Standard Manipulations

The section covers our standard manipulations. Manipulations do exactly as the name implies - they take the data that is passed to them and manipulte it to deliver a different output. That result or oupt can be as simple as extracting elements from the data the manipulation was given through to using the data to fetch other data from a database. For example if you can a product barcode, we could return the product description and product class from the database. A simple option would be using a manipulation to extract certain characters from a barcode

Manipulation Name	What it does	Error Message /Operator Used
GetLeft	Returns the left X characters as the result (x defined by you)	Length of input data must be greater than left length.
GetRight	Returns the right X characters as the result (x defined by you)	Length of input data must be greater than right length.
GetLength	Returns the length of the scanned string (e.g. 13 for an EAN barcode)
PadLeft	Pads from the left for the number of characters you specify and with the characters you specify. E.g 12306 can become 00012306
PadRight	Pads from the right for the number of characters you specify and with the characters you specify. E.g 123.1 can become 123.100
LeftAndRightTrim	This cuts off characters from the left and right
LeftTrim	This cuts off characters from the left only
RightTrim	This cuts off characters from the right only
ReplaceString	Substitutes one set of characers with another. example whereever there is a 0 found, replace with a 1	1.Replace string is not found in the source data.
GetSubstring	Extracts part of a string For example starting at posiiton 3 for 4 char would return CDEF from ABCDEFG	1.The start and length values must be numeric. 2.The end position of the substring is greater than the length of the input Data.
GetDelimited	This is a very useful manipulation. If you have a barcode with varioues elements defined by delimiters e.g. (S)1234(Q)23 you could return only the 1234 after the (S) or the 23 after the (Q)	1.Delimeters have not been defined. 2.The start delimiter does not exist in the input data.
SplitString	Another widely used manipulation. Barcodes are often structured with a delimiter between elements like this. A100-LOT1234-23. You can extract any element by specifiying the delimter and the number (.e.g element 1,2 or 3)	1.Element Number is not numeric. 2. Data does not contain delimiter. 3. Element number not found in Data string.
ConvertUppercase	Converts the string to uppercase
ConvertLowercase	Converts the string to lowercase
ReplaceValue	You can pass one value to the manipulation and it will look in the specificed database table and replace this with another value. For example pass a customer code and replace it with the customer name.	1.SELECT ResultColumn FROM ViewOrTableName WHERE SourceColumn = @SourceData. 2.SELECT TOP 1 @ResultColumn @ConditionalText
ReturnColumnsFromTable	Similar to replace value but will return multiple values instead of only one. The values returned are comma delimited	1.SELECT TOP 1 ResultColumns FROM ViewOrTableName WHERE SourceColumn = @SourceData. 2.SELECT TOP 1 @ResultColumns @ConditionalText
GetValueAfterDelimeter	If you have a string with only one delimiter, you can get the data after that delimiter
TestIfAOrB	This function checks if Value A matches a TestValue. If so, it returns A or else it returns Value B. Similar to the Excel IIF function. The manipulation works with text or numeric values and supports a range of operators: =, <>, <, <=, >, >=, ISNOTEMPTY. This allows you to replace an empty string with another value.
Concatenate	Will concatenate two strings. You can concatenate fixed values and dynamic values. For example have a user enter a PO Box number of 4546 and then concatenate with fixed text 'PO Box' to give PO Box 4546
FindStringInValueManipulation	This manipulation lets you specfiy a string to look for in an input step and then a result value if the string is found and another result if it is not. In other words you are not replacing the string with anything, you are returning one of two results depending if the string is found or not
FormatDate	Allows you to convert date (and time) into a format you required
DateAdd	Can add fixed values to a date. For example add 6 months to todays' date to give you an expiry date.
FindMinMaxValue	Finds either the lowest or highest value in a spcified column in the database.	1.SELECT MIN ("@ColumnName ") FROM ViewORTableName. 2.SELECT MAX ("@ColumnName ") FROM ViewORTableName
EchoValue	This is used to display the same value that you passed to the manipluation. Useful when trying to create two instances of the same value.
ArithmeticManipulate	Performs an arithmetic manipulation on 2 numbers. You can specify the number of decimals required on the result.	No Error Message - Supported operators are:"+,-,/,*,^,root"