap, and says so.

A check walks the shelves of the sites you pick. The site filter above the list is what chooses them: leave it on Every site and the check covers every bin you have, or pick one site and it covers the bins assigned to that site. With a single site there is nothing to choose and the check simply starts. A check started at a pickup station walks the shelves at its site, which is one reason a pickup station needs a site set; see Setting up a station.

The shelves are worked out when the check starts and stay fixed for its whole life. A bin you add half-way through a walk does not quietly join it: nobody was asked to look at that shelf, so finishing must not conclude that everything on it has been taken.

When a rack is used by several sites#

A check covers the shelves, not the site that started it. If the corridor rack is assigned to both the FDM room and the resin room, a check that walks it accounts for everything on it: both rooms’ prints, because a print that is not on the rack has been taken whichever room printed it. That is also why the other room cannot start its own check over the same rack at the same time.

What happens when you finish#

Everything that was on those shelves and was not scanned is resolved, according to your setting:

Your setting	Finishing does this	Can it be undone?
Flag it as missing	Each print is marked missing for somebody to look into.	Yes: the next check that finds it puts it back on the shelf.
Assume it was collected	Each print is recorded as collected, with no member of staff’s name against it, because nobody watched it happen.	No.

The screen tells you the number before you press the button and it is on the button itself, Finish (flag 7, or Finish) collect 7. Under assume it was collected the button asks once more before it fires, because nothing undoes it afterwards. Under flag it as missing it does not, because there is nothing to undo. When you have scanned everything and there is nothing left over, Finish just finishes.

The number on the button is the number that gets resolved. It is not an estimate: the screen and the finish itself work it out the same way, from the same list of prints.

A check keeps the setting that was in force when it started. If an administrator changes it while you are half way round the shelves, your check finishes the way it promised to on the button you were shown.

A print has to have been seen at least once before its absence counts. Only prints already confirmed on a shelf (by a previous check, or by staff putting them away) are in scope, so a print still sitting in a printer’s output tray is never quietly resolved. This also means your first check concludes nothing. It establishes the baseline, and the second one starts telling you the truth. It is also why a print already flagged missing is not flagged again every week.

If you are giving up on the walk rather than pausing it, abandon the check instead. Your scans are kept. They already recorded everything you found, but nothing is concluded about what you did not reach, because a half-finished walk has not looked everywhere. Abandoning is the deliberate end of a check; simply closing the window is not, and leaves it running for you to pick up again.

Seeing consequences as you scan#

If you have rules about uncollected prints, each scan shows what the rules say about that print while you are holding it:

Four week clear-out: the owner is added to a role, once someone confirms

That is the argument for doing this with a scanner rather than from a report. The decision is in front of the person who can act on it, with the print in their hand.

A rule in Test mode shows (test mode) on these lines. It matched and nothing happened. See Chasing uncollected prints.

Looking back at past checks#

The Pickup page lists your past bin checks under the two buttons: when each was walked, who walked it, how much was still there, and what it concluded about the rest: recorded as collected or flagged as missing, whichever that walk was set to do.

If you run checks that infer collections, this is the provenance of every collection nobody witnessed. When somebody asks why their print is marked collected, the answer is a particular walk on a particular afternoon by a particular member of staff, and this is where you find it. An abandoned check says so and shows no counts, because it concluded nothing.

Turning bin checks off#

There is no switch, and nothing to turn off. A bin check is something a member of staff chooses to do; if nobody runs one, none happens. What you can control is who may run them: grant or withhold the run bin checks permission, and, for a pickup station, the matching capability on its template.