Friday 31 July 2020

Extending Workflow Groups

Workflow Groups have been a little used feature in TrakIT. These basically help you organize workflows into logical groups. Every workflow created in TrakIT belongs to a group (by default, there a group called 'General').

With the latest update, we're expanding Workflow Groups to play a larger role in organization and display of workflows. The Workflow Groups now has it's own page where these can be defined - this page is only accessible by System Administrators.

Menu Organisation

Workflow Groups is now available under the Admin menu for System Administrators only.


The 'Operations' menu has now been renamed to 'Workflows' and the workflow groups now appear as sub-menus under it. This means that each workflow group has it's own page. The columns displayed on the table on each workflow group can be customized as required.


The Finance > Shipments sub-menu is now renamed to "Workflows" and it displays all the relevant workflow groups as tabs in the page. It is possible to disable tabs for specific workflow groups that don't need to be in the Finance module.



In upcoming updates, workflow groups will be linked to roles so that users only see workflow groups relevant to their roles.

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.




Wednesday 20 May 2020

Increase Automation, Productivity & Efficiency

Over the last many years, we have constantly been adding new features in TrakIT. Automation, Computed Fields, Query Reports & Asset Management to name a few. New features are usually accompanied with blog articles or news about them. Despite this, the information sometimes does not reach some clients and not everyone may not be aware of the new features.

We've decided to put together a list of productivity enhancing and time-saving features in TrakIT. Please go through these and feel free to start using them in TrakIT. If you need assistance, contact TrakIT Support and we'll be glad to help.


Asset Management

Did you know you can create and manage any kind of asset in TrakIT? Trucks, Trailers, Drivers, Office Equipment, Machinery, Contracts, or anything else that you can think of. Assets need not necessarily belong to you - they can belong to any Entity as well. And assets can be attached to work orders just as easily.


You can create any number of assets. You can also link assets to each other. For example - you could link a trailer and driver to a truck. This way, when a truck is attached to a work order, the linked assets are also automatically attached to the work order.

Assets can also be GPS enabled. For example, if your trucks have GPS enabled, you can update their locations manually or have TrakIT pull their locations from your GPS vendor automatically every x minutes. If you have portable GPS units, we can create an Asset Type for GPS Devices and these can be linked to the trucks where they are placed. See the present locations of all your assets on one map.


What's more, you can define any number of data fields to hold information about an asset - just like you do for a workflow. And when you attach an asset to a work order, any data fields in the asset that have the same code as data fields in the work order, get copied automatically. This is a really huge time saving feature when you need to enter the same information from an asset in many work orders.


Computed Fields


All TrakIT users are well aware of Events and Data. Events simply hold the dates for actions that happen (or future events). Data can hold a variety of information as numbers, text, lists, locations, hyperlinks and so on. Did you know that TrakIT can also have computed Data fields. These fields calculate their values based on formulas and can be derived from other Events or Data fields (even computed ones). 

Similar to how you can write formulas in Excel, you can write formulas for Computed fields. A simple example for a data field that calculates a discount is shown below:

$PRICE$ - ($PRICE$ * $DIS$ / 100)

PRICE and DIS refer to the codes of the data fields that hold the Price and Discount Percentage respectively - they just need to be surrounded by $ symbols. You can add expressions of any complexity and logic. TrakIT uses JavaScript to parse expressions. TrakIT can also use SQL queries for computed expressions. This means you can use any data anywhere in TrakIT to compute your data.

Computed fields can also use other computed fields as their source. The order of processing of computed fields happens in the serial order of the Data fields. The example below calculates the total amount for truck haulage depending on the rate type:


If this looks too complicated, just contact TrakIT Support, tell us what you need, and we will create the necessary computed data fields you need.


Automation with Event/Data Actions

Automation can drastically improve efficiency of any organisation. Automation can reduce delays, process orders faster, reduce employee or manual work dependency and even reduce head-count of employees. Like machines, TrakIT doesn't need to rest and can continuously monitor your shipments and take action based on parameters you set. 

