I have worked with qr and bar code scanners in bubble and understand how they work but I have a question.
If a product already has an existing qr or bar code which a bubble plug in or phone camera can scan, how can I then use that information in bubble to run a workflow if the barcode was not created by bubble in the first place
I like this question because a lot of people assume the barcode has to be generated inside Bubble for it to work, and that’s not really the case 
If a product already has a QR or barcode, what the scanner gives you is just the encoded value inside it. It doesn’t matter where it was created. Bubble doesn’t care about the origin — it just reads the string. So the real thing to figure out is what that barcode actually contains. Is it just a number? A SKU? A URL? Once you know that, you store that scanned value and then run a search in your database for a matching field. If a Product’s barcode field = scanned value → trigger whatever workflow you need. In other words, the barcode doesn’t need to be “made by Bubble.” It just needs to match something in your database so you can react to it. The key is making sure your DB structure is ready for that match. Once that’s in place, it’s pretty straightforward 
Fantastic - thank you for the response
@Rob_07 You don’t need Bubble to create the barcode. When you scan it, the plugin gives you the value as text. You can then use that text to search your database for a matching product and run any workflow based on that match.
