General Information on GS1 Barcodes

GS1 barcodes are an international standard for barcodes developed by the GS1 organization. They are used worldwide to uniquely identify products and store information such as serial numbers, lots, and expiration dates. These barcodes are of great importance in various industries such as retail, healthcare, and logistics.

Starting Sequences and Delimiters

A GS1 barcode always consists of a start sequence followed by content, which is identified by qualifiers. The individual information is separated from each other by a delimiter, if the information does not have a fixed length. Both, the starting sequence and the delimiter are non-readable ASCII characters processed by the scanner. For the ProBatch 365 Scanning scanning solution to work, a mapping of the ASCII characters to readable characters must be set up on the scanner.

Note

With Honeywell hand-held scanners, for example, it is possible to set which starting sequences are sent to BC.

Here you can use the Symbology Prefix option to set whether no prefixes, the Honeywell prefixes or the AIM prefixes are sent to BC (Honeywell Settings -> Scanning -> Internal Scanner -> Default profile -> Data Processing Settings).

In these settings, it is also possible to make settings to replace or remove the starting sequence of a barcode in the hand-held scanner. To replace the start sequence ]d2 with ]C1, for example, enter the following decode filter script in the decode settings:

if(_event=="decode"&&(_aimId=="]C1"||_aimId=="]d2")){_data=concat("]C1",_data);}

As a general rule, the scanner settings should be set up with the scanner provider, as they know their way around the scanner.

When a scanner reads a GS-1 barcode, the ASCII characters for the starting sequence and delimiter are converted into the values ]C1 and #, for example, and sent to BC. The starting sequence is used in ProBatch 365 Scanning to identify whether it is a GS-1 barcode.

To do this, the fields GS-1 128 FNC1 Character for the delimiter and GS-1 128 starting sequence for the starting sequence must be maintained in the ProBatch 365 Scanning setup page.

This setup can only process one GS-1 starting sequence. If two or more types of GS-1 labels are sent from the scanner, this will result in an error as they will not be recognized as GS-1 labels.

YAVEON Feature "ProBatch Scanning Extend GS-1 128 setup fields for multiple Barcode formats"

To enable this, a feature can be activated in the YAVEON Feature Management: "ProBatch Scanning Extend GS-1 128 setup fields for multiple Barcode formats"

This replaces the fields GS-1 128 FNC1 Character for the delimiter and GS-1 128 starting sequence for the starting sequence with the new fields GS-1 128 FNC1 Characters and GS-1 128 starting sequences. Lists of starting sequences and lists of delimiters can be entered in these new fields, which can be used to identify and evaluate a GS-1 barcode.

Important

It is important, that the entered values for both fields are always seen as a pair, based on their (comma separated) position in the fields. In the following example Pos1 in both fields is a pair: GS-1 128 FNC1 Characters "Pos1,Pos2,Pos3,..." GS-1 128 starting sequences "Pos1,Pos2,Pos3,..."

The feature also adds a new Remove Starting Sequences field to the setup page. A list of starting sequences can be entered in this field, separated by commas. The starting sequences entered are automatically removed from the start of the barcode as soon as the data record is transferred from the scanner. This function can be used to remove unnecessary starting sequences.

Qualifier and example

Due to the presence of qualifiers, the GS1 barcode allows for the storage of many pieces of information Overview of available Qualifiers. So far, the following qualifiers can be processed in the mobile dialogs:

Information	Qualifier
Item No.	01 (GTIN) oder 93 (Item No.)
Variant	22
Lot No.	10
Serial No.	21
Load Carrier	00 (SSCC) oder 97 (Package Number)
Load Carrier Type	91

The following is an example of a GS1 barcode:

For example, we take an Item ITEM001 with a Lot LOT001

The ProBatch barcode for this would look as follows ITEM001@@LOT001@

The text of the GS1 barcode after the conversion of the start sequence and the delimiter in the scanner would be the following: ]C110LOT001#93ITEM001

A Load Carrier PAL000442 with the Load Carrier Type EURO results in the following GS1 barcode ]C191EURO#97PAL000442