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#14 Ability to use a 'control symbol' instead of a barcode numbe
One agency has expressed an opinion that they will not produce anything for us with a barcode number. This is mainly because the system they use does not have any capacity to store one.
As you know, the barcode number in the manifest ties the data objects to the item record in RecordSearch. In essence, the barcode number in the manifest (and associated DPR table) is a foreign key to the items table in Recordsearch. The barcode number is pretty much an 'Archives use only" thing. The items table in recordsearch is populated from an 'item list' provided by the agency at the time of the transfer. The item list contains what is called a "control symbol" - which is usually the file number (eg 2011/1) and the barcode number.
It would be useful for an agency to be able to create a manifest which contained the control symbol. Probably the best mechanism for this would be via the barcode list functionality. It would also be useful to be able to manually enter a control symbol in the second pane (changing the automatically populated entry).
If an agency only had to worry about one item being one data object, there would probably not be any problem. Making sure that the barcode numbers attached to each data object is the correct one has always been an issue when dealing with a 1:M relationship between items and data objects
It should also be possible to be able to develop a spreadsheet, where the NAA user could paste the item list and the manifest containing the control symbol and replace the control symbol on the manifest with the correct related barcode number from the item list. If we do go with a spreadsheet, DPR would need to be modified to allow a manifest to be comma separated value (CSV) file. I will raise a feature request there separately - its still a good idea to allow for csvs
This would mean that an agency did not have to jump through hoops to make sure that the barcode number in the manifest referred to the correct entry in the item list. It would be much easier for them to use the terms they were familiar with, rather than something that is imposed on them.
Happy to discuss.
This would be a large body of work and needs appropriate approval.