Application Identifier on Bar Codes in SAP Business ByDesign

It appears that there have been a number of questions raised on the ByDesign forums related to the use of the mobile devices with existing SAP Business ByDesign form templates, and errors due to a lack of an “Application Identifier” when trying to scan barcodes.

The reason for this is that not all standard form templates for ByDesign are built with mobile devices in mind. Luckily, the fix to this is very straightforward. By default, most of the forms do not include the “Application Identifier” for the related fields. The “Application Identifier” is a numeric code that represents what type of data is being scanned.

Take the use-case in which the product ID is expected to be scanned. The associated application identifier is “91”. Note that this is a ByDesign-specific application identifier (it is one of the “90 – 99” custom fields referenced in the GS1 specification). Therefore, the mobile device will expect that any barcode that represents a product ID will start with a “91”. However, the XML data that is used to generate the forms will not necessarily have information in this format – in general, it would come over with just the regular value.

With the example of a product ID “SKU1234”, the product ID on the form template would still be “SKU1234”. However, if this product ID needs to be scanned, then the application identifier would need to come first – the barcode would actually need to contain the value “91SKU1234” to scan correctly, with the “91” representing the application identifier. We can make this adjustment through the addition of a simple script in Adobe LiveCycle Designer.

First, we’d generally want the barcode to be a separate element on the LiveCycle form template. The reason for this is that the human readable value will not be the same as the scannable value.

Then, we’d add a script similar to the one pictured below to produce the value required for the barcode. In this case, we’re taking the product ID actual value (from a separate element on the LiveCycle template) and concatenate a “91” to represent the application identifier at the beginning, which will produce the “91SKU1234” that we need.

The barcode on the form will now generate with the value “91SKU1234”, which should be recognized correctly by the mobile devices.
Please do not hesitate to reach out should you need additional information or assistance.
Written by:  Dan Edelman, Senior SAP Business ByDesign Consultant - FMT Consultants