MyGeotab Release 2101

by Lynn Rios | Feb 18, 2021 | Fleet Management Software, Announcements-News, Fleet Management, Geotab

MyGeotab Release 2101 Update

MyGeotab release 2101 includes a new and improved look and feel. Changes in colors, fonts and icons focus your attention on what is most important and impart information quickly. Many of the improvements are things we have been asking for, and we are especially excited to show you what is coming soon. It is a lot to take in, so we have used quite a few GIF images to tell the story. These updates should be rolled out toward the end of May 2021.

Some of the enhancements are available now to users who have feature preview turned on. To select the feature preview option, follow the instructions at this link (click here).

Expect to see design changes on these components.

HOS Logs and HOS Availability pages
Charging events
Updated logo and favicon to use accessible colors
Maintenance and Reminder Rule Add/Edit
Report pages
User options
Vehicle Edit page
User Edit page

New to Vehicles in Release