Glossary
The terms that cross more than one process in this wiki. Where a term has a technical counterpart — a database field or status — it comes in parentheses, for anybody who needs to connect the word on screen to the data stored.
A term that appears on a single page lives in that page's own glossary.
The screen labels themselves are in Portuguese and are listed separately, in the interface glossary.
Active loans
The admin panel tab that lists everything somebody is holding
right now — the loans in ATIVO (active), with the name of whoever has the
device and since when. On screen it is Empréstimos Ativos.
It is read only: there is no button on it at all. The person who returns is
the borrower, on the portal; what closes a loan is the
physical check-in, in the
return queue. This tab answers "where is NOTE-04?", and
nothing else.
Admin panel
The front desk screen, on the computer, at /admin. It requires an
administrator login. On screen it is the Painel.
It brings together the return queue, the active loans, the inventory, the categories and the people records.
Administrator
Whoever operates the front desk admin panel. Everybody has their own account, with their own login and password — there is no shared password.
The login field is called Usuário (Username) on the sign-in screen
(Administrador.usuario). That is the only sense in which the word Usuário
appears in this system: it never refers to whoever picks equipment up.
There is no screen for registering an administrator. Accounts are born from the database seeding command, and recovering a forgotten password goes the same way.
Asset tag
The code stuck on the device, such as NOTE-01 or EXT-05
(Equipamento.id). It is what identifies the physical item — two laptops of the
same model have different asset tags. On screen it is the Etiqueta.
The asset tag always appears in full and in a monospaced font, because it has to match the sticker on the device character by character.
Batch
A gesture that handles several items at once. There are two, and they behave differently on purpose:
- "Devolver tudo" (Return all), on the portal: all or nothing. The devices go to the counter together, and returning half of them would let somebody walk away thinking they had handed everything back.
- "Confirmar Todas as Devoluções" (Confirm all returns), in the admin panel: item by item, and one row failing does not bring the others down. The physical gesture has already happened — the front desk collected the pile — and a row that left the queue in another tab cannot undo the checking of the rest. The summary says what closed and what did not.
Both only appear from two items upwards. With a single item, each of them would duplicate the button on the row just below.
Category
The group the inventory is organized into and that the portal shows
as a grid: "Notebook", "Tablet", "Extensão" (Categoria.nome). On screen it is
the Categoria.
The name is unique — it is the database that stops two spellings of the same thing living in the same cabinet. A category can only be deleted when it is empty.
Counter
The physical desk where equipment is handed over and collected. It is not a screen or a field of the system — it is the only place in the process the system cannot verify. On screen it is the bancada.
It is what the return refers to: whoever returns something leaves the device on the counter and says so on the tablet. Between that gesture and the physical check-in, the device is on the counter and nowhere in the inventory — that is the shelf time.
Enrollment number
The number that identifies a person in the system, and the key to everything
they do: it is what gets typed on the first screen of the portal
(Pessoa.matricula). On screen it is the Matrícula.
It accepts digits only, fifteen at most, because that is what the tablet keypad
can type. It is stored as text — leading zeros count, and 0012345 is not the
same as 12345.
The enrollment number can be corrected in the admin panel, and the correction takes the loan history with it.
Inactive record (person)
A record taken out of circulation — somebody who suspended their enrollment,
graduated or left the institution (Pessoa.status = INATIVO).
The rule is asymmetric on purpose: an inactive record cannot pick up and can return. People who are deactivated usually have a device in their bag; blocking both directions would make deactivation guarantee that the device never came back.
In practice: the enrollment number gets into the portal as usual, and the category grid gives way to an explanation.
A record is never deleted either, for the same reason as retirement: the history points at it.
Inventory
All registered equipment, one row per device, grouped by category — and the admin panel tab that shows it. On screen it is the Inventário.
The inventory lists everything, including what is under maintenance, what is on loan and what has been retired. That is what makes it different from the portal, which only shows what can be taken right now.
Loan
The record of a device in somebody's hands, with the times of
pickup, return and
physical check-in (Emprestimo). On screen it is the
empréstimo.
Each item creates a separate loan. Somebody who takes a laptop and a power strip on the same trip to the desk has two loans, which can be returned at different times.
A loan goes through three states: ATIVO (with the person),
AGUARDANDO_BAIXA (declared returned, awaiting the front desk) and CONCLUIDO
(closed).
