This news concerns administrators and supervisors of company accounts with activated territory optimization.

There are three new settings under “Initial situation > Settings” to adapt the territory analysis and optimization even better to your situation. The layout of this page has also been revised.

Users: Overnight stay > Willingness to stay overnight

When calculating the expected number of overnight stays, territory optimization takes into account all settings for overnight stays in portatour®. Nevertheless, in practice it can happen that the field rep spends the night away from home more frequently or less frequently, e.g. due to manual overnight stays at home location or in hotels.

To take this into account in the territory optimization, you can influence the number of overnight stays with the new “willingness to stay overnight” setting. “Low” leads to fewer calculated overnight stays and more driving time, “High” to more overnight stays and less driving time.

Under “Manual adjustments > User modifications”, this setting can be edited individually for each user. If you want to edit this setting individually in the initial situation, set “Editable per user” to “Yes”.

Note: Please note that changing the setting does not affect the number of overnight stays in all cases. If, for example, only a few customers meet the criteria for overnight stays away from home, increasing the willingness to stay overnight will not lead to more overnight stays, as more overnight stays are not required or permitted.

Users: Customer reachability > Maximum overnight stays from home location

In addition to the maximum distance or maximum driving time, this setting allows you to specify the maximum geographical extent of a territory. By default, a customer must be reachable with a maximum of one overnight stay from the home location – this usually corresponds to a distance of over 1,000 km. If you want to allow even larger territories in exceptional cases, set this value to “Any”. This will slow down the calculation speed.

Under “Manual adjustments > User modifications”, this setting can be edited individually for each user. If you want to edit this setting individually in the initial situation, set “Editable per user” to “Yes”.

Driving speed

portatour® uses historical driving speed data collected by navigation system and mobile phone providers by measuring the movement data of millions of road users and making it available for the respective road sections.

To deviate from these average values during territory optimization, use this setting. The changed setting applies equally to all territories.

This news concerns administrators and supervisors of company accounts with activated territory optimization.

• In the table views, clicking on the column heading “Users” displays the additional columns “Working hours” and “Share of working hours”.
• It is now possible to perform user modifications and customer modifications in post processing. Use this option if you are satisfied with the optimized customer assignment, but would also like to evaluate and apply the effect of different customer or user settings.
• When exporting territory optimization customers, there is a new selection option “Customers included in the result”. This means that customers that you have excluded in the initial situation are not exported.

This news affects administrators of company accounts with at least two users.

Would you like to allow access to your portatour® only from certain IP addresses – e.g. to allow only managed company devices that are logged into your LAN or VPN? Then proceed as follows:

1. Switch to the company workspace.
2. Open the options.
3. In the “Security” section, click on “IP-based access restrictions”.
4. For those user authorization levels where you want to restrict access, set the selection box to “Restricted”.
5. In the input field below, enter the IP addresses or IP ranges from which access should be permitted. Multiple entries must be separated by a line break.
6. Click “Save”. The access restriction takes effect immediately.

Users who are successfully logged in but are accessing it from an unauthorized IP address will receive the following error message:

Notes:

• Handle these restrictions carefully. There is a high risk of inadvertently locking yourself or other users in your company out.
• Ideally, you should store several IP addresses, e.g. redundant IP addresses for your office, so that you can continue to access portatour® in case of an emergency. Make sure that these IP addresses are static.
• If you make changes to your company’s network configuration, remember to remove the restrictions or add additional IP addresses in time.
• Only IPv4 addresses are supported – no IPv6 addresses.

After an intensive development period, we have rolled out a major update of portatour® today. To read details about the new features, scroll down or use the following links:

• • Dynamic fields in call report
  • Call interval can be changed directly in call report
  • View full report text in report list and customer list

We wish you much success with using the new features and are looking forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.

This news concerns company accounts of at least two users.

Have you ever wished that different fields would be queried when entering call reports for different customers? For example, the customer’s industry, the ABC classification, or the geographical region could play a role in what data should be collected during the call.

With portatour®, this is now possible.

As an administrator, do the following when setting up a new dynamic field group:

1. At the customer list, create a filter using the extended search. The filter should include those customers for whom specific fields should be displayed when entering reports.
2. Review the list to ensure that the right customers are in the list.
3. Save the search organization-wide.
4. In the organization options, open the management of custom fields for reports.
5. Create a new field group.
6. Set “Show for all customers” to “No”.
7. For “Only show for”, select the previously created saved search.
8. Create the fields within this field group.
9. Save.

The change is immediately active for all users: If a customer matches the filter of the saved search at the time the report is entered, the dynamic field group is displayed. Otherwise, it is not visible.

Notes on dynamic field groups:

• If fields from dynamic field groups are filled in in a report, these entries are retained in the report in any case, even if the customer no longer matches the corresponding filter later on.
• Dynamic fields also work in offline mode. The detection of whether a customer matches the filter is based on the downloaded customer data on the device.
• When configuring the field group, several saved searches can be selected at the same time. The dynamic field group is displayed if the customer is at least part of one of the selected searches.
• Saved searches that are used for field groups cannot be deleted or renamed. Therefore, choose the name carefully. However, it is possible to change the filter criteria of the saved search at any time by overwriting them.
• If you create mandatory fields in dynamic field groups, users only need to fill these fields if the dynamic field group is actually displayed.
• Dynamic field groups are always displayed in reports without customer reference.

Do you often change the call interval after a customer call to reschedule the days until the next call? Then you will benefit from the following innovation.

In the Options under Reporting, set “Call interval” to “Customizable in the call report”.

When entering new call reports, you can then edit the customer’s call interval in the “Next call” section.

Note that the change to the call interval is permanently stored in the customer’s scheduling parameters until you change the interval again – for example, on the next call. The change in the call report is thus equivalent to editing the customer’s scheduling parameters parameters.

Bear in mind:

• For company accounts, this function may be restricted by the administrator. This is the case when users do not have the permission to change customers’ scheduling parameters or do not have the permission to change reporting settings.
• As an administrator, you can customize the organization default for above reporting settings in the organization-wide options.
• The call interval can be changed only in reports that update the customer’s last call date when they are created – i.e. “Call” and “By phone instead of in person”.

If you view the report list or customer list on a device with a larger screen (such as a tablet or PC), you will see the report text in the right column — but no more than two lines up.

If you would like to see the complete report text, then go to the Options. In the Program settings, switch “Customer list” or “Report list” to “Entire report” or “Entire report (compact)”.

Notes:

• In compact display, line breaks are removed.
• Users can change this program setting individually for themselves.

After an intensive development period, we have rolled out a major update of portatour® today. To read details about the new features, scroll down or use the following links:

• Opening schedule trips in the map
• Managing saved searches
• Global reports list and search
• Selection mode and mass deletion of reports

We wish you much success with using the new features and are looking forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.

Trips in the schedule are now clickable.

Clicking on them will take you to the map view of the relevant schedule day, where the corresponding trip is highlighted.

Tip: To factor the current traffic situation into the proposed trip, click the “Current traffic” button in the upper right corner.

Previously, saved searches could be created and deleted. As of this update, there are extensive possibilities for managing searches.

To overwrite an existing saved search, first run the new search (e.g. using extended search), then go to the menu of saved searches and click the Save icon to the right of the search you wish to overwrite.

Clicking on Manage Searches opens the following window:

The customization options are as follows:

• To show/hide predefined searches, use the check boxes.
• To rename saved searches, change their names in the input field.
• To change the order of saved searches, use the up/down arrows.
• To delete a saved search, use the recycle bin icon.

As an administrator, you also have the same options for company-wide saved searches. To do this, click on “Manage searches company-wide.”