After you have entered your inventory in qmBase, the question is how to make it as easy and seamless as possible to enter inspections. One approach is to create labels with a QR code so that you can easily capture inspections with your smartphone or tablet. With this guide, we want to take you one step closer to Smart Maintenance, or digital maintenance. Here's how you can do it in three easy steps.
Create QR code labels for easy digital capture of inspections
What do you need?
qmBase, Excel, Word, pre-made labels and a printer.
Here's how to do it:
- Export the items you want to label.
- Use our Excel template to create the links
- Print your labels as a form letter
- Label your items
Export the items
Select the items you want to label. Then you can export these items from qmBase. You can use the search line of your inventory items for this, or filter by inventory categories or responsible person to get the items you need. Then click on the advanced table options (three dots against gray background) and export the table as a CSV file.
Use our Excel template to generate the links
In our template you need to fill in the following columns.
- Display Name: Readable text that will be displayed in addition to the QR Code.
- ID: qmBase identification number of the item.
- HostName: Name of your qmBase instance e.g. https://mycompany.qmbase.com
- Path: Leave unchanged
Print the labels as a form letter
If you have created table from the previous step and saved your changes, you can download the form letter as a template here. Attention: Word reports a damaged record when opening the file. But this can be fixed by clicking on Restore.
Click here to download the Word file
You can use the following field functions for your own form letter:
- QR Code:
DISPLAYBARCODE MERGEFIELD Url QR \q 3 \s 5 - Display name:
MERGEFIELD Display name
In our template we use labels of size 45x45mm. This size is usually enough for the labels to be easily recognized by your camera. For other sizes and label shapes, you can either customize our template or use the Word Mail Merge Wizard to design your own template in just a few clicks. You can find more information about creating mail merge letters here.
Label your items
The labels can now be printed using Word's mail merge feature and distributed to your inventory items. Then you can simply scan the labels and immediately record inspections and inspection data. This not only saves you time, but also promotes the digitization of your business.
Creating QR codes with qmBase - a practical example
To illustrate the process, we have prepared a practical example for you.
Mr. Müller wants to create a QR code for one of his inventory items, an abrasive cutter. To do this, he calls up the list of his inventory items in his qmBase software and uses the filters to export the item.
After that Mr. Müller exports the inventory as CSV file, on the picture is marked how which button you have to press to download the CSV file.
Now he enters all the important information from the CSV file into the Excel template for the labels that he downloaded earlier. You can use the data that is already in the table as an orientation for your items and disregard this data when creating the QR code in the Word template.
Now Mr. Müller saves the changes and calls up the Word template he downloaded from qmBase.
Under the Mailings tab, Mr. Müller finds the Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard by clicking on Start Mail Merge. He follows the instructions of the mail merge wizard, taking into account only the data of the separator from the Excel spreadsheet.
Now Mr. Müller prints out his QR code and tags his inventory item with it. The QR code is immediately ready for use and can be used to record tests and test data for the cut-off machine.
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