Services Portal 2.9 Release Notes

These release notes describe the new features and enhancements for Services Portal applications (QTRACS, Performance Monitoring, Trailer Tracks, Fleet Mapping, GeoServices, and Administration) in Services Portal 2.8, which released in the U.S. September 24, 2016.

For previous release notes, click here.

Performance Monitoring Changes

Support for vehicles that consume Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) was originally made available in Services Portal 2.7. This initial support provided for the processing and storage of CNG extract data along with the necessary changes to convey this data via ESS, but the UI was not updated to display the data. As part of SP 2.9, the UI now fully supports and displays CNG data in a similar fashion as diesel data.

Note that:

  • A driver or vehicle is never permanently associated with, or defined as, a single fuel type because a driver may have driven both CNG and diesel equipped vehicles. Likewise, a vehicle may be capable of using both CNG and diesel, or have been converted from one fuel type to another (i.e. the vehicle was diesel and was converted to CNG).
  • Throughout the UI, CNG fuel efficiency metrics are displayed in the same unit of measurement as diesel fuel efficiency metrics. CNG is reported in DGEs or diesel gallon equivalents.
  • CNG support at the UI was implemented so that it remains hidden until a customer has at least one CNG-equipped vehicle that begins to report data, at which point the UI pages dynamically detect the presence of this data and reveal the CNG-related data as applicable.
  • CNG and Diesel fuel efficiency data is never comingled.

The following table summarizes the areas of the UI that were changed with SP 2.9 to accommodate the display of CNG data:

Area

Description of Change

Performance Monitoring Company Settings

Support was added for CNG Fuel Efficiency Parameters which are used to drive various UI queries. These parameters will default to reasonable values. Interested CNG users may decide to tune them to values that are specific to their fleet.

Dashboard

Performance Monitoring customers with at least one vehicle in their fleet that is reporting CNG data will automatically see the new CNG Fuel Efficiency key measures on the Performance Monitoring Dashboard. Each of the existing diesel Fuel Efficiency key measures are complimented by a new corresponding key measure for CNG. These additional CNG key measures are displayed whenever the customer has any CNG data, regardless of whether the results contain data from CNG-equipped vehicles:

  • CNG Fuel Efficiency
  • CNG Driving Fuel Efficiency
  • CNG Moving Efficiency
  • CNG Total Fuel

Performance Details Page

The existing Mileage metrics on the Performance Details panel are now supported for CNG-equipped vehicles:

  • Fuel Type
  • Fuel Mileage
  • Driving Mileage
  • Moving Mileage

Queries

The online Queries were adjusted as applicable to optionally display data from CNG-equipped vehicles.  The system now requires the user to specify whether the user wants to see a diesel query (the default) or a CNG query.

Charts

The Charts tool was adjusted as applicable to support the CNG Fuel Efficiency Metrics and CNG Key Performance Targets in a similar manner as the Queries.

Reports

Three new reports (analogous to existing reports) are available to customers with CNG-equipped vehicles:

  • CNG Economy Factors
  • CNG Efficiency
  • CNG Combined Analysis

Combined Analysis Report Fixes

The Performance Monitoring Dashboard, the Idling Analysis Report, and the Combined Analysis report are all attempting to show/convey the same 5 Idling Key Metrics:

  • Total Idle%
  • Operating Idle%
  • Intertrip Idle%
  • Short Idle%
  • Extended Idle%

All five of the calculations behind the Idling metrics were in unison except for the Total Idle% on the Combined Analysis report, so the Total Idle% calculation on the Combined Analysis report was tweaked to match the rest of the system.

It was also discovered that the Combined Analysis report was referencing extracts which had been marked as bad by the user so the Combined Analysis report was fixed to properly omit extracts that are invalidated by an administrator.

Trailer Tracks Changes

TT150 and Data Sharing

Historically, Trailer Tracks has supported a Data Sharing feature which allows customers to instruct the system to temporarily provide copies of T2 return traffic to other Trailer Tracks customers (i.e. non-owners). Doing so provides trailer status/visibility to non-owners. This data sharing feature was extended to also allow sharing of information from the TT150 and functions in the same manner as the T2 data sharing feature in both the UI and web service calls.

Removal of the Two-Minute Status Reporting Interval

With SP 2.9, it is no longer possible to configure a two-minute status reporting interval across any untethered Trailer Tracking product (TT150/200/210).

The chart below lists the parameters that are no longer configurable at the two-minute interval.

