Category Archives: Anywhere

Search for appointments, tasks, reports and users

One of the most frequently used functions in portatour® is the customer search. It is available as quick search, extended search and saved search.

As of now the same functionality is also available for appointments, tasks, reports and users. One difference: whereas in the customer list the search function is always displayed, in the other lists you have to switch to the search mode by clicking the magnifying glass symbol. Another click on the magnifying glass symbol ends the search mode; you will see the standard view of the respective list again.

What else is new in the search?

  • The symbol for the extended search is now a filter symbol instead of the configuration wheel symbol.
  • If an extended search or a saved search is currently active, this will be easily recognizable by the yellow color of the respective button. In addition, a new button with an X symbol is displayed to the right of it, with which you can end the search and return to the standard view.
  • If an extended search or a saved search is currently active, you can also perform a quick search, which will narrow down the search result even further. Up to now, every quick search has ignored previous searches.

Hints for the quick search

For those of you who don’t already know, in the quick search, you can enter multiple search terms in the search field. For example, if you enter “Turner Oakland” in the search field, all customers containing “Turner” and “Oakland” will be found – in this example in the name and the city. The words do not have to be written out in full.

Additional information

  • The search also affects the export button below the list. When a search is active, you can choose whether to export only the rows found or all rows.
  • You can search for appointments by clicking the list symbol at the top right of the calendar and then the magnifying glass symbol for the search.
  • In the reports list you will find the three well-known functions “Clock in”, “Clock out” and “Report day off” via the new button “Log working time”.

Find hotels through Booking.com

If you are planning routes with overnight stays on the way, the new function “Find hotel” can be helpful.

You will find this function in the following places in portatour®:

  • In the schedule by clicking an overnight stay suggestion or overnight stay appointment
  • Clicking an overnight stay suggestion or overnight stay appointment in the calendar
  • In the appointment details view of an overnight stay appointment

When clicking “Find hotel”, you will be forwarded to the Booking.com website in a new window where hotels nearby your overnight stay location will be suggested. You will see the availabilities and prices for the date of the overnight stay. The room search uses the criteria “1 adult” and “business person”. You can set further filtering criteria on Booking.com.

After you have booked a hotel on Booking.com, use the function “Change overnight stay location” in portatour® to enter the hotel address. This will create a new overnight stay appointment that replaces the old overnight stay suggestion or overnight stay appointment.

Hint: If you would like to stay overnight at a hotel more often or if you want portatour® to suggest this hotel on its own for overnight tours, enter it in portatour® by clicking main menu > My Places > New accommodation. Up to 25 accommodations are possible.

Move days in the schedule

As a user of portatour®, have you ever been faced with the following situation? portatour® has suggested a route for one day, which you would like to follow in exactly the same way, but for whatever reason you would rather drive that route on another day? Then you will enjoy the new functions “move day” and “swap day“.

You can find these new functions in the schedule and in the calendar:

In the schedule, switch to the desired day. There, scroll down to the bottom, click More and then the menu item Edit day.

In the calendar, click the header of the day, then the menu item Edit day.

A window opens for you to select the target date.

In the case of “Swap day”, select both days to be swapped.

Note that moved or swapped call suggestions are discarded when the schedule is updated. To fix these call suggestions on the desired day, they must be converted into appointments. In the selection box, choose between fixed appointments, where the time is kept exactly the same, or appointments flexible on the day, where the time remains flexible.

Bear in mind

  • Only those days that start and end at the home location can be moved or swapped. This means that the day may not have an overnight stay on the way. Likewise, no calls or appointments may have already been completed for that day.
  • If you select a target day in “Move day” where there are already suggested calls, these will be removed. Appointments are retained in any case, but this can lead to conflicts. In such cases, you will be warned in time and asked whether you want to move the day anyway. Consider whether a swap would be better in such cases.
  • Furthermore, you will be warned if a customer call on the target day could not be scheduled, e.g. due to restricted business hours, call blocks, customer holidays or scheduling restrictions.

Further improvements in March 2020

In addition to the major enhancements described above, the update features the following minor improvements:

Explanation of the symbols of the customer list

Symbols relevant to planning are frequently displayed in the customer list. So that new users of portatour® don’t have to look up their meaning in the online help, they are now also displayed on the customer detail page. A single click is sufficient to open the description.

Improved appearance of the map for geocoding

When entering or editing an address, the corresponding map in the window now has an improved appearance to make better use of space. You will find the zoom buttons in the upper left corner. The “GPS” button for capturing the coordinates of your current location is located in the upper right corner with the crosshair symbol.

Easy input of business hours or working hours

If you edit a customer’s business hours, you can simply copy the business hours of one day to days below. A single click on the downward arrow is sufficient for the business hours of the day to be copied to the following day with currently different business hours.

Example: To change the business hours for each working day to 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm, enter these business hours only on Monday and then click the downward arrow four times. In this way, these times will also be entered for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

As usual, a click on the recycle bin deletes the business hours of a day.

The same functionality is now also available when editing working hours.

Navigation apps: Use of address or geoposition

In addition to the existing program setting to determine which navigation app should be launched when you click the “Navigation” button in portatour®, you can now also set whether the address or the geoposition of the customer should be sent to the navigation app. If you maintain the geopositions in portatour® accurately, it may be advantageous to use those.

Note that not all navigation apps support both modes. portatour® will automatically use the other mode if necessary.

