Items
An item is a specific RFID-tagged unit being tracked in Stratosphere. Everything in stratosphere revolves around making items easy to add to the system, so you can gain the power to track that item wherever it goes between any location and device. An item must be associated to a Product and an RFID tag at minimum in order to be tracked, but it may also contain serial number, batch, and expiration date info about that item.
An RFID Tag that is seen by a device will only show up in the Unassociated Tags Report until it is added as an item, at which point it will be tracked in inventory reports as an item.
Viewing Items requires the "Item Management" role to be granted in your user record. Contact your system administrator to add this capability.
Items are viewed and managed inside the Items page.
To view an Item's details, click the Tag EPC of the Item. On the details page, you will see the available information for that Item, including:
- Batch - The batch or lot that an item was produced in.
- Serial - The unique (serialized) number used to identify this specific item.
- Product* - The Product # and Name of the product.
- Expiration Date - The "best by" or "expires on" date for the item, in your organization's chosen date format (DD-MM-YYYY by default). Enables early warning of expiring product via the expiring product dashboard widget and report.
- RFID Tag EPC*- The attached RFID Tag's unique Electronic Product Code (EPC), which typically consists of 24 hexadecimal characters. This will be printed in both a human readable and barcode format on the tag and is also the number that devices use to read and identify the item. Once an item has a transaction history, its RFID Tag EPC cannot be edited by any user.
- Admins with the Organization Management role can establish custom validation rules for Tag EPC, to allow only a certain length or certain prefixes (only allow tag EPCs that start with ABC123 and are 24 characters total, for example). If a Tag EPC entered does not match your organization's validation requirements, an error will appear clarifying those requirements.
- Location - The name of the location an item is currently located at.
- Device - The name of the device an item is currently located in.
- Transaction History - Table showing up to the last 5 times an item was reported by a device, with a link to view more, if applicable.
- Event Time - The date and time that the item was reported.
- State - Added items are those entering a device and Removed items are those leaving a device.
- Device - The name of the device the item was reported by.
- Location - The location where the item was reported.
- User - If the reporting device has secure access, indicates who added or removed the item.
* = Required
The following data will also be presented on the Item Details page if your organization has enabled the Item Disposition feature.
- Status - The Item Disposition status of the item.
- Documented By - The First and Last name of the User who set the status for the item.
- Item Status Set Time - The date and time the status was set, displayed in your time zone.
Adding items requires the "Item Management" role to be granted in your user record. Contact your system administrator to add this capability.
If you already have RFID-tagged item data stored in a system other than Stratosphere, we recommend the Bulk Import Method of adding items.
To Add Items manually, in addition to the Item Management role, you will need:
- An Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID Tag to attach to each item
- Physical access to the items you wish to add to Stratosphere
- Products in the Product Catalog in Stratosphere
We recommend you also have:
- A 2-D Barcode Scanner configured to TAB after each scan
- Remember fields when associating
- Default cursor to barcode field
A user with the Organization Management role can specify valid RFID Tag Prefixes on the Organization page, which will help eliminate the risk of entering an invalid RFID Tag EPC value.
When adding items one at a time, or adding multiple items that all have unique combinations of batch, serial number, and expiration date, use the following steps:
- Press "Add Item" in the top left of the Items page.
- If you have a barcode scanner, the cursor should have defaulted into the barcode field according to the setting in your user profile, so you can immediately scan the product's barcode into the barcode field. The system will automatically use any Barcode Regex in the system that matches the product barcode to parse out the information from the barcode into the Batch, Serial, Expiration Date, and Product fields.
- Scan the RFID Tag into the Tag EPC field, by scanning the 2-D barcode or manually entering the RFID Tag EPC printed on the tag.
- If there are still fields empty that you wish to enter, either enter them manually or re-enter the barcode field to scan a secondary barcode.
- Click Save Changes to finish adding the Item. The add item screen will clear the serial number, barcode and Tag EPC fields so that you can quickly add more items as needed.
If you have multiple items of the same product that are not serialized, and may share the same batch, and expiration date, use Bulk Tag Association to add these identical items more quickly and easily. Bulk tag association allows you to scan or type in the product info just once, then enter a list of all RFID tags that should be associated to that item data, cutting the time to add these items nearly in half.
- Press "Add Item" in the top left of the Items page.
