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.

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.

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.

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

• Main menu and calendar header in new design
• Task management in portatour®
• Filtering of customers by external list
• Increased API usage limits

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

By clicking the now more prominent main menu button, the menu items appear as icons to make better use of space on smartphones:

If there are important notes, the main menu button will turn red:

On large screens, “Tasks” and “Reports” are accessible directly from the main menu bar:

The original main menu entry “Appointments” has been renamed to “Calendar”, because the calendar view has been extended by new functions over time and now also shows call suggestions, reports and tasks besides appointments.

The “Calendar” entry in the main menu now always opens the calendar view. To get to the list view of appointments, click the list button in the calendar.

The day headings of the calendar have a new design. The labels appear in a larger font, the reference to the map and the presence of tasks are represented by symbols. The small arrow pointing downwards indicates that a menu will open with a click.

In addition to the already familiar link to the map, this menu also contains a new link to the schedule for the day and new functions for task management.

Furthermore, for a better overview in the weekly and monthly calendar, only those weekdays are displayed that are scheduled for visits according to the working hours set in the options. If an appointment is entered on a day off, this day is also displayed in the calendar.

This function was requested by many users. Now it is available: A task management directly integrated in portatour®.

Use tasks in portatour® to manage your to-do list. This will clear your head while you still remember your tasks. Post-it notes are now a thing of the past.

Here are some use cases that you can cover with tasks in portatour®:

• “Create a quote for customer ACME Inc.on Friday.” A task with date and reference to a customer.
• “Call customer John Doe every Wednesday and, if necessary, take order, since customer is on the truck delivery tour for Thursday”. A recurring task with customer reference.
• “Fill in the questionnaire X at the next visit of customer Jane Doe.” A task with customer reference, but without concrete date.
• “Create my expense report for the previous month every 1st of the month.” A recurring task without customer reference.

The task list for creating and completing tasks

In the main menu you will reach the new Task List by clicking “Tasks“.

You create a new task using the buttons “New task” or “New task for customer”, depending on whether the task refers to a customer or not.

Enter the subject of the task, e.g., “Create quote”, then select the desired date and optionally enter a note. Click save. Voilá, the first task has been created.

You can now find the task in the task list under the heading “Open”. The tasks that still have to be completed are sorted there by date. Overdue tasks whose date has already passed are displayed in red at the top.

By clicking the task you can edit, delete or mark the task as completed. You can complete a task even faster by clicking the check mark on the right.

Optionally, you can create a report when completing tasks. This report can also be viewed as “Other report” on the customer detail page, provided that the task had a customer reference.

Completed tasks can be found in the task list, now under the heading “Completed”. After 90 days they will be deleted automatically.

Special Features of Tasks

• Recurring tasks: When creating a task, it can be created as a series of repetitive tasks, e.g. every week on Wednesday. They can be configured and edited in the same way as recurring appointments.
• Tasks that expire automatically: If the field “Completion” of a task is changed from “Required” to “Optional”, this task expires automatically if it has not been completed by the configured date. Instead of being displayed as a red overdue task in the task list, it automatically moves to the category “Expired” and is deleted after 90 days.
  Hint: A task should be set to “optional” if completing it no longer makes sense after the set date; or in the case of recurring tasks if it can wait until the next occurrence of the task. This way, you avoid overdue tasks accumulating unnecessarily.
• Tasks without date: If you set a task to “Without date”, the task is no longer displayed in the list under “Open”, but in its own category “Without date”. The task will never become overdue or expire. It can be completed at any time. For example, if the task has a customer reference, you could interpret it as “to complete at next customer call”.
• Custom fields: Similar to reports and appointments, the input masks of tasks can be extended by up to 100 custom fields to cover your needs. As usual, this customization can be done by you or your administrator in the options under “Custom fields > Tasks”.
• Reports on completed tasks: The decision whether reports on completed tasks can or should be created is similar to the decision over call reports and can be configured in the options under “Reporting > Reports for tasks”.

Tasks on the customer detail page

If there are tasks for a customer that still need to be completed, they are also displayed directly on the customer detail page in the new section “Tasks”. By clicking the task, you can edit, delete or mark them as completed. The “New task” button creates a new task that automatically refers to this customer.

Tasks in the calendar

If tasks are to be completed on a certain day, this is indicated in the calendar by the task symbol for the respective day. To view all tasks of the day, click the day heading. A menu appears with the entry “X Tasks”, X representing the number of tasks. If you click it, the tasks of this day are displayed in a window.

In the calendar, click the day heading, and then select “New Task” to create a task for that day.

Tasks in the schedule

If there are tasks to complete on the day displayed, a yellow row is shown at the top of the schedule. Click it to see the day’s task list.

Technical notes on tasks

• Tasks have no influence on the automatic route planning of portatour®. I.e., tasks are completely separated from call suggestions, appointments, reservations, call blocks, the last call date or the call interval of a customer.

• It is possible to create up to 3,000 tasks per user in portatour® . Recurring tasks will be created one year in advance, just as recurring appointments.

• The import and export of tasks works the same as for appointments or reports via the user interface under Options > Import data or Export data. It is also possible via the API.

• The export of tasks is also available via OData in Excel.

• If you transfer customers between user accounts via the user interface, associated tasks can optionally also be transferred. When importing customers via the API, the new parameter “transferIncludesTasks” must be added for the automatic transfer of tasks.

• For company accounts (2 user accounts or more), you can specify whether tasks may be deleted under Options > Permissions.

• The task management is not available in the offline mode of portatour®.

• The task management is currently not available if you use portatour® Anywhere in connection with Salesforce or Dynamics CRM.