All Events & Data fields defined in any workflow are capable of taking action based on specific conditions that can be set. We can trigger action when the event or data field changes (any change or specific values). For events, the trigger can happen in advance of any date or after a defined delay.

Once you've defined the action trigger, you can setup any of the following actions to happen:


Actions can update send emails, generate documents, send messages, notify people, update other data, events or event execute customized queries. For full details on actions, see the full Documentation.


Custom Dashboards


Because of the wide variety of the kinds of workflows that TrakIT manages, users sometimes need custom dashboard to get a clear picture on what is happening within the workflow(s). TrakIT supports the use of customized dashboard pages for your organisation based on the workflows, or roles of users. 

Any kind of dashboard can be created. If the information is present in TrakIT, we can create a dashboard out of it. These dashboards cannot be provided out-of-the-box as the requirement for each scenario is different and these have to be constructed for each requirement.

A couple of examples are shown below:




Please let us know your requirements and we'll be glad to create a dashboard for you.


API Connectivity & Interfaces

TrakIT's customisable architecture lends it to being versatile to connect with other systems. TrakIT exposes it's own extensive REST-based JSON API to connect with other systems. You can use TrakIT as an intelligent database for your own front-end system or other applications.

We can build interfaces with other systems - such as GPS Vendors, Port Authorities, Shipping lines, etc. We also support standard EDI-Fact interfaces and have in-built API and FTP exports.

Integration with Finance systems such as Quickbooks, Xero, Jurnal, Sage & Thalia are already available. New ones are being added all the time.

If you'd like to connect with an external system, just let us know and we'll get it done.


Conclusion

There are many, many more features in TrakIT, but writing about all would need a small book. If you have any challenges you would like to solve, please let us know and we'll do our best to solve it. None of the features in TrakIT cost anything extra.

Thanks for reading. Please reach out to TrakIT Support for any questions or guidance.


Tuesday 7 April 2020

Redesigned Form Definitions

Form Definitions in TrakIT are used to create HTML based forms and templates for generating a variety of documents for work orders, reports, invoices and many other uses. Previously, the form definitions page was within the Master Tables page and the editor layout was not optimal.

The Form Definitions page has now been re-designed as a separate page under the Admin menu. Forms have been divided as per the group they belong to.


Clicking on the form displays a preview/details of the form.


The Form preview displays an approximate layout of the form along with codes of fields that will be substituted with real data. The 'Workflows' tab displays a list of the workflow that the form is available in (applicable only for Work Order and Shipment forms). Global forms are automatically available in all workflows.

Clicking the 'Open Editor' button displays the Form Editor in a side-by-side format so you can preview the form on the right as you type in the HTML editor on the left.



Forms support dynamic and complex calculations as well (using Javascript coding). Please contact TrakIT Support if you need assistance in designing or creating forms for your organisation or workflow.


Monday 23 March 2020

Your Top Customers and Other Entities

We have updated the Top Entities report to include a trend-line for all entities displayed.

The trend line displays the number of work orders created each month for the entity over the last 24 months.





The peak values, lowest values and latest values are indicated with an orange dot.

For any questions or concerns, please contact TrakIT Support.

Tuesday 25 February 2020

Multi-Office Job Costing within a Shipment

There are many shipment workflows that are carried out by more than country or office. In such a case, each office has it's own job costing and profitability statement for the same shipment. TrakIT supports multi-office accounting within the same shipment. However, approval of the estimates and closing of the job was done at the shipment level.

In the upcoming update, each office involved in the shipment will be able to separately request, approve estimates and close the job for their own office only. And as currently, users cannot view accounts from offices they are not assigned to.

The above will be accomplished in a few steps:
  1. Remove Office field from Master Accounts
  2. Add 'Multi-Office Finance' flag on the workflow
  3. Add Office field at Workflow Account definitions
  4. Add Office field at Shipment Accounts

The above changes will make the job accounting system more flexible and allow the same account to be used in multiple offices. We will also be providing multi-office access for users that belong to shared teams and offices.

These changes will be implemented and released in the upcoming weeks. For any questions or clarifications, please contact TrakIT Support.