- If you have a barcode scanner, the cursor should have defaulted into the barcode field according to the setting in your user profile, so you can immediately scan the product's barcode into the barcode field. The system will automatically use any Barcode Regex in the system that matches the product barcode to parse out the information from the barcode into the Batch, Serial, Expiration Date, and Product fields.
- If there are still fields empty that you wish to enter, either enter them manually, or re-enter the barcode field to scan a secondary barcode.
- Toggle on Bulk Tag Association in the top right of the Add Items page. This will cause the Serial Number and Tag EPC field to be disabled, and a new Tag EPCs table will appear.
- Scan the RFID Tags into the first Tag EPCs field, by scanning the 2-D barcode or manually entering the RFID Tag EPC printed on the tag.
- After each Tag EPC is entered, a new Tag EPC field will appear below in which to enter an additional RFID tag. There is no limit to the number of RFID tags that can be added.
- These Tag EPCs will be validated in real time, and can be individually edited or removed any time prior to bulk saving.
- The total number of Tag EPCs entered will be tracked in the title of the list and on the bulk save button.
- Click Bulk Save to add an item for each RFID Tag entered. All correctly saved Tag EPCs will be cleared from the Tag EPCs list, leaving any Tag EPCs that were invalid so they can be fixed before retrying.
If you already have RFID-tagged item data stored in a system other than Stratosphere, there is no faster way to start tracking items than to Bulk Import your items from a spreadsheet.
There is no way to undo a bulk import, other than to edit or remove items from Stratosphere individually. When bulk importing, take every opportunity to verify the accuracy of the import. Double-check to ensure that the data in the uploaded file is accurate. After importing the file, but before saving the imported records, open the "ready to Import" section and verify that the columns are mapped appropriately and the data is exactly as you want it.
- Select "Import Items" at the top of the Items page.
- "Choose File" and select a file containing the items you want to import. The file must meet the following requirements:
- .CSV file format
- less than 1 MB file size
- Contain columns titled "
- Expiration Date must match your organization's format exactly. A dynamic example is provided on the import items page in Stratosphere. It is recommended that you format this column as Text to avoid date reformatting if you are using Excel.
- Once a file is chosen, select "Import Items". If your list of items is large (thousands), it may take a minute or two to import.
- Before saving the import, validate that the import was completed as expected by reviewing the three lists:
- Ready to Import - These items were successfully read from the file. Verify that the RFID Tag EPC, Product #, Batch, Serial, and Expiration Date are displaying as expected.
- Already in System - These items were successfully read from the file, but already exist in Stratosphere and will be skipped in the import to avoid duplication.
- Errors - These items were not successfully read from the file. It could be due to in invalid characters, excessive length, blank required fields, or an unknown reason. Where possible, the reason for the error will be explained in this list.
- If you are happy with your import preview, click "Import Items" one last time to save all the Ready to Import items in Stratosphere. Any errors can be handled individually and uploaded in a subsequent bulk import.
You can review the last 10 Item Imports, including the list of items that were Already in System or had Errors, by clicking "Import Items" from the top of the Items page at any time.
Example CSV Import:
Editing items requires the "Item Management" role to be granted in your user record. Contact your system administrator to add this capability.
There are two options for editing an item. Note that the Tag EPC field cannot be edited once it has been seen by a device, since there is now a transaction history that is dependent on that Tag EPC existing.
- On the items page, open the quick action menu for the Item you wish to edit and select "Edit".
- In the Edit Item window that opens, make any desired changes.
- Click "Save Changes" to save the edited record. Clicking "Cancel" or the X in the top right of the window will remove any edits you just made but had not yet saved.
Option 2
- On the items page, click the Tag EPC link.
- In the item details page, make any desired changes.
- Click "Save Changes" to save the edited record. To cancel your edits, simply leave the item details page without saving.
Deleting items requires the "Item Management" role to be granted in your user record. Contact your system administrator to add this capability.
Once an item has been "seen" by a device at any location, it can no longer be deleted, since the item now has a transaction history that is dependent on the item record existing.
- On the Items page, open the quick action menu for the Item you wish to delete and select "Delete".
- In the "Delete Item" confirmation window that appears, click "Delete" to confirm the deletion of the Item. Clicking "Cancel" or the X in the top right of the window will not delete the Item.
- On the Item page, click the Tag EPC link for the Item you wish to delete.
- On the item details page that opens, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Delete".
- In the "Delete Item" confirmation window that appears, click "Delete" to confirm the deletion of the Item. Clicking "Cancel" or the X in the top right of the window will not delete the Item.