We print labels using Bartender through automation logic set up within Epicor. We have 3 Plants all printing this way. For some reason our main site sporadically has printing issues where labels randomly do not print and we have to go back to reprint them.
We have not been able to identify what is causing this. We have replaced equipment, worked with Epicor consulting to check our automation logic and have tried numerous fixes from both Bartender and our IT. The location that is having this print issue has the least amount of volume compared to our other sites and experiences this the most often. At times they are having to reprint half of the labels that they attempt to print. At other times it may be a handful per day. Has anyone experienced this?
Hello Lynette,
I’d say from my Bartender experience, it either works or it doesn’t, you mentioned it works for other sites, so it has to be something specific around the printer for your main site.
You probably need to go back to the basics and look how the printer is installed, based on what you said it sounds like the file gets generated, label does print (as you can reprint) but it just doesn’t come out of the printer. In the past I I have always installed the printer with the Seagull drivers on the bartender server and shared it, then make sure the printer in Epicor uses the share.
Are the bartender files being written to the same server as the integrations are deployed?
There could be a network issue.
Do you save your files after processing? Or do you remove them? It would be interesting to see if maybe the files aren’t getting transferred in the first place.
I would troubleshoot it from the start to the finish. If you don’t save your files via the integration, I would add that in to make troubleshooting easier. That way if you don’t have a saved file you know it’s not making it to the correct server/directory.
EDIT: Also, we’ve found in the past that if any BPMs create the bartender file, sometimes we didn’t update all of them to have the updated data needed for the label (we have since moved to functions). We would generate the file, it would get renamed but never come out of the printer. So if you do have files being renamed, check the data and make sure it matches the fields the label is needing.
What version of BarTender are you using? There are more stable versions recently than would have been released around your current Epicor Version. License issues are common too. Make sure everyone is printing to a single printer the same way to avoid extra license usage. Example \PrintServer\MyFavLabelPrinter is not the same (in bartenders eyes) as MyFavLabelPrinter or that same printer hosted through multiple servers.