First Steps
You decided to get started on your journey to automated reordering and after placing an order, you've just received your credentials and shipment from us.
If you haven't already, we'll need to go through a few steps to have your automation up and running:
- configure articles
- create supply points
- match devices to articles and supply points
- set desired stock levels
- activate the order integration
- done!
First, let's log into the cloud. You should have received your credentials shortly after signing up.
You'll be greeted by the landing page.
Users generally can belong to multiple tenants, if the use case requires it.
Since this guide assumes that you're on your first install, we assume that you'll only see a single tenant to select.
If you have multiple Supply Points to outfit, we recommend doing all of the work described here within the Software chapter first and at a central facility.
This keeps user count and permissions to a minimum and reduces overhead during the install of the hardware. Doing so also gives you the opportunity to evaluate the should situation in comparison to the is situation and resolve issues accordingly.
Software
Configure Articles
The main navigation at the top of the page offers a lot of options. We want to configure articles for now and will head to Administration > Articles. In case you want to jump there directly, you can use this link but you will have to choose a tenant first.
The table on the next page shows you the dimensions that can be configured each article. We'll concentrate on the most
important first.
You'll need add at least one of: Name, Article Number or GTIN. Even if it's not strictly speaking required to have all
measurements of a product, in case you're exclusively going to use Smart Tracks for example, we strongly advise to
import all correct product measurements and keeping them up to date.
Above the table you'll need to use either:
- Create, in case you want to add only a few articles by hand
or - Import Articles, in case you want to add or update articles using a csv
Our recommended method would be a third option: Integration though APIs.
This is the most reliable way to have all the information on your articles ready when you need it and keep it up to
date.
If you opted for this before the first install, you should already see a populated list of your article data and skip ahead.
Read more on how to manage your articles.
Create a Supply Point
Supply Points are a structure that describes where your products are.
This can mean different things for different use cases. Most of the times it means one or more shelves at a location.
But sometimes it might be more important to differentiate who owns the products.
To offer a degree of flexibility our model is allowing three different levels to be configured: Location, Zone and Supply Point.
Location is meant to describe the establishment, like the address and opening hours of an office or production site.
Zone is meant to hone in on the area a bite more. This can mean a production hall or a department. This level of
distinction is quite often not required and distinct enough from the Location. In that case we set this name to
default by convention.
Supply Point is meant to be the leaf of this hierarchy. This is what our sensors and automatic orders are attached to.
Read more on how to configure your supply points.
Match Articles at the Supply Point to a Smart Device
In order to know which articles are supposed to be kept in stock at your supply point, each of the articles to be tracked needs to be matched to one of our devices.
Read more on how to match articles to devices or manage a particular device.
(Optional) Set Desired Stock Levels
If you prefer to not always refill to maximum capacity on each auto order, you can set your desired stock levels as part order logic of the config.
Read more on how to configure your Auto Order.
Activate The Order Integration
To make all your work worthwhile, there needs to be an integration that handles the order, when it is executed by our system.
Read more on how to integrate your Auto Order.
Hardware
Install The Gateway And Devices
The only thing left to do is plug in the Gateway and install the devices at the location.
Please make sure to position the Gateway close enough to the devices for a stable connection.
Our recommendation is to center the gateway in line of sight, unobstructed, within two meters in front of your shelves, so that the outermost devices have an equal distance to the gateway.
This is not always feasible and certainly not required. Please try to position the Gateway with as little shielding and interference and within reason.
Should you run into connectivity issues, please try repositioning your gateway first.
Connectivity Check
Coming soon!
We're done - Congratulations!!
You are now ready to automate your supply processes!
If you need to support or want to leave us some feedback, contact us
at support@neoalto.com