While map updates in recent years have “only” ever updated the map material including traffic flow data, there is much more in today’s software update. In addition to updating the data, we have invested a lot of programming effort in the map display, address geocoding and route calculation.
The advantages for you as a user
- Faster geocoding when importing customers
- More accurate geocoding even with incorrect address spelling
- Faster schedule calculation when the GPS location is used as the departure point
- More realistic travel times in the schedule
- Visually more pleasing presentation of maps
- Faster switchover from beelines to the route view on the map
More realistic driving times in the schedule
Since 2015, portatour® has used historical speed data to calculate driving times. This data is collected by navigation systems and mobile phone providers by measuring the movement data of millions of drivers and is made available for the respective road sections.
What’s new with today’s update is that portatour® estimates driving times to be considerably slower than previously on those road sections where traffic flow data often show traffic jams or heavy traffic.
As a result, roads with a high probability of traffic jams are avoided when calculating the schedule or are planned with longer travel times than previously. The schedules are therefore even more realistic and robust for dealing with unforeseen traffic situations.
You will already notice a difference with today’s first schedule update.
Recommendation: Set Driving Speed to “normal”
If you have set the “Driving Speed” to “slower” in the portatour® Anywhere Options, we recommend that you now reset it to “normal” so that portatour® does not estimate unnecessarily long driving times.
Additional information
- This update currently only affects customers from German-speaking countries (i.e. Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and English-speaking countries (i.e. USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia). Other countries will follow shortly.
- If you use portatour® in combination with Salesforce, for technical reasons, the maps will be updated together with the next release of the portatour® for Salesforce-App. We’ll be sure to let you know!
Your feedback is welcome!
We hope you enjoy this software update and look forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.