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BizSpeed is a mobile ISV and we often get asked by clients for recommendations on mobile devices. If a client is looking at Motorola mobile devices, we get asked to help them choose between MC55, MC75 and MC9090 devices. We have customers using all 3 models of these devices.
This article will help explain what what you should consider when choosing and will highlight real-life customer examples for field data capture and proof of delivery applications.
| goRoam on MC55 | goRoam on MC75 (MC70) | goRoam on MC9097 |
Before we start with criteria, it is important to understand what features you need today as well as in the future. With rugged devices, once you purchase the device, you cannot go back and add hardware options like a camera, GPS or Bluetooth. The devices we will discuss are:
We start to narrow the hardware choice by asking the following questions.
The following highlights examples of BizSpeed customers using each type of device.
MC9090 – Bulk bleach manufacturer with 8 plants in 5 states. This customer receives bleach in rail cars and then distributes to pool supply companies, municipal water treatment facilities, paper manufacturers, etc. The bleach is loaded at the plant and the driver starts their day by scanning the truck (tractor) barcode, trailer barcode and product barcode. They weigh the truck on an industrial truck scale and goRoam wirelessly receives the truck weight to calculate the volume of product on the truck. The driver makes deliveries to a set of customers and scans the delivery ticket, product, etc and records product quantities in each tank. The customer signs the device for proof of delivery and then prints a receipt on mobile Zebra RW420 printers. When drivers return to the plant, the driver scans and weighs again to calculate remaining volume. Once at the plant, deliveries are sent wirelessly to the goRoam server for processing and export for invoicing.
MC75 – HazMat pickup and disposal for large retailers, oil change shops, car dealers, etc. across 30 states. These drivers receive routes/stops through cellular communications while on the road. The drivers go to each stop and pickup one or many HazMat containers. They place a barcode on the container (by hazmat product type) and record the contents of each container. This can involve a reasonable amount of data capture through the touch-screen on the handheld device as they have to complete different mobile forms depending on the pickup. Once complete, the customer signs for electronic signature capture/proof of pickup.
MC55 – Door-to-door surveys and canvassing on a large scale. This customers use goRoam.Inspections to automate field data surveys that may contain 300-750 questions, although not all are required to be answered. When a homeowner or business needs a survey completed, the field personnel scan a barcode and take 1 or more high-quality pictures per site. They also have to take a GPS reading and possibly make a drawing on the device to show the site. Once complete, the homeowner signs the device for proof of delivery/electronic signature capture and a receipt is automatically emailed.
If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact us regarding rugged mobile hardware selection. To learn more about BizSpeed and goRoam Proof of Delivery Software click or call 866-270-0541 (toll-free).
Most utilities are performing large scale meter upgrades to AMR (automated meter reading) meters. ![]()
The good news, if you’re reading this, is that you are interested in learning how to automate the field service installation.
The bad news is that most existing work order systems are not designed to handle the specifics of meter installations. Specifically, they aren’t designed to:
The following is a list of needs we’ve heard from customers related to automating field surveys and installations.
In this walk through, we’ll show you how to quickly setup and implement mobile, wireless work orders for AMR meter or SmartGrid device installations. The installation is based on BizSpeed’s goRoam system. goRoam runs on the web for dispatchers and on rugged, wireless handheld devices for installation crews. goRoam can be used standalone or it can easily be integrated with existing work order systems.
goRoam.Inspections is a module that allows rapid assembly of mobile forms without programming. Forms consist of pages, pages have questions, and questions have attributes (ex. textbox, checkbox, GPS, picture, etc.). Mobile forms can be ‘dispatched’ pre-populated with the work order information from the utility company or your work order system.
Logon to the goRoam server and create a new form. Name the form (ex. Meter Installation) and set the icon for the form.
Save and click ‘Manage’ to access versions of the form and start adding pages and questions.
You will see the list of versions of the form. Each time you want to update the form, you can create a version to work on before pushing it to the field. Once ready, you can simply ‘publish’ that version and it will be deployed to the users.
You will see the pages and can simply start typing to update the page name. To reorder pages or questions, drag and drop them to the new location. Add questions and set the question information. This is what will show up in the mobile form. You can see the list of question types listed below.
Questions can be of type:
For each question, you can set numerous properties such as how it is populated, whether it is required, and conditional logic.
Once a form is set, you can publish the form to one or more groups of users. These are typically going to be the roles you setup for your work crews.
If you want to automatically email the completed survey, you can add a post-completion handler. This is a standard .NET extension that allows you to be notified when a survey comes in from the field and is marked complete. Typical uses would be to email copies of the survey or to perform other actions based on the results of the survey, such as creating a follow-up work order.
Most utility companies will provide a flat file that contains the list of work orders they want completed. These include the customer name, address and basic demographic data. These can be imported via web services, scheduled jobs or our import utility. The import utility allows you to open a flat-file (CSV) and map the import fields to your survey fields. This will automatically create dispatches for each imported work order. Note that import profiles can be saved to quickly re-import additional records.
Users logon and see the menu items authorized by their security role. Synchronization happens in the background, so work order and survey users simply click the touchscreen to open their dispatches.
The technicians receive all dispatches for their role (work crew) or for them individually (as a user). To start a meter installation, the tech taps the screen to see the work order. The forms are configured per utility company specs – so this installation example includes the following:
Orders are sent and receive wirelessly in the background. Once complete, the order can be exported to the utility in a batch file.
Using the goRoam.MobileHub, the dispatcher can manually export orders or can setup a scheduled task to export completed orders to the utility company via FTP.
These results can be exported to a CSV file – the easiest way to view is in Excel.
If you made it this far….thanks! We’d love to hear from you. Please contact us for more info or leave a comment.