Transcript
Congratulations on your recent purchase of OnTime and welcome to your OnTime Enterprise account. This Introductory Video Course is designed to help you to quickly understand some of the major OnTime features available to your company. Each section of this video will focus on a different business process. The sections are:
One, Your OnTime Overview
Two, Adding Data to Lists
Three, Pricing and Service Levels
Four, Interacting with Customers
Five, Order Entry and Dispatching
Six, Tracking a Shipment
Seven, Your Mobile Workforce
Eight, Tracking Time and Activities
Nine, Routes
Ten, Customization
Eleven, Report and Analysis
And Twelve, Security
This video will be available to you for as long as you are an OnTime subscriber, so be sure to keep it around to refresh your knowledge or to train new OnTime users in your company. For specific video tutorials, see the OnTime Support page on our website.
Section One, Your OnTime Overview
Download the OnTime applications from our website at OnTime360.com. Free updates can be downloaded from here, as well. Your OnTime applications will automatically let you know when updates are available. The system requirements for OnTime’s desktop applications are minimal. OnTime Management Suite and OnTime Dispatch will generally work with any computer running Windows built within the last ten years that has access to high speed internet. The OnTime Mobile application, which is available in multiple editions, has broad support. OnTime Mobile for Windows Mobile can be installed on Windows Mobile 2003, 2003 SE, 5 or 6 devices. The OnTime Mobile for Windows Mobile application gives you access to useful tools, including digital signature capture and barcode reading. OnTime Mobile Web and WAP editions will work with any WAP enabled device with a data connection, or any mobile device with a web browser and the internet. You will likely be able to use the app with the devices that you already have and know how to use. The OnTime API, which is based on Open Standards, allows you to connect your Enterprise account with third party applications across the internet. Keep up-to-date with the latest courier software developments included with your OnTime account subscription. For more basic information about OnTime, see Chapters One and Two of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Two, Adding Data to Lists
The first thing that you should do to start making use of your OnTime account is to populate it with your company data. OnTime uses a series of lists to keep track of your records including customers, locations, zones, and users. A manager or administrative user can adjust these lists from the OnTime Management Suite desktop application. Your User list should include anyone that will have access to OnTime via your account. This may include employees, subcontractors, agents, and partners. Your Enterprise account includes thirteen free users, including your administrative user.
Your Customer list includes all of your customers and their profiles.
Your Location list is essentially an address book, which includes addresses involved with shipments.
Your Zones list includes zones, or areas, closely related to postal or zip codes.
Your Price Sets list shows the contracts, or service levels, that you offer your customers.
Your Price Modifiers List displays your accessorial charges, which represent any adjustment that should be made to a base price.
You may quickly import data from Excel or CSV files in to customer, location, order, and zone lists by clicking the Import Data button. Be sure to map the columns in your file with OnTime’s corresponding fields to ensure accuracy. Browsing and searching your lists for specific information can be made easier with a few tools. You can customize the way that most lists will appear. Customizations include sorting, column order, and column visibility. Most lists can be printed as they appear on screen by selecting Print Current View. If you ever need to find any specific information in your lists, you can search most in real-time by entering text into the search box in the top-right corner. For more information about saving time and managing your account with OnTime’s lists and your data, see Chapters Three and Four of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Three, Pricing and Service Level
OnTime uses Price Sets to set up pricing information and to detail the Level of Service attached to those prices. Unlike most courier software, OnTime allows you to set up virtually all of your pricing ahead of time. Your dispatchers will be able to give your customers accurate quotes, while entering orders efficiently. Two steps must be taken to set up a price in OnTime. First, establish a Base Price. Second, adjust that base price with Price Modifiers, or optional charges. The base price for your price can be established in three ways. One, Zone Based Prices. Two, Distance Based Prices. And three, a Flat Amount, which the dispatcher will enter. To set up a Price Set in OnTime, create a new Price Set and define its general setting. The Name of the price set will be shown internally to OnTime Management Suite users, while the Service Level will be shown to dispatchers and customers. Now you will need to establish your base price. To use Zone Base Pricing, first ensure that zones are defined in your zone list. Mileage Base Pricing can be used by creating a Distance type price modifier. And, remember, a Flat Amount base price will be entered by the dispatcher. Once you’ve established your base price, you can use Price Modifiers to adjust that base price with accessorial or optional charges. To setup a new price modifier, enter the Price Modifiers list and create a New Item. Set the Type of your price modifier as desired. Adjust the action field for the type of arithmetic that you want to be used to arrive at the modifier’s price. Adjust the Watch Value to indicate which of the order’s fields will be associated with the modifier. After setting up your price modifier, you may wish to test it to ensure that the results calculate as expected. To do so, simply use the testing area at the bottom of your price modifier’s editing screen. In some cases, you may wish to use Price Modifier Groups to have OnTime evaluate two or more price modifiers, and then use the highest or lowest calculated price. For instance, when calculating a certain weight charge, you may want to use whichever is greater, either dimensional weight or actual weight. Remember, to setup a price in OnTime, first establish a base price and then adjust that base price with modifiers. For more information about pricing in OnTime, see Chapters Three and Four of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Four, Interacting with Customers
Your OnTime account comes equipped with a variety of tools that you will find useful for easily providing your customers with better service. The OnTime Customer Web Portal is exclusively offered to Enterprise subscribers, such as yourself. This customer service tool can be linked to from your website and used by your customers to place orders, track orders, and generate labels. Your customers can even view information about their orders in real-time. You can quickly access the Customer Web Portal from OnTime Management Suite’s Web Portal area. More about the Customer Web Portal can be found later in this video. Some of OnTime’s customer service tools can be used to provide detailed invoices to your customers.
