As of today, new and improved online help for portatour® is available.
Click the question mark symbol in the main menu bar or in the pop-up windows of the portatour® application to open the new online help. Alternatively you can also navigate to help.portatour.com directly.

More content

• Online help for browsing and searching
• Video Tutorials
• Frequently asked questions and their answers
• Manual as PDF download
• Contact Support

Improved search

Using the new search function, you can quickly find the articles or videos in the online help that are relevant for you. Simply type in the search terms and the results will immediately appear, sorted by relevance.

New design

We have given the online help a fresh coat of paint. Both functionality and user-friendliness have been improved.

Improved usage on smartphones and tablets

The online help is also now easier to use on smartphones and tablets while on the move.

Content provided according to your product variant and authorization level

In the menu (next to Help Center For), select your portatour® product variant (Anywhere, Salesforce, Dynamics CRM, etc.) and your authorization level (user or administrator).

More languages

The range of languages has been extended. In addition to English, German and French, the portatour® Anywhere online help is now also available and updated in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. When no translation is available, the English version is displayed.

Your feedback

We are constantly working on improving the online help and adding new content. If you have any comments, please send them to feedback@portatour.com You will also find a feedback section under the individual articles. Please let us know whether an article was helpful or what we can improve. Of course we are also happy to receive positive feedback.

We wish you much success with the new online help!

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.

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.

Until now, the statistics of the portatour® Report have always included all reports created in portatour®. Since last week’s update, you can now filter certain report types directly in the portatour® Report.

To do this, click the black funnel icon. This is available in the portatour® Report in the following three sections: “Customer Call Reports”, “Daily Summary of Last and Current Week” and “My Key Figures of the Last 90 Days”.

An additional line appears with the report types that can be filtered. In parentheses, you can find the number of reports affected by report type. If you do not want to include the customer calls of a given type in the statistics below, remove the checkmark for the respective report category. All the values in the statistics shown in blue have an effect on filtering.

There are a total of six report types in portatour®. The following procedure describes how to create reports of these types in portatour® Anywhere:

• Customer Call: By clicking “Called Now” for a customer or “Took Place” for an appointment. The prerequisite for this is that reports for customer calls are enabled in the Reporting options (setting: “Ask Every Time”, “Open Automatically” or “Create Automatically”).
• Missed: By clicking “Missed”  for a customer or an appointment. The prerequisite for this is that reports for missed calls are enabled in the Reporting options.
• Other: By clicking “New Report” for a customer or “Took Place” for an appointment without location, for example, to log phone calls.
• Start of work: By clicking “Clock In” in the Reports menu.
• End of work: When you click “Clock Out” in the Reports menu.
• Day off: By clicking “Report Day Off” in the Reports menu.

Note: In portatour® Anywhere, when you create or edit a report, you see the report type displayed in the form’s title bar . When you export the reports as an Excel or CSV file, you find the report type in a column as a number (0-5) and broken down into a second column for the display name.

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.

Today we have installed a new update of portatour® on our servers or released it for download respectively. Please find detailed information in the following two news:

Automatic extension of the planning period in case of overnight stays

The planning algorithm of portatour® has been upgraded to trigger an automatic extension of the planning period in the case of overnight stays on the way, which guarantees that the schedule will end at the home location. This increases the schedule quality.

Example: On Wednesday you update the 1-week schedule, i.e. until the Tuesday of the following week. On top of that you allow overnight stays away on the weekdays. In this case portatour® automatically extends the planning period until the Friday of the following week to guarantee that the schedule ends at the home location.

This will already be hinted when setting the planning period in Schedule > Scheduling parameters:

Hints:

• If the planning period is set to less than one week, i.e. between 1 and 6 days, there will be no automatic extension. Thus, we recommend a planning period of 1 week.
• Users of portatour® in combination with Salesforce, Dynamic CRM or Connector have to install the latest version to be able to use this new feature (Download for Salesforce, Download for Dynamics CRM).

