Friday, November 28, 2003
Friday development wrap-up
I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.
File Transfer Services
This week we have pushed ahead with testing and quality assurance on the File Transfer Services. Here’s a list of what’s new this week.
Make Bill
- Users are reminded to restart Dispatch when changing the "Bill shipments at" property.
- New properties mirroring what is available in the Billing options of Custom Booking. You can now specify which columns should appear when editing bill detail charges and whether you want charges recalculated after editing details. The default settings for these properties are pulled from Custom Booking, if the service is installed.
- Resolved an issue where dropping tractor/driver and/or trailer/shipment was being mistakenly seen as a Delivery check call.
- Fixed a problem with the service not pulling in detail charges for stops, surcharges, and discounts correctly.
Dispatch History Transfer
- The service now checks for links to Freight Billing, Trip Settlements, and Trip Interface real-time before running the process. Before the service had properties for this, which we disabled, since we already have Dispatch options to determine this.
- Fixed a problem where the service was sending check calls from empty manifests to history before they had flowed to linked applications.
- The service now checks to see if another user is executing the process before running. This is similar to what the Settlements Transfer service does.
Settlements Transfer
- Temporary files created by the service are now removed when the service finishes processing.
- Just a note about this service and the Trip Interface Transfer service. They both have a “Lookup miles” property that is equivalent to the “Look up mileages in Dispatch (Y/N)?” general option. Turning this option off may result in mileage exceptions.
Horizon Dispatch
- The File Transfer menu will be hidden if the customer has all four File Transfer services loaded.
A note on the File Transfer services and new EDI development. We are using the latest version of Visual FoxPro for these developments, version 8. We have begun to use new version numbers starting with the number 2 to avoid any confusion over the currently distributed VFP 7 applications. For example, the current version of Dispatch available for download via the Horizon Installation Manager is 1.6.639. A VFP 8 version of Dispatch will have a version number like 2.0.2. We are slowly but surely making our way to a complete swith to VFP 8. I have also created new directories on the server to store updated versions for testing, R:\Horizon7Upds and R:\Horizon8Upds.
On a different note, there have been some calls recently from customers regarding errors like index order not set, and problems with typematic searches not working. I have tracked down the problem to the Master Files service. A recent update to the service improved the handling of new fields being added, but this routine failed to set the proper order in the master file tables, when reopening them. This is an important requirement for Dispatch. I have a fix ready, and hopefully we can get this tested and uploaded for customers on Monday. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Have a great weekend.
Marketing/Tech Weekly Wrap-Up
Hope everyone had a GREAT Thanksgiving!
Because of the holiday, one would think this week was relatively quiet - not so much on our front.
Mobile Communications
A great feature in PeopleNet PACOS allows companies to specify specific forms (macros) to pop-up on the driver's device when they arrive at a location. Our support for this feature is really cool - companies can set up global forms that pop-up for Pickup, Stop or Delivery events, they can set up customer specific forms for each of those events or it can be configured specifically for individual shipments and stops! So let's say a company normally doesn't need the name of who signed for a delivery but they have one customer who insists on it? They can set that up so that when a driver delivers a load to that location, the form that pops-up requests that name! Very cool
Aether Outbound Assignment Messages are now working at PDQ! This has been a long delayed project due to scheduling difficulties on both ends but earlier this week, we were able to confirm that the messages were going out properly! Now we'll be tying the messages to the regular Send Assignment that is built into Horizon.
Implementations
4 Truckers is going live next week with our Aurora Import (which is managed by Translator and the new File Converter tool). Note that in their new scenario, we are creating Unprocessed Pros at the same time as we are importing the shipments. These unprocessed pros will have full detail as well. On 4Truckers side, they will be going live with PeopleNet PACOS for Jan 1 as well!
I had a meeting with Accurate on Wednesday which outlined many of their ongoing implementation issues. A lot of these things stem from preconceptions they have about where information is and when it moves over. Susan and I have been trying to identify some ways of making this a little easier to understand. However, we made a lot of headway with them. This may be something we face quite often when dealing with smaller companies (less than 10 trucks - a market we have not targeted in the past).
I spoke with Waccamaw about their implementation of e-mail notification. They are really excited about all the great features in this product but made some suggestions. I will be building a "Notification Viewer" tool that allows a user to view the shipment notifications that have gone out, make minor adjustments to the email and then resend. After that, these guys will be a great reference quote for this feature!
Company Wide
I'll let Chuck chime in on the details but Melody, Chuck and I had some meetings on planning that will help set a good focus to our work in the coming year. We also are setting in motion some international partners for Horizon.
Got a load of feedback on the Make Bill presentation I sent out to everyone this week - thanks! Since I got so much feedback, I can only discern it was because you were actually able to watch the whole thing and make sense of it - which is great! The iCreate tool will be used to highlight a lot of online training on Horizon and document procedures for customers. I'll be sending out a list of each one as they go out!
New PeopleNet feature: Ability to specify arrived driver messages (that pop-up when driver arrives at a location) on a per shipment, per stop, per customer
All of these settings refer to the respective Form ID defined in PeopleNet forms.
A setting named Default xx Form ID (where xx is PU, Stop or Del) is now used in Settings to identify default company-wide settings.
Individual customer specific (PU, Stop or Del) forms may be set up using the Custom Data Viewer. The internal fields are CPUFORM, CSTOPFORM and CDELFORM.
Shipments also have their own CPUFORM and CDELFORM and Stops have a CSTOPFORM.
The logic for implementing is that if the shipment or stop has a specified form, that form ID will be used.
If not, the customer's related specific form will be used.
If no form is specified, then the company default form will be used.
What does this mean to a company?
Really big customizable benefits!
The company can have forms set up for general use and others for more specific purposes, such as high profile customers, who require more information or who receive different products.
The generic forms may be used company wide (if at all) and then when you book the shipment, we can actually specify other forms for other purposes.
Let's take for example a company that mixes Tanker and regular OTR work.
The generic forms may be specific to OTR work, so it may prompt the driver on Delivery only for who signed for the delivery. No other forms may be used.
Now, whenever a shipment is being picked up from Customer X, the company may need to know who loaded the shipment. So they would specify another form as the Pickup form for Company X.
Shipment 54621 is a tanker load, which may have different gross and net gallons being delivered to Company Z. So when the shipment is booked, the special form may be specified as the Delivery Form for that shipment.
All handled within the confines of the Horizon PeopleNet solution.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Date Specific Surcharges
Revised version of Effective Surcharges now allows you to specify what codes the surcharges will apply against on a DATE specific range.
By default, if the cRateCodes Column is left empty, it does them all but you could set it up so that between one date range, it bills against PC and MI.
And then the next date range it applies to something else.
The other real benefit of Effective Surcharges is that you can use ANY code you want. You are no longer limited to the X codes for surcharges.