Invoices can be generated manually in OnTime based on unbilled orders. Alternately, billing cycles can be used to automatically generate invoices by grouping those orders into a specific billing period. The invoices that you generate in OnTime can be printed, emailed, or faxed to your customers. The Workflow Designer is another useful customer service tool included with your account. The Workflow Designer will help you to automatically stay in contact with your customers and employees at all times.
The Workflow Designer can be set to respond to certain events across the system, such as when an order is placed, when an order is dispatched, or when an order is delivered. When an event occurs in the system, OnTime will automatically compose a message and send it as either a text message or an email. You may pre-program template messages into that system. Each notification that you create can be customized with Special Fields, which will act as placeholders for specific information in your notifications. Special Fields will be replaced by values such as Customer Name or Tracking Number. For more information about interacting with your customers, see Chapters Three, Four, Six, and Eight of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Five, Order Entry and Dispatching
Dispatching and order entry tasks for your business can be completed using the OnTime Dispatch desktop application, which can be downloaded on its own or launched from within OnTime Management Suite. To begin order entry for a new shipment in OnTime Dispatch, click the new order button. Then enter the appropriate customer, and collection and delivery locations. Most fields have auto-completion built-in, so once you begin to type, an appropriate entry will be suggested. The recent fields show the previous 10 locations shipped from or to. Search for other addresses by company name using the directory field. If a location is not already in your address book, include it quickly and permanently by clicking the new location button or pressing the plus sign beside the lookup box. Next, select the Service Level for the order. Remember, Service Levels, or Price Sets, are pricing contracts that OnTime Management Suite users setup. Now you may submit your order. If you are ever placing an order on hold temporarily, or working with multiple order entries at once, OnTime Dispatch’s tabbed interface will be especially useful.
Your customers can create new orders via the OnTime Customer Web Portal in much the same way as you will create orders in Dispatch. These new orders entered by customers through the Web Portal will be placed into the unassigned order queue automatically. Unassigned orders can be easily and quickly assigned to drivers using OnTime Dispatch. To see a list of all available drivers and all orders that have not been assigned to a driver, click on the Dispatching area. Double click a driver in the list to see their information and current assignments. To assign orders, simply drag the name of a driver onto the appropriate order. For more information about quick dispatching and order entry with the OnTime Dispatch application, see Chapter Five on the OnTime User Guide.
Section Six, Tracking a Shipment
The Tracking View may be used from either OnTime Management Suite or OnTime Dispatch to view and change your orders’ information. The status of any shipment, active of inactive, can be found in the Tracking view. By default, when you are in the Tracking view, the last 500 entered orders will be displayed. You can customize which orders are shown with the Advanced Search function. After performing a search, you can choose to save that query by clicking the save as Quick View button. This will create an entry under the Quick Views section, making it easy to search by that saved criteria in the future. Your customers can track their own shipments in real-time via the Tracking section of the OnTime Customer Web Portal. Through this section, they may also print reports, run searches, and export data without needing to consult your staff. You can adjust the way that these features behave to meet the needs of your customers. From the Tracking view, you can also work with your orders. To begin, double click the order that you wish to work with. If the edit icon appears next to the entry, you can double-click it to edit. Details, such as address information and service level may be adjusted from this screen. In fact, you can edit almost any detail of an order from here. You may also include accessorial charges as predefined or write-in charges. If you ever need to diagnose irregularities in an order, you will find the History tab helpful. This provides a full audit trail of an order. From this tab, you can view the state of an order every time that it has been changed by either a user or by the system. For more information about the Tracking view and order tracking, see Chapters Five and Eight of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Seven, Your Mobile Workforce
The OnTime Mobile application is available in several versions with your Enterprise subscription. Virtually any mobile device with internet access will be compatible with one of the OnTime Mobile application editions. Our extensive mobile support will allow you to use the mobile hardware that works best for you. Accessing the WAP and Web editions of OnTime mobile is as simple as navigating to the URL emailed to you after sign up. Other editions of OnTime Mobile can be installed as an app on your device. Detailed instructions regarding installation of each OnTime Mobile edition can be found on our website. If you are using a Windows Mobile 2003 or later device, OnTime Mobile for Windows Mobile will be your best choice. This OnTime Mobile application offers enhanced functionality and the most features. OnTime Mobile for Windows Mobile contains a built in database, which stores information locally on your device. If you ever experience issues connecting to the internet with your Windows Mobile device, OnTime will allow you to continue working offline. Windows Mobile devices with touchscreens can be used for digital signature capture. These signatures will be saved into your OnTime account. Barcode scanning is possible with OnTime Mobile for Windows Mobile, depending on your device. With this feature, you can scan shipments to reference important information. Once you have logged into the application, you can use OnTime Mobile to work with orders and received messages from dispatchers. For more information about downloading, installing, and using OnTime Mobile, see Chapters One and Seven of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Eight, Tracking Time and Activities