Maintenance
The temporary withdrawal of a device for repair
(Equipamento.status = MANUTENCAO). The item disappears from the
portal and comes back with one click when the repair is done. On
screen it is Manutenção.
Different from retirement, which is permanent.
A device with an open loan cannot go under maintenance: its status is locked until the cycle closes.
On loan
The status of a device that is off the shelf because somebody picked
it up (Equipamento.status = EMPRESTADO). On screen it is Emprestado.
What is not obvious: it stays EMPRESTADO after the return.
Declaring a return on the tablet changes the loan, not the device —
what puts the device back on the shelf is the
physical check-in.
EMPRESTADO is not a button in the admin panel: it goes in and
out on its own, through the two gestures that involve somebody carrying the
equipment. The row of an item on loan shows the name of whoever has it instead
of the button.
Physical check-in
The front desk's check: the equipment has been collected from the counter and
the loan is really closed (Emprestimo.status goes from
AGUARDANDO_BAIXA to CONCLUIDO, and the time is stored in
Emprestimo.data_baixa). On screen it is the baixa física.
It is here — and only here — that the device becomes available for somebody else to pick up. The return on the tablet does not do that.
Pickup
The moment the person takes the equipment (Emprestimo.data_retirada, with the
device moving to EMPRESTADO). On screen it is the retirada.
The path is enrollment number → category → item → confirmation. Only available items appear, and only for an active record.
Portal
The screen on the tablet at the counter, at /. It is where students and
teachers do the pickup and the return.
It has no login: identification is the enrollment number, typed at every use. The tablet is shared, so the session ends at the end of each visit.
Profile
What the person is at the institution: Estudante (Student) or Professor
(Teacher) (Pessoa.perfil). On screen it is the Perfil.
It is the only database field stored exactly in the form it appears on screen. It is used to filter and count records in the admin panel; it does not change what the person can pick up.
Retirement (inactive item)
The permanent removal of a device from circulation, without deleting it
(Equipamento.status = INATIVO). On screen it is Inativo, and the action is
Inativar (Deactivate).
The item stops appearing on the portal — it does not even enter the availability counts — and stays in the inventory list, in gray, with a button to reactivate it.
Equipment is not deleted because the loan history points at it: deleting the device would take the record of whoever used it last semester along with it. That is why the icon for the action is a crossed circle and not a trash can — a trash can promises the record disappears, and it does not.
Maintenance is the opposite: temporary, and for repair.
Return
The declaration by whoever is returning: the person says on the tablet that
they have handed the equipment over and left it on the counter
(Emprestimo.status goes from ATIVO to AGUARDANDO_BAIXA, and the time is
stored in Emprestimo.data_devolucao). On screen it is the devolução.
Returning does not free the device for somebody else. What does that is the physical check-in, at the front desk. The distance between the two moments is the shelf time.
Return queue
The list of loans in AGUARDANDO_BAIXA, waiting for the
physical check-in. It is the first screen of the
admin panel, and each row is a physical task: pick the device up
from the counter and check the asset tag. On screen it is the
Fila de Devoluções.
Session
The period during which the screen knows who it is talking to. The two halves of the system handle this in opposite ways:
- On the portal there is no login: the session starts when the enrollment number is typed and ends at the Sair (Exit) button or on its own, after two minutes with no touch. The tablet is shared, and a forgotten open screen would let the next person pick equipment up in somebody else's name.
- In the admin panel the session comes from the administrator login and lasts eight hours — one shift. It survives restarting the computer, and is ended by the Sair do painel (Sign out of the panel) button.
Shelf time
The interval between the return declared on the tablet and the physical check-in done at the front desk — the time the device sat on the counter, invisible to the portal and to the inventory.
It is the measure of the operational bottleneck of the system: while it lasts, there is equipment physically free that nobody can take.
Status
The column that says where something is in its life. The word has two owners, and what it means depends on the screen. On screen it is the Situação:
| Where | Possible values |
|---|---|
| Inventário (Inventory) tab — of a device | Disponível (Available), Emprestado (On loan), Manutenção (Maintenance) or Inativo (Inactive) |
| Pessoas (People) tab — of a record | Ativo (Active) or Inativo (Inactive) |
The two Inativo share a name and have different rules: on a device it is retirement and it locks while there is an open loan; on a person it is an inactive record, it is allowed with an open loan, and it blocks the pickup only.
The full tour of the statuses is in States and transitions.