When you add a new prop/set piece you will see a popup window which will ask about the Tag ID. There are three options: You may select to use the next number in the sequence or enter a new number of your own choosing or scan an inventory tag (with a barcode scanner) that is already in a costume. If you have Inventory Tags/Labels with sequential numbers (available from Costume & Theatre Inventory Resources) it is easy to just select the next number in the sequence that matches your inventory tag. If you choose to enter a new number or letter/number combination - that is fine as well. Once the Tag ID is assigned to a Prop/Set record, it is saved with this record. .
You may start with any number / letter combination i.e. 100, SB-123-601, etc. Your Tag ID must have at least one number cannot end with letters. (See Appendix B for more details.) Only 12 digits (A12345678901) will be displayed on the forms and reports due to the limits of space but you can have longer ID’s. A list of all current ID #’s is shown at the bottom of the screen
If you have inventory tags with barcodes you can use a hand-held barcode scanner to read a tag #/ ID and place it in a database field at the point of the cursor. You may use the scanner to insert a tag # / ID in the Add New Item screen, select a prop/set for a check-out record and scan a tag for the Quick Check-in screen. See the Appendix / Barcode Readers for more information.
How Prop/Set Tag ID's are sorted:
To manage all the possibilities of the numbers, letters and symbols in a Tag ID the following system was set up. A new field was created to hold the sorting key.
Numbers: Numbers are treated as text values and have 0's placed in front of the numbers so that the numeric value is preservers:
Example: 12345 is 0012345
10 is 0000010
Letters are kept as they are: ABC = ABC
A combined letter and number ID: ABC-134 = ABC-0000134
B15-2 = B0000015-0000002
B15-13 = B0000015-0000013
Each time a Costume or Prop record is added the Sorting Key is created. If you suspect that your records are not sorting correctly you can go to the Costume/Prop Utilities menus and use the "Update Costume / Prop Sorting" function to refresh the sorting keys.
