Lots of meetings this week - lots of discussions but not a huge amount of new stuff to talk about....
PeopleNet and PACOS
About half of Tidewater's units have been updated and I have been adding in more and more functionality on this end. Todd's work on Import and Export with the Custom Data Center has cut my data updating efforts in half. It will allow us to add generic functionality to customers in minutes rather than hours. Testing this week has focused more on displaying pre-defined messages to the driver when an event takes place and also handling more of the data updates smoothly. For example, right now, when the user defines a shipment, we use the Load Date and Time as the date/time for Arriving, Arrived and Departed. Now, a company can define default differences so the Arriving date/time might be an hour before the load date/time and the departing is an hour after. Of course, they can modify these custom fields on a per shipment/stop basis but being able to define the default is a big help.
Some other useful features in the PeopleNet link now is that we are saving all of their Position updates in a separate file that can be viewed by right-clicking on a tractor and choosing View History. (of course, this list is customizable with the Customizer!) Tidewater now has a PACOS Dispatch Screen set that is being customized to show the status of loads as defined in PACOS as well as what the Dispatcher is doing.
PTC
Melody and I spent one day this week in a meeting with Lynne Parsons from PTC, one of our Tanker customers. Everything she wants we already do with just a few exceptions but one of the neat things we discussed was the creating of a "Shift Planner" utility. This would essentially turn Manifest Planning into an intelligent activity with a "board" by which dispatchers could drag and drop shipments onto a driver, re-arrange them and see how things would work out. Then when they were satisfied with the assignments, they would be able to hit a button and all of the shifts would be planned.
Intrigued? I hope to have some initial ideas on this drawn up early next week.
Cool Tools
One of the things I did with our PTC meeting as well as our Monday meeting was use a tool called Mind Manager. This is a "mind-mapping" tool - one where you write down ideas as they come up and it automatically groups them into categories. You saw some of the results in the Minutes I was able to send out a few minutes after our meeting ended. But this tool also exports to PowerPoint and to Web-pages as well. To get an idea of the web-based output, check out http://www.mtihorizon.com/maps/pacos/.
I'll be using the Mind Manager tool as we move forward with our Strategic Planning sessions so we can actually track what was actively said.
Another tool we are starting to use is something called iCreate that converts a Powerpoint file into a more web-based presentable format. Instead of having to use videos and such, presentations can be done much quicker. Check out http://www.mtihorizon.com/shows/sample/ for more details.
Vision Statement
And the current front-runner for vision statement is:
Assure MTI's success by providing quality transportation technology and superior customer service in a productive rewarding work environment.
// posted by Andrew MacNeill @
8:49 AM
EDI This Week
This week saw the successful, import, mapping and booking of EDI Load Tenders (204). In addition, a new "activity notification" client was developed to provide more flexibility in who receives EDI alerts and under what conditions they receive them.
Here's a quick rundown:
Notifications can be setup based on every combination of Document Type (ie. 210, 204, etc) and/or trading partner. This can be done on a "per user" basis. The engine that generates the notifications takes advantage of Windows Networking to utilize user "groups". For example: the administrator defines a user group named "Ford 204" and adds 2 of 5 dispatchers to that group.
Then in the notification engine, he sets the "Ford 204" group to receive notifications for Ford 204's only. The engine supports multiple means of notification, ie. a flag file, email and broadcast message. In this case, he sets flag file and email. Without boring you with all the details, the notification engine will ask Windows for a list of users in the "Ford 204" group and then create a flag file for each of them. In the case of a group, sending email requires that the "group" have an email address. In this case, the admin created a mail distribution group named ford204@domain.com. The notification engine sends a single email to that address. The mail server sends it to each member of the group.
Back to the notification client. Examining flag files in more detail, the flag file actually contains a message indicating the type of activity that has occurred. In this example it would be something like:
EDI activity for the following document types, may require your attention.
Ford 204
Click here to dismiss this message.
The notification client runs in the system tray on the users computer. Whenever it sees a flag file, it reads the contents and then displays the message in a window very much like an Instant Messenger activity popup. The window will display for a user configurable amount of time. If not clicked within that time, it "slides" off the bottom of the screen. The user also has an option to play a sound when a notification message displays or times out.
The former EDI used a service in dispatch to notify the user of 204 activity. Besides a lack of flexibility, it is currently not possible to have the notification popup at "any" time. In other words, the check for activity is made based on a service "hook" and the hook does not occur at regular intervals. The new notification client is able to notify the user even if they are not running a Horizon application.
File Transfer Services
First I would like to thank everyone for getting the ball rolling on the quality assurance and testing of the file transfer services. Your feedback is much appreciated.
Here are some of the changes that have been put forth this week. The Make Bill service will now have its own Bill at Point property. Initially we had set this up to use the already existing Dispatch option ‘Bill at Pickup/Delivery/Break Bulk”, adding a new setting for Booking. Because Break Bulk is setup to use the letter B, Dale pointed out that it may cause some confusion among our customers about what to use for Booking, which by the way we were assigning the letter K. Now that the Bill at Point property is in Make Bill we will instead have a drop down list of options:
Bill at: Booking
Pickup
Delivery
Break Bulk
When the service is first loaded into Dispatch, the existing Bill at Pickup/Delivery/Break Bulk option will be used to populate the new Make Bill property.
Yesterday I sent an e-mail to everyone asking for advice on whether to create a line item when a rate for the shipment was not found. The service has now been updated to not create a line item in this case.
Earlier this week Bob was able to successfully test pickup and delivery check calls sent from Circle of Service to ensure shipments were billed appropriately. Bob also informed me that some customers are using a small service that prevents the file transfer from proceeding if EDI 214 transactions are found, and have not been exported. Basically what this service did was add the validation to front of the File Transfer routine. We have now incorporated this functionality into the Dispatch History Move service. A new property for the service, “Check for outstanding EDI 214 activity before transferring”, has been added. The default value is initially determined by the whether the EDI 214 translator exists or not.
Dale noted a problem yesterday where a trip went to history before being imported into Trip Interface. I have received a copy of the data from Dale, and plan to debug the process today. Other than that I believe we are in good shape on these services.
New Driver Compliance hours of service
We will hopefully get some feedback out of Fanelli in the near future on the new hours of service which come into effect on Jan 4th. Chuck informed Mark Laurusevage, Fanelli’s Director of Safety earlier this week that they could test out the new regulations now.
That's it for this week.
// posted by Andrew MacNeill @
8:13 AM
All entries are FC (no rating will take place)
PBLDESC is Description
PBLAMOUNT is the Rate and the Amount
PBLWEIGHT is the Weight
PBLPIECES is the Pieces
// posted by Andrew MacNeill @
6:33 AM
Horizon Form Validation can be used for so many things including features you wouldn't normally associate as a validation.
The typical examples are things like "Make sure this field is filled in" or make sure the load was booked within a valid date range.
But using small pieces of code, MTI can automate other aspects of Form Validation.
For example, let's say you put in comments into the customer file that you want your dispatcher to see.
The following rule in form validation might display a message to say "Check the notes"
NOT EMPTY(lkup("MFCUST","CUSTNO",mcustno,"COMMENT2","","","","MFCUST"))
But now Form Validation supports "text merge" so you can actually display the message. How?
In the rule message, put the text that you want Horizon to evaluate within << and >>. Example:
<<lkup("MFCUST","CUSTNO",mcustno,"COMMENT2","","","","MFCUST")>>
Now when the warning fires, the actual comment pops right up to the user!