New export format: “Excel with data table”

This new Excel export format differs from the original Excel format in that the data in the Excel worksheet is marked and formatted as a “data table”.

The new format is also available when exporting via the API if you specify the parameter format=xlsxtable in the URL. This format is useful, for example, if the exported data is to be processed automatically using Microsoft Flow.

New maps January 2020

We have just updated the map data and traffic flow data on our servers.

Changes in the road network and driving speeds may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change, when updating the schedule for the next time.

September 2019 update

We hope you enjoy this software update and look forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.

New “smart zoom” button on map

In addition to the “+” and “-” zoom buttons, you will find a third button in the upper left corner, which switches between important map sections including the zoom level:

  • Normally, this button will take you to full view of your entire territory, i.e. you see all your customers at a glance.
  • If you have customers without call interval (grey in color) that lie outside your core territory, then this button switches between core territory (i.e. all customers with call interval) and total territory (incl. all grey customers). The new default snippet that appears when the map opens, covers the core territory.
  • If you look at the schedule on the map and, in addition, also display all further customers, the new button switches between the schedule and the overall view of all customers.

Better display of reports without time in calendar

If you save your call reports only with date but no time, these reports have been displayed side by side in the weekly calendar at the beginning of the day. From now on, these reports are listed one below the other, which significantly improves readability:

Sorting is done alphabetically by subject including symbol.

New entry of times and durations

Since the July update, hours and minutes can be selected faster together in a selection box in the appointment window. This selection box can now be found in many places in portatour® for time entry. By clicking the keyboard icon, you can enter hours and minutes separately – e.g. for the exact input of minutes.

Also in the July update, it was started to output durations of more than one hour separately in hours and minutes for better readability. Instead of e.g. “105 min”, “1 h 45 min” is displayed. This new type of display is now implemented everywhere in portatour®. In addition, an entry of long time periods separated by hours and minutes is now possible.

New ways to clean up old reports

In the cleanup dialog, portatour® offers to delete old reports. It has already been ensured that for each customer at least the last call report remains, no matter how old it is. Now, you can choose to preserve not just the last, but the last two or even three reports per customer, no matter how old these reports are.

Increasing the request limit for shared calendars

If you have subscribed to your portatour® calendar in other calendar programs such as Outlook using calendar sharing, there was a limit of 100 requests per day. We have now introduced smart caching, which allows us to raise this limit to 500 requests as of now. This allows the calendar of a user to be easily subscribed to by multiple people without having a problem with the request limit.

New update mode when importing “Last call date” for customers

In addition to “Keep” and “Overwrite”, the new update mode “Overwrite if greater” is available. This new mode makes sense if you enter customer calls not only in portatour® but also in other systems (e.g. the CRM system) and regularly transfer customer data to portatour®.

Depending on whether the last call date from the import file or that in portatour® is more recent in the customer import, the last call date is overwritten or kept. This is evaluated individually for each imported customer.

This new update mode also prevents the last call date from being erroneously reset to an old date by an import.

Improved API manual

If you are administrator of a portatour® Anywhere company account, an improved online manual for the API (=programming interface for automatic import & export) is now available. Among other things, you can expect a new table of contents and a clearer structuring of the contents. You can reach the manual in the options under “API” or under https://my.portatour.net/a/Docs/APIManual . By the way: You can now also forward this link to IT staff without portatour® access. A login to portatour® is no longer necessary for reading the manual.

New maps August 2019

We have just updated the map data and traffic flow data on our servers.

Changes in the road network and driving speeds may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change, when updating the schedule for the next time.

July 2019 update

With today’s update, we’ve made small but significant improvements to many features in portatour® to make it even easier to use, as well as get you to the desired result with fewer clicks.

We hope you enjoy this software update and look forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.

Improvements to entering appointments

  • Instead of an appointment duration, the end time is now selected from a list. The resulting duration is shown as additional information. To enter hours and minutes separately, just click the keyboard symbol.

New display and input of long durations

  • From now on, durations of more than one hour are displayed separately in hours and minutes, e.g. “105 minutes” is now displayed as “1 h 45 min”.
  • By clicking the keyboard icon, you can enter the hours and minutes separately.

Improvements to call reports

  • The start and end times of the report can now be taken directly from the completed appointment or suggested call. Simply click the […] icon to accept the times.

  • The “Call Note” field is now always at the bottom of the call report, since the field refers to the next customer call. To make this easier to recognize, it also has the heading “Next Call”.

Improvements to the map

  • When you display the schedule on the map, a single click on the new button to the left of the day selection is enough to display the daily routes for the entire week simultaneously. Individual days can be switched off and on again simply by clicking them.

Improvements to the calendar

  • Display of the calendar weeks in the month view
  • Quickly switch to a different date. Clicking the blue heading opens the new “Go to” window.

Improvements to the appointments list

  • In addition to future appointments, past appointments can now also be displayed in list form. Clicking “Past” shows the appointments from the last 90 days. You can get to the appointment list by clicking the list symbol in the top right corner of the calendar.

Selectable authorization level when logging in as a user

  • If you have previously logged into a user account as an administrator or supervisor, you still have administrator or supervisor permissions. Now you have the option to lower the authorization level for the duration of the login. You see the user account from the user’s point of view. To do this, click the cogwheel symbol in the header.

Major map update 2019

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.