OnTime Dispatch and OnTime Mobile include tools that will track the time and activity of an employee when they are using those applications. OnTime’s Time Tracking tools will automatically take care of gathering employee time and activity information, every day. Built in auditing features in OnTime Management Suite will help you to ensure the accuracy of that automatically gathered data. For more information about accurately keeping track of your employee’s time and activity, see Chapters Four and Seven of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Nine, Routes
OnTime Management Suite allows you to organize frequent stops and driver schedules into what are referred to as Routes. A route is assigned to a specific driver. Each day the route is evaluated and all stops that are scheduled to occur on that day are assigned to the driver as shipments. To drivers using OnTime Mobile, these are segregated from on-demand orders under the heading of Route Stops. To create a Route, add a New Route and give it a Name. Then, assign a Driver to the new route. Add stops to your new route by right clicking in the Route Stops list and choosing New Stop. Specify a Customer, Service Level, Description, Options, and Pickup and Delivery Locations for the new stop. Adjust the schedule to suit your new route stop, then click Save. Occupied Zones can be used with routes to represent the time of day that an assigned driver is expected to be in a particular zone. Simply specify a zone and time range to help OnTime know the schedule and whereabouts of a driver assigned to that route. OnTime can consult this schedule later on when dispatchers need a recommendation for the appropriate driver for an order. Route Stop Scheduling is done by looking at all route stops and then evaluating if they need to be scheduled for that day. To have this done automatically, activate the Automated Route Scheduler available from OnTime Management Suite’s General Options. Once activated, OnTime will automatically attempt to schedule all route stops once each day. For more information about improving your driver and dispatcher efficiency with routes, route stops, and route scheduling, see Chapter Four of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Ten, Customization
The OnTime Customer Web Portal is a web application that allows your customers access to tracking, self-dispatching, address book, and other features, directly from your company's web site. The Customer Web Portal comes with a somewhat generic default theme. If you wish, you may customize the Web Portal’s look and feel to match your existing company's web site theme. The layout, or the position of the elements on the page, can be adjusted. The OnTime Customer Web Portal makes use of ASP.NET Master Pages and thus all features of that technology can be employed in customizing the site. Making changes to the master page will allow you to change the layout of elements on every web page in the site. The style, or visual elements of the web page, can also be adjusted. The OnTime Customer Web Portal makes use of industry standard CSS style sheets. Making changes to the CSS files will allow you to change the appearance of elements on every web page in the site. For more information about the various customizations that can be made to your OnTime Customer Web Portal’s layout and style, see Chapter Six of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Eleven, Report and Analysis
With OnTime, you can generate a variety of Report types and access several Data Analysis options. OnTime is fully compatible with third party reporting and analysis tools, such as Crystal Reports; however, there are also several robust reporting tools included in OnTime Management Suite. The Reports Section lists several reports included with OnTime and where to find them throughout the program. Many of these existing reports can be customized to suit the needs and preferences of your company. For more information about reporting and data analysis, see Chapters Four and Eight of the OnTime User Guide.
Section Twelve, Security
We are serious about your security and privacy at OnTime. Advanced measures are continually taken to ensure that your data is always kept confidential. Our server’s three-tier architecture prevents your data from ever being exposed to hackers on the internet. The OnTime Customer Web Portal is protected similarly, with three-tier architecture to minimize surface area attacks. 128 bit SSL encryption can be optionally enabled for all data connections to and from the server. All data on Windows Mobile devices and desktops is stored in encrypted databases. This cached data is well protected. Mobile devices are automatically logged out after a configurable period of time; ensuring that your information is protected, if a phone is ever misplaced. For more information about how we protect your data, contact our support team.
Thank you for taking the time to review your Introduction to OnTime. Remember that this video will continue to be available for as long as you are an OnTime subscriber, so feel free to return for a review at any time. If you ever need assistance, please contact OnTime Customer Support using any of the methods listed on our website at OnTime360.com. We look forward to working with you.