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Friday, December 12, 2003

FW: Friday Support Wrap-Up 

Message
As everyone, we were busy following up on and closing support calls this week.  In addition, I tried to do a lot of testing on the file transfer services, so that we might be ready to install that next week.  We aren’t quite there yet however.

 

Support/licensing invoices were mailed for Jan and Feb renewals.

 

We believe that we have determined the cause of Mabe’s Eden to Edenton problem, which is PC Miler 12 itself.  That is a very old version.  They have v. 17 but had not loaded it.  They are working on getting v. 17 loaded.  I am not aware of any other critical issues.

 

 

 


FW: Friday Development wrap-up 

EDI
 
On the EDI front. Considerable progress was made this week on 214 implementation. The 214 user interface is complete. Integration with Dispatch is mostly complete. What remains in Dispatch is to get the 214 dialog to appear everywhere it needs to and when needed. Most of that has been done but Todd is still working on it.
 
Without getting into too much detail, previously the dialog would appear too many times and it was aggravating the users to continually have to click cancel. Attempting to change the previous method would very likely disrupt EDI operations for most of our customers. This issue was one of many that were taken into account during design.
 
Bob is going to give a quick demo of EDI on Monday as it applies to the Horizon user interface. We are not going to get into the details of how we capture information, we are going to show how the typical user will interact with EDI. The demo will be the first thing covered in Monday's meeting. We are going to keep it short, less than 15 minutes for the actual demo. We'll field questions for as long as we can stand <G>.
 
As a side note, every time I have spoken with Jerry Halstrand he has told me how impressed he is with our EDI implementation. Problems are always anticipated during the first implementation of a new product but this one has gone extremely well. We have not hit a single "wall" at any time. Every issue that did come up was very small. Jerry is eager to see the 214 work and with some luck, he may get to next week.
 
You will have a much better feel for Horizon EDI after the demo on Monday.
 
File Transfer Services
 
More testing was done and as a result, subsequent issues were rooted out.  Most of these issues have been taken care of and I believe things are shaping up really well.  Here's a list of what's new.
 
Make Bill service
 
1) New service properties to support backward compatibility with Custom Booking Billing options.  These options include Add Charge Estimate to Shipment Comments, Update Shipment Rate with Total Charge, and Do Not Override Non-Zero Shipment Rates.
2) A new Recalculate button on the Edit Charges screen.  This will allow users to recalculate charges after adding a new detail line or modifying an existing one.
3) Fixed a problem where the mileage lookup was not checking whether the Customer was set to use Practical miles or not.
4) Custom Booking was updated so that the Multi-Product entry screen is shown before the shipment is rated.  It was also updated to show users a message when they attempt to access the Custom Booking Billing options.  The message indicates that the options are overriden when the Make Bill service is active.
 
Settlements Transfer
1) Fixed a problem with the service not closing all Dispatch files when it finished processing.  The service was also updated to ensure it was able to get shared access to Dispatch before proceeding.
 
Dispatch History Transfer
2) An important fix to check the delivery status of a manifest before sending related shipment data to history.
 
Trip Interface Transfer
3) An update to the service to include the # of exceptions found during processing.  This update also involved a required change to Trip Interface.
 
What's left to be done?
 
1) Need to update the Quick Dispatch service so that its Bill at Delivery option is overriden when Make Bill is active.
2) A couple of small fixes related to the new Make Bill service properties.
 
MTI Dev Team
devteam@meltech.com
 
 
 

December 9 Tech Marketing Wrap-Up 

What I Planned To Do

Clean up open calls

Update Strategic Plan

Build Employee Orientation Plan

Get More Mapping Proof of Concepts Down

What I Did

Fixed issues with PACOS Integration

This involved some issues with File Transfer as well as testing with the new less than half mile server.

Some other problems existed with conflicts with File Maintenance that have also been cleaned up.

More options have been added and a full write-up on implementation is coming later today.

Cleaned up open calls

On Monday, I had 75 calls that had not been touched in over 3 months (non issue/non-followup).

This morning, I have none that are over three months and 24 that are older than one month.

Perhaps more to the point of what everyone has done, there were a total of 797 open calls (including issue and followups) at the beginning of the month. There are now only 416, including Open-Issue and Follow-up calls. There are really only 92 open calls.

Attempted to sync Plan with Project

Created first draft of Orientation Plan with Susan

This will be sent in a separate email for discussion purposes on Monday.

Designed Virtual Office scenario

This was really done to highlight some ways of cutting costs down and for identifying remote needs. However, in doing this, I had created a SharePoint server on my system for MTI purposes. This was a way of making it easy to find documents and common schedules. It is also what was used earlier when we were doing telemarketing.

Feel free to visit it at http://24.192.157.161:86

If you are prompted for a logon, let me know.

 

Updating E-Notification Viewer being used by Waccamaw

·  Allows for regular purge of data

2.5 Hours with Accurate going through reports

·  User Confusion

There were too many options available in their Report Writer so I removed options not necessary for their operations. This may be something we want to do for other customers who have purchased the report writer.

Created a Move To Timer that allows auto selection for 4 Truckers

Updated data at 4 truckers

This is more work with the Aurora Import as Eric slid back his timewindow from 5 days to 15 days, which imported in a slew of older shipments again.

Fixed problem with Aether Outbound Stops

This took a while but now stops should be going through perfectly. Now we'll move to getting their stuff working like PACOS.

Initiated conversation with MapTuit regarding their mapping ASP software

There is an NDA pending but this could be valuable. They already link to two of our competitors.

Presentation on Aether with Corriher

We couldn't get connected to PDQ for this demo so it was more of a quick walk through. We will be scheduling a better demo with them later on.

Email to Rudd looking for Data

Rudd won't be doing anything until the new year but we want to get some real data set up so we can do a kick-*ss demonstration for the first of the New Year.

Discussion on Reporting

Initiated a discussion on reporting with Todd as to how we can make this work more seamlessly in moving the building of reports out to more people, instead of just being with one person.

One idea being tossed around is having the initial discussion being handled by myself and then turning the requests over to Susan, Bob and/or Development.

This is still in discussion phases.

What Didn't Get Done

Mapping

Some work was done but not a lot. The approach is going to be as follows for Mapping Analysis:

Custom reports will be built in the Horizon Report Writer.
When the user runs the report, it will prompt them for some options for mapping and then display the map.

This will allow anyone to build custom mapping reports for analysis of lanes, revenue, profitability, whatever they want.

What's Up For Next Week

Mapping

 

·  MapPoint

·  MapTuit Proof of Concepts

Further Plans on Reporting

First Draft of Employee Orientation Program Sections

Peoplenet Implementation at 4Truckers

Finalizing Details on PACOS/Implementation

Update Docs and Demo Data

What Issues are coming from other areas?

None. I've had to be grabbed for some support aspects and other discussions but nothing too big. Something I really happening is the need for more presentation steps and demo data to be found in various locations. That is something I have on my agenda for next week.

What Should Everyone Else Know?

I think everything is covered here. I haven't done much else except as noted.

 


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