Work Order Count and Fill Rate for Event/Data in Corridor Defintion

With the latest update of TrakIT, we've made a slight addition to the event and data view in the corridor definition.

The tables now include the number of work orders where the event / data field is used as well as the fill rate in percentage.

The Fill Rate is defined as the percentage of events/data that are not empty and not "TBA". This gives the administrator a very good overview of fields that are rarely being used and these can either be deactivated or removed entirely.

For any questions or clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.

Improve your Data Quality

It is quite common for users to miss updating some fields in TrakIT. These could be header fields, events or data fields. This leads to incomplete shipment data, resulting in inaccurate or incomplete reporting to customers and others.

With the latest update of TrakIT, we've implemented a new feature to help improve data quality. Events in a corridor can now require other data fields to be populated before TrakIT will allow the event to be populated. This can be set for each event independently via the Corridor Definition page.

For example, you can specify that the event "ETA Vessel" can only be populated once the name of the vessel has been entered in the data field. Or, you can specify that the event "Loaded on Truck" requires that the Transporter has been specified in the header.

Once a requirement is set, TrakIT will not allow an event to be populated with a date or "NA" until the requirement is met. It is, however, still possible to populate the event with "TBA".

Other Changes

These are some of the other changes in this update:

1. The size of Item List field for Data fields has been increased to 500 characters to allow for longer lists.
2. When performing a bulk update via email, you can now specify and additional keyword "IgnoreSequence" (without space) in the subject line to disable sequence checking when updating events. This will work only for users with "PowerUser" role or above.

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.

Zipped Reports and Mandatory Header Fields

This new update of TrakIT bring the following features among others:

1) Zipped Reports

In the last update of TrakIT, we updated the main Excel component that generates Excel reports. Unfortunately, this has caused some false positives on some email filters for a few customers that caused the Excel reports to be removed from the email. Oddly enough, the emails were let through if the Excel files were zipped and attached.

For such instances, we have implemented a zip feature on Custom, Advanced and SQL reports. When creating the subscriptions for these reports, a "Zip Report" option is now available. When selected, the attachment file is zipped into the standard .zip file format.

Please note that the report will be zipped only when sent via email. Previewing the report within TrakIT will not generate a zip file.

2) Mandatory Header Fields

In many instances, users forget to populate important header fields such as Carrier, Origin Depot,  etc. when creating work orders. To prevent this, we've added new functionality within the corridor definition whereby Admins can select which fields from the work order header should be mandatory when creating work orders.

Go to Admin > Corridor Definitions, select a corridor and then select the "Mandatory Header Fields" section. A list of header fields is displayed (not all) where you can select the ones you want to be mandatory when creating work orders. Remember to click 'Save' once done. The "Shipper/Receiver" field is always mandatory.

3) Create Work Order Page Redesign

The page for creating new shipments has undergone a slight re-design. It now uses tabs to prevent users from having to scroll down too much. The corridor selection has been moved to the top and the user must select the corridor before anything else is shown.

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.

"New and Improved" Delay Tracking

With the latest update of TrakIT, The 'Container Tracking' module has changed to Delay Tracking with the addition of one major feature.

Previously, when a user populated an event in a work order that was designated as a ‘Container Tracking Entry Event’, the container was added to the list of the active containers (if not already there). Thereafter, TrakIT calculated the allowed and actual days as well as the total cost until the time the container "exited" the tracking. The issue with this was that TrakIT could track only one kind of a charge with one container. It was not possible to track the same container for multiple types of charges.

A new field called Tracking Type has been introduced. This field can take one of several types that are defined by System Administrators in Master Tables > Delay Tracking Type. Any number of Tracking Types can be added here. By default, the following are present:

All events that were previously set to trigger entry or exit from the 'Container Tracking' section will now trigger entry or exit for the 'Carrier' tracking type in the Delay Tracking page.

Administrators can now specify the trigger actions for any event based on the Tracking Type. A single event can trigger multiple entries for the same container into the Delay Tracking module.

As an example below, the 'Discharged' event will trigger Delay Tracking of both 'Carrier' and 'Port Storage'.

When the Discharged event is populated with a date in a work order, two entries of the container will be added to the Delay Tracking module - one for Carrier and one for Port Storage.

The delay slab rates and free days can be specified as usual via the Delay Tracking Costs section in the Corridor Definition.

The Delay Tracking page now has a new filter - Tracking Type

And the Tracking Type column is displayed as the first column.

It is possible to have multiple designated entry event and exit events in a corridor. You can have same containers multiple times for different ‘Tracking Types’.

As before, the rates, free days and exit work order number and date for a particular container entry can be modified by clicking on the 'Modify' action in the row menu.

Containers that are active in the Delay tracking module will also show up on a new tab in the corresponding work order for that container.

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.

More about Functions

Although users in TrakIT have different roles and responsibilities, they can make updates on all events or data fields in a work order if their role and location assigned allows them to.

However, in many circumstances, not all events should be update-able by a user who has access to a work order. For example, you might not want a user in sales updating events that are supposed to be updated by Operations.

With the help of ‘Functions’, Administrators can assign specific rights to events so that only the events or data which match a user's functions can allow the user to update them.

When an event or data field is assigned to one or more functions, only those users who are assigned to one or more matching functions can update that event or data field.

Functions are defined by System Administrators in Master Tables > Function Definitions.

Assigning functions happens in two steps:

1) First the event should have one or more functions assigned to it. As an example below, the 'Shipping Order Received' event can have as many functions as you want to assign. Select ‘Functions’ from the row menu in Corridor Definitions and then you will get complete list of functions.

2) We can assign functions to users via User Management. Assigning functions to a user can be done while creating user profile or by editing user profile. Users who are not assigned to functions, will not be able to edit event or data fields that are assigned to functions. They will, however, be able to view them. 

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.