Restrict period for the export of call reports

Up to now, it was only possible to export all call reports in one go from portatour® Anywhere. From now on, the export feature optionally allows the input of a period to make sure only the reports of that period are exported. This reduces the file size and speeds up the process. For the export go to Reports in the menu, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Export button.

Hints:

• The portatour® Anywhere API also allows the limitation of the exported reports from now on. Use the new parameter maxPastDays in order to enter the number of the required calendar days in the past, e.g. maxPastDays=7 in order to only export reports of the past 7 calendar days. If you export the reports on a regular basis, we recommend to use this new parameter to speed up the process and reduce the transferred data volume. Please refer to the API instructions for more information.
• The export of call reports directly from portatour® Anywhere is only possible if you use portatour® Anywhere without a system hosting the data (e.g. Salesforce, Dynamics CRM, Connector). If you have a data host system you can export the reports from there.

Today we have installed a new update of portatour® on our servers or released it for download respectively. Read the following 3 news to learn more about it:

• Get more out of portatour® with the new application check
• In-house feedback button
• Longer notes field for call reports

We wish you continued success with portatour® and hope you enjoy using its new features. We look forward to receiving your feedback to feedback@portatour.com.

Automatic route planning software can only be as good as the data and settings it is fed with. In addition, the software only achieves its full potential if it is used properly.

We from the portatour® team want you to achieve best results with portatour®. Therefore, we have added the “Application Check” feature to portatour®. At the push of a button portatour® automatically checks more than 35 criteria regarding data quality, scheduling parameters, territorial characteristics and usage hints. Over the past years, our team has identified the typical road blocks which frequently arise during the introduction of automatic route planning and summarized them in a comprehensive criteria catalogue.

As a result of the application check you receive an inspection report with detailed information which criteria have been met and where improvements are recommended. Click the respective line to learn which specific problem has been identified, its effect and how you can solve it, and – for enterprise accounts with several users – which users are affected.

This is how you get to the portatour® Anywhere application check:

• If you are an administrator or supervisor of an enterprise account click the new menu item “Organization > Request report”.
• If you are a field rep request the portatour® report as usual in the options. From now on, it will contain your personal application check at the end.

PS: Please install the latest version of  portatour® if you use  portatour® in combination with Salesforce or Dynamics CRM (download for Salesforce, download for Dynamics CRM). After that, the administrator can also start the application check directly from Salesforce or Dynamics CRM respectively.

We have released an update of portatour® on our servers and released new downloads.

You will find detailed information about the improvements in these two articles:

• New maps 2015 with improved driving time estimation
• Improved selection of starting location for route planning

We wish you a productive time using these new features and are looking forward to
your feedback, which you can send us to feedback@portatour.com .

P.S.: Should you be using portatour® in combination with Salesforce, update to the newest release (download for Salesforce) to access these features.

We have updated our map material to the current state of 2015.

At the same time we improved the driving time estimation of the schedule calculation. For the first time, the driving time of a street segment will be estimated based on historic driving times collected by navigation system providers and mobile telephone carriers from the movement patterns of millions of drivers.

These improvements, together with changes in the road network 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.

Through this update, one part of portatour® changes: at Options there are Driving Speed settings. Previously, you were able to enter an absolute driving speed here (i.e. in miles per hour). From now on, you set how your driving speed relates to historic average driving data. For example, “on highways I drive 10% faster than the average”.

We are happy that this update improves the schedule quality considerably and adds additional optimization to the routes created by portatour® for you.

Hints:

• Real time traffic information (for example: traffic jams caused by accidents) are not considered in route planning.
• The historic driving times are always the average value of the whole working day. For road segments that have diverting driving times during rush hours the daily average is used as a basis for calculation.
• Should you suffer by slow traffic based on “rush hour” traffic in cities, we recommend adapting the driving speed option on city roads, for example to “30% slower”.
• Should you have adapted the driving speed settings already before this update, your settings have been automatically converted to the new setting.