Creating a shipment

To create a new shipment, navigate to the shipments tab and press the create a shipment button.

When creating a shipment users can select between creating a template-based shipment from pre-defined templates and creating a custom shipment (without templates). If a user has access to a project, then he can create a shipment (globally) but within a project (see the first picture below). If the user doesn't have access to any project, then the option to create shipment within a project is not available (see the second picture below). Create a project shipment should only be checked if the user wants the shipment to be created within a project.

Custom Shipment

When creating a custom shipment, the user will go through three steps. After these three steps there is an optional Review and Confirm dialogue (see chapter below) where users can review their information before creating a new shipment. 

Step 1: General Information

The user adds general information about the shipment here. 

• Select a logger:
  • In the dropdown the user can find a list of loggers that are free or in use. Only free loggers can be used. The user can either type in all or part of the logger ID that is to be selected or select it directly from the list. If the user wants to add another logger, then they must click the add another logger button. After that, another dropdown will appear below the other logger where the user can find and select a logger. Another way to add a logger is to click the button scan barcode, doing so will open a modal window where the user can scan a barcode on the back of a logger and then select the logger from the logger dropdown menu. If the logger is successfully found and added to the shipment, the scan barcode modal view is closed automatically. If the logger is not found, has already been added to the current shipment, or is in use in another shipment an error modal view appears and suggests to scan another logger barcode. Note that only 4 loggers can be added to each shipment. If a customer has the setting logger description and/or logger reference set on the customer level, the user will see two extra fields below the logger selection (see picture below), one for Reference and another for Description. When a logger has been selected, the field Wake-up interval will be displayed with a default interval pre-selected. If there is more than one available wake-up interval, the user can select what he prefers. The wake-up interval implies at what interval the logger wakes up from sleep mode.

• Basic info: 
  • The user needs to fill in the Shipment name/reference field and has the option to add a Shipment description.

• Shipping & Delivery:
  • User selects a Shipping origin and a Delivery destination.
    (if appropriate locations do not appear in the drop down lists, please see here how to create new locations. Note that only locations from the currently active project, if any, will appear as options). 
  • Once the locations have been selected, an appropriate Shipping method and Delivery method is selected.
    (more information about the available methods can be seen here).
  • The user will need to select an Ignore period for the shipment. The ignore period defines the duration at the start of a shipment where measurements do not trigger excursions for the shipment (as the temperature often needs to set in, e.g. when putting a warm logger into a cold shipment and shipping right away).
  • Optionally a Delivery deadline can be set. After this deadline passes, the shipment will be marked as being late.

• Load Shipment Template:
  • In the first step the user can load a shipment template by clicking the button load shipment template.

Step 2: Shipment Warning Configuration

User can select a pre-defined warnings template, define custom warnings or not add any warnings for the shipment. The user defines custom warning boundaries for the shipment by pressing add upper/lower boundaries buttons. User inserts the temperature that the environment cannot go above or below without raising a warning. For each alarm boundary a delay can be selected, i.e. for how long the excursion can last without raising a warning, and severity level of the warning can be set to notification, low, medium or high. In the add warnings step the user can load a shipment warnings template within the custom warnings section by clicking the button load shipment warnings template. Max number of boundaries per upper and lower is 6, i.e. 12 boundaries max. But the logger selected controls how many boundaries can be added, if more than one logger is added to the shipment the one with the lowest max boundaries allowed controls how many boundaries can be added.

Step 3: Shipment Contacts Configuration

User can select a pre-defined contacts template, define custom contacts or not add any contacts for the shipment. The user defines custom contacts by inserting the contacts manually for the shipment by using the add buttons. He selects what severity level alarms are to be sent to each E-mail and SMS recipient by selecting appropriate receives severity checkboxes. If selected logger allows severity level notification then the fourth checkbox is displayed in front of the Low severity checkbox. Note that 5 E-mail alert recipients and 3 SMS alert recipients can be selected. Delivery notifications can be sent via email when a shipment has been delivered and additionally a PDF report with temperature history can be attached to the notification email. The report is attached by checking the Include Report checkbox when adding delivery notification recipients. Note that 15 Delivery notification recipients can be selected. In the add contacts step the user can load a shipment contacts template within the custom contacts section by clicking the button load shipment contacts template.

Template-based shipment

If a user chooses to create a template-based shipment they will need to choose a shipment template in the initial step. The system will read through the template and make note of what information is missing from the template. If an information is missing from the template (e.g. logger ID, shipment name and shipment description and delivery destination), the user will be prompted to fill in these fields. All other fields will be pre-populated with data from the template.

A template can have Origin filled out but Destination not filled out, so a user would then only be asked to provide a Destination for the Shipment in the first step but not need to provide an Origin. This way, the user only needs to fill out the minimum amount of fields during the whole shipment creation.

If a template does not define any warning configurations (upper and lower boundaries), users will be prompted to select a pre-defined Shipment Warnings Template or to manually define the warning boundaries. If a selected shipment template includes pre-defined warning configurations, this step will automatically be skipped.

If a template does not define contacts (for alerts and delivery notifications), the user will be prompted to select a pre-defined Shipment Contact Template or to manually define the contacts who receive alerts and notifications for the shipment. If the selected shipment template includes pre-defined contacts, this step will automatically be skipped.

Review and Confirm

Users will be able to review their full shipment on a single screen before confirming the shipment creation. Both for a custom shipment and shipment created with a pre-defined template. From the review page the shipment can be created or the user can click the back button if he needs to change anything. The back button can be clicked in all steps to go to previous step. To Review and Confirm shipment the user can check the checkbox preview shipment before create in the final step of the shipment form, whether it is a custom shipment form with three steps or template-based form with fewer steps. A single page review will open with all information added in the shipment creation form. If customer has logger description and/or logger reference customer setting set then a table of all loggers and there info is displayed if not then a list of loggers is displayed.

Batch shipment creation

When a user needs to add more than 4 loggers to a shipment, then a batch of shipments will be created. This means that multiple identical shipments with up to 4 loggers per shipment are created. If a user adds e.g 6 loggers in the create shipment form and creates the shipment, two shipments will be created where the first shipment has 4 loggers and the second shipment has 2 loggers. When a batch of shipments is created, each shipment name gets the suffix  "- {{no. of shipment}}/{{batch shipment count}}". When more than 4 loggers are added in the create shipment form, an info message appears informing the user of what will be done: "You are adding more than 4 loggers to the shipment. If you add more than 4 loggers to a shipment, multiple identical shipments will be created instead of one shipment with multiple loggers. Each shipment will have up to 4 loggers." After the batch of shipments have been created the user is then routed to the first shipment created.