Product

Parameter Description

 TT150

External Power On Status Report Interval

 TT150

External Power Off Status Report Interval

 TT200/210

Status Report Interval

 TT200/210

Queued Status Report Interval

 TT200/210

In Trip Status Report Interval

Event History UI Enhancements

SP 2.9 provides several user experience improvements with respect to viewing a trailer's event history from within the History tab on the Trailers page:

  • A new two-line detail view provides additional information and is formatted to match the Events query. The view is dynamically scalable based on screen size. More columns are shown if possible.
  • A new 'maximize' button was added to allow the user to suppress the map and use the entire right side of the page to show the event listing.
  • The following terms have been updated for events originating from an Omnitracs-equipped device in a tractor:

Previous Terminology

New Terminology

Omni Position

Tractor Position

Omni Connect

Connect

Omni Disconnect

Disconnect

Trailer List CSV Enhancements

With SP 2.8, we attempted to clarify the connect/disconnect state and associated timestamps on the Trailer List CSV.

Here are the two columns that were shown along with some sample data:

Connected/Disconnected

Omnitracs Connect/Disconnect Time

connected

03/28/16 20:17:29  EDT

disconnected

04/01/16 21:57:06  EDT

Still, it remained difficult to tell whether a trailer's connect state was derived from a true connection to an Omnitracs In-Cab device, or simply via the detection of external power to a generic source.

Therefore, SP 2.9 supplants the existing two columns above with a new set that more clearly conveys the trailer's connect status and how/when it was derived:

Connect Status

Connect Type

Last In-Cab Connect/Disconnect Time

Ext Power

Last Ext Power Connect/Disconnect Time

connected 

In-Cab

03/28/16 20:17:29  EDT

Yes

03/29/16 19:17:29  EDT

connected

Ext Power

 

Yes

04/01/16 21:57:06  EDT

disconnected

 

03/01/16 21:57:06  EDT

No

06/01/16 21:57:06  EDT

QTRACS Changes

Vehicle Information Enhancements

The Vehicle Details panel was modified to include three new information fields: VIN, License Plate Number, and License Plate Jurisdiction. These new fields can be viewed or edited on the General tab under the Identification and License Plate sections.

In addition, the UA and Device Type was moved from the Identification section of the General tab to the Identification section of the About Device tab and the About Device tab had section headers added to better organize and display the information on that tab.

Alert Page UI Updates

The new Alerts UI provides the same functionality and features as before but in an easier to use UI and in a similar manner as the other QTRACS pages. The Alerts page in QTRACS was updated to mirror the changes that had previously been added to several other pages in QTRACS. The new Alerts page contains an Alerts list on the left side similar to the vehicle or driver lists. The Alerts list allows filtering by user, status, or application, and allows searching by date ranges. Now when users select on an alert from the alert list it opens in the right pane instead of navigating to a new window.

Mexican Cities Update

It was discovered that there were numerous errors with respect to the reserved Mexican towns used to calculate proximity references on the Services Portal including the lack of postal codes, over 1,000 missing towns, incorrect city and town categorizations, and incorrect latitude and longitude coordinates for several towns. Therefore, a complete and updated data set for Mexican cities and towns was added with SP 2.9.

Fixes/Minor Enhancements

The following fixes and minor enhancements were included in the Services Portal 2.9 release.

QTRACS

  • Added Extended Sleepy as a possible selection for default message priority.
  • Fixed an issue with the text input box when creating a new message in Firefox.
  • Updated the label Enhanced Canadian Cellular Roaming to also include Mexico.

Trailer Tracks

  • Corrected an issue when editing the Trailer Specs so that the model year now says unknown instead of 0 if no changes are made to the field.
  • Improved the editing of monitoring plans so that errors are displayed before confirmation of changes or warnings.
  • Corrected an issue with the more options link on the Trailers page that would cause the page to malfunction.
  • Corrected an issue where the required sensors portion of monitoring plan details displayed incorrectly for the TT150.

Miscellaneous

  • Fixed an issue that was causing the metric display of odometer readings to be inaccurate in some cases.
  • Improved CSV reports to support inclusion of landmarks with an apostrophe in their name.
  • Fixed an issue with the display of metric units in the header of the Landmarks CSV report.
  • CSV reports that show trailer or vehicle speed and direction have been changed to show a blank for the direction instead of “unknown” when the speed is zero.
  • Fixed an issue with the latitude and longitude for St. Adolphe de Dudswell, QC, Saint Eugene, QC, and Saint Eugene, ON so that the locations for these proximity references is not correct.
  • Fixed an issue in Internet Explorer where tool tips from hovering over an item would sometimes disappear prematurely.

Previous Releases