Several customers were asking for more control over what users are able to see and do inside the program, and the latest improvement to the application provides a solution.

Before describing the update, I'd like to make a quick introduction. Patrick Thurmod has joined our team as a web developer. He's located here at the DLT office in Kansas City. He will be sharing the responsibility of maintaining and improving the code and he's already been a big help. Patrick did a great deal of the coding for this update and almost all of the testing.

The application did allow users to be in groups before, but the functionality was very limited. Now every user belongs to a group and groups can be placed inside of other groups. There's no limit to the number of levels of group nesting, so we should be able to handle even the most complicated organizational structures.

When you create users now (or when you ask an admin to create them for you), you can set up permissions for the user. If you like, you can allow the user to only see the shipments that they themselves created. Or maybe they can view all shipments created by people in their group, but they can only edit their own shipments. You could also set up users who can see all shipments in the company, but can only edit shipments in their group. And you will probably want some users who can view and edit all shipments in the company. Before this update, all users could see all shipments in their company. So, all users will be given permission to view and edit all shipments initially. Customers who want their existing users changed to take advantage of the new permission system will need to request the change.

Admin users will be able to create users and groups in a newly designed form and rearrange users and groups by dragging and dropping. Customers with no admin access can simply email us a description of how they want their company set up.

Normal users will probably only notice one main change from this update. If their company has groups set up and the user has permission to view shipments in more than one of those group, then they will see a new link at the top of the Tracing page: "Groups". Hold your mouse over this word and you can drill down to the groups you have permission to view. Click on the name of a group and the list of shipments will update and only show shipments that belong to that group (and its sub-groups).

Permissions are also applied on the Reports page. The reports will only include information about shipments that the user has permission to view.

This update adds a feature that many people have been asking for: Online pickup requests. The only carriers we have set up at the moment are FXFE and FXFW. Now that the framework of the feature is built, we should be able to add more carriers without much trouble. For now, we'll be watching to see how this works out. Please send us any feedback you have after using online pickup requests.

Once you've created a BOL for a shipment using FXF, the list of BOL tools at the top of the detail page will now include "Pickup Request." Click the green "Pickup Request" link to begin. If your ship date is in the past, you'll see a message saying that it's too late to send a request. Otherwise, you'll see a list of fields that the carrier requires for a pickup request. Most of them will be filled out using the information you've already provided in the BOL. There may be some additional required fields to fill out and some optional fields. When you're ready, click Send and the request will be sent to the carrier. If all goes well, you'll get a confirmation number. Now follow the link at the top to go back to the shipment details page. You'll see that the confirmation number is now listed below the BOL tools line.

In order to cut down on unnecessary calls to the shipper when setting up a pickup (online or by phone), we now require a few more fields when you create a bill of lading. You'll have to enter a shipper phone number and contact name, as well as a ready time and closing time. The time fields have also been added to the address book. You can enter your opening and closing times in the address book to avoid having to repeat yourself. You will have to choose a ready time for each shipment, however.

As always, this release includes fixes for any bugs that we've found since the last release. Delay excuses were not getting saved properly. Adding items to a shipment during a Recalculation wasn't working in all web browsers. And, searching for a shipment by its PO# or SO# wasn't working. All of these and several smaller bugs and validation errors have been fixed.

The Address Book has been redesigned to handle large numbers of contacts and to make it easier to use. We can now import addresses from a csv file. Anyone interested in loading all of their addresses from one file, rather than typing them in one at a time, can contact us for the required file format and to arrange for the import.

If your address book contains less than 100 contacts, you'll still see them when you call up the address book from the Rate page. You'll be able to search by name or zip code. If you have more than 100 contacts in your address book, you won't see any contacts at first. You'll have to search and your contacts will be displayed for searches with less than 100 results. In either case, start typing a zip code or customer name and the results will update as you type. Press enter to select the first contact in the list, or use your up and down arrow keys to highlight another contact, then press enter to select it. You can also click on the contact with your mouse to select it.

The interface for adding, editing and deleting contacts, found in the Settings tab, has also been updated to handle more items. The list of contacts is now paged. 20 items will show on each page. Use the previous and next buttons to move through the list, or search the list to find a specific name or zip code. This section doesn't search as you type, so click search or press enter to start the search.

If you've ever run a service report, you may notice that many carriers seem to be falling short of their scheduled transit times. This week's update addresses two of the reasons for the low numbers in that report.

First, many shipments are not picked up on the day they're initially scheduled to ship. The tracking system has been expanded for several carriers to include their pick up date. When the application goes to the carrier's site to get the status of a shipment and the delivery date, it also records the pickup date if the carrier provides it. If the pickup date does not match the ship date on the BOL, an email is sent out to the creator of the BOL and anyone else who gets email notifications for that shipment. Recalculating the shipment will allow you to change the ship date if you want to. This could result in a different rate. Having the correct ship date on the BOL is going to help make the service report more accurate.

Second, a shipment often arrives late for reasons beyond a carrier's control. Weather, special equipment and appointment delivery are a few of the legitimate reasons for a delay. Now you can record that reason for a late shipment so that it doesn't count as late in the service report. Once a shipment is delivered and the tracking system determines that it took longer than the original service time estimate, you'll see a new item in the BOL tools on the shipment detail page. Go to the Tracing tab, click on the pro number of your shipment, then click Excuse delay. You'll see a list of possible reasons for the delay. "Not excused" is selected by default. If the shipment is excused, choose the reason or enter your own reason in the Other line and click Save. The excused shipments will no longer count as late when you run the service report.

Entering items for a shipment just got a little easier. When you choose a class for an item, the list of commodities is automatically limited to the commodities that match that class. Change the class back to blank if you want to see all of the commodities.

There are customers who use our application to get LTL rates, but then they need to create the BOL in some other software. In the past, if they wanted to enter that shipments and track it in our application, they would have to retype all of the information. We can now allow customers to import shipments from another program so that they can track them online and run reports. There are instructions for creating the xml import file here. We have an example xml file and an rng file which can be used to validate the xml file. The customer will need to contact us to set up some of the details.

While you're on the help page, you may notice that we've addes some negotiation tips. Following these tips when negotiating a tarrif with a carrier can save money.

Last week the Tracing page was taking way too long to load. We optimized some database queries and now it's loading much faster.