Pickup Stations

Pickup adds two kinds of station: one people use, and one people read.

Pickup counter#

An interactive screen next to the shelves. What it is for is decided by the capabilities you grant its template, because that is you saying what the screen is:

• Drop off or collect. Grant it collect and put away. A print that is not on a shelf is arriving and gets put away; one that is on a shelf is leaving and gets handed over. This is the setting for a scanner mounted by the bins where drop-offs and pickups are the same gesture: one scan does the right thing without anybody choosing.
• Hand over. Grant it collect. Scan a print, check the name, hand it over.
• Put away. Grant it put away. Pick the bin you are standing at, or scan the code written on the shelf, which selects it. Then scan each print going into it. The bin stays selected so you can work through a tray; scan the next shelf’s code when you move on.
• Bin check. Grant it run bin checks. Walk the shelves. See Bin checks.

A screen granted several of these opens on the most capable one and puts the rest on buttons across the top. A screen granted one shows that one and no switcher at all.

Putting a print away happens the moment you scan it. Handing one over never does. Putting a print on the wrong shelf costs one more scan to fix, so emptying a tray is one scan per print and no taps. Giving away somebody else’s property cannot be undone by software, and a mis-scan is an ordinary event at a shelf, so the screen always shows you the name and waits.

Like any station, you can require a card tap or PIN for individual actions, so handing a print over is recorded against a named person, while looking things up is not.

Collection board#

A passive display for a corridor or a doorway. It lists who has a print waiting and which bin it is in, in type large enough to read while walking past, and cycles through pages when there are more than fit.

It has no controls at all: not hidden, not disabled: a board’s template cannot be granted the ability to collect, move, or change anything, whatever an administrator clicks. That is what makes it safe to mount somewhere unattended. It also never asks anybody to identify themselves and never blanks, because a board that has gone dark is a board nobody trusts.

Prints that are finished but not yet on a shelf appear too, marked ask at the desk: telling somebody their print exists but is not out yet is more useful than pretending it does not exist.

Setting one up#

Exactly as with any other station: see Setting up a station. The only difference is the type you choose for its template: Pickup counter or Ready for collection board.

Both types appear only where the pickup module is switched on. A station whose type belongs to a module you later switch off says so on screen, rather than going blank.

A screen next to shelving that several sites use sees everything on it, whichever site printed it. That is the point of sharing a rack: see Shelving that several sites use.

What the completion dialog does#

When somebody marks a print successful, the final dialog offers two equal choices:

• Hand over marks it collected and prints no label.
• Put away assigns it to a bin, prints the label, and marks it stored.

This records the physical result while the person is still holding the print. The actions require the matching hand over and put away capabilities on the station template. See Collecting prints.