Tips for Solving AX 2012 R3 Label Printing Needs

Written by Zahni Thuzar | October 29, 2015

From the Scanning Challenge on the expo floor, to our customer breakfast, it was great seeing many of you at this year’s AXUG Summit in Reno! We presented a session addressing R3 label printing needs. Attendees confirmed this is a hot topic for many moving to AX 2012 R3. Here are some main tips for solving your printing needs in AX.

First, when printing labels from AX 2012 R3, especially complex labels that require 2D barcode, concatenated barcode or requires data from other sources, there are different challenges to be aware of that can occur during the process:

ZPL coding is required
There is no drag and drop label designer
No easy concatenation
There is no way to pull data from other tables in AX or other source (ex. Fedex)
You don’t have an option to reprint a label
In the same light, there is no ad-hoc label printing options
There isn’t a management console for label printing
No pre-processing and post-processing capability
There is limited flexibility in dynamically defining appropriate label printers
And, there is limited capability in triggering an event for label printing

Addressing label printing issues

An enterprise labeling software solution, like Print Suite Bridge, can definitely help, allowing you to bring different systems together (AX, Excel database, custom applications – even a machine) to meet your labeling needs. We’ve often heard, “My custom application needs to be able to print a label.” Well, today is your lucky day.

As you see below, a labeling solution allows you to increase label printing accuracy, productivity, and efficiency all while easing the difficulty of the task.

Enterprise Labeling Solution

There are 3 valuable uses for an enterprise labeling solution with AX 2012 R3:

1. Trigger an Action: Create a different label or log for a certain variable in AX. This feature becomes very helpful when addressing the drag and drop issues, as well as the need for ZPL coding.

2. Printing a Mix of Data: Print directly from AX, RF-SMART scanning and/or an external database in CSV, Access, SQL server, etc. The challenge of pulling and gathering data from other sources and tables is no longer a challenge when using the software.

3. Easy R3 Inherent Printing: This component covers the issues of not having ad-hoc label printing nor having an option to reprint, with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) vs. printer command printing.

View full post