INTRODUCTION

This article describes the usage and licensing of QR codes in ERS/QC-Mobile. Specifically, we are talking about impersonation codes (or ICs). Regular QR codes are simply hyperlinks to QC-Mobile. When the user arrives at the link’s destination, they are challenged to log in. Upon logging in, the user proceeds to the link's destination and is logged in as themselves normally. Therefore, the user can use any functionality on the QC-Mobile website.

However, with impersonation codes (or QR codes that impersonate a user), the login challenge is skipped and the user is taken directly to the destination as the user impersonated. This is a very convenient option for customers who want to post QR codes around the shop floor but whose audience likely does not have a formal login account with QC-Mobile.

While convenient, it raises a couple of issues for everyday use, such as sharing an existing user’s settings and daily device limitations (typically 2 devices) when the QR code is placed in a public area and scanned by more than a couple of people in a given day.

We devised the new licensing model and functionality described below to solve these issues. The goal was to allow most people to use ICs under normal circumstances without necessarily incurring an extra cost or having to predict upfront how many would be needed in the license.

HOW IT WORKS

1. When a customer purchases several users (i.e., starter pack of 5), those users can either be regular user accounts used to log in with a browser or IC users, which allows the creation of one IC per user account. When assigning users to the license in QC-Mobile, the customer can declare a user as an IC or Normal user. IC users cannot be logged into the browser normally (other than through an IC), and regular users cannot be used for ICs when creating QR codes in ERS.
   
   The benefit is that there is still only one list of total users for QC-Mobile, which keeps it simple in terms of licensing. Therefore, more ICs can be created by simply adding more users. If a customer has 20 machine tools around the shop floor and wants to put ICs on the side of every one of them, s/he can simply purchase a 20-user pack and assign them all as IC users.
   
2. When clicked/scanned, ICs are logged in to QC-Mobile as restricted access users on the QC-Mobile website.
   This comes with the following restrictions:
1. The QR code link's original destination and any drill-down links are available. However, no generic page hits are allowed. This means the Data Selection areas at the top of Stat Summary, Snapshot, Full View, and Live Data are disabled.
2. The Home page is not allowed to be accessed via IC QR Codes.
3. Dashboards will be an empty screen unless linked from somewhere else to a specific dashboard.
4. The Settings screen is accessible.
   
3. IC User Accounts have a different daily unique device count. Rather than the typical 2 devices per day per user, ICs include 10 unique devices, which should cover most "reasonable use" scenarios. The idea is that people should be able to walk around scanning codes, but it's doubtful that half the factory will scan the same code on a given day. All daily device counts expire at the end of the calendar day (midnight), so the number will automatically reset the following day if it is reached.
   
4. A user account can be switched between IC and Normal as often as needed. There are no time limits. Each time the switch occurs, the daily device limit will be switched to the default amount (2 for normal, 10 for IC), overriding any previously overridden values.

CONCLUSION

Impersonation codes (ICs) are useful for posting QR codes around the shop floor that skip the login challenge. This great option allows users to get the needed quality information for the local machine tool or cell even though s/he may not even know what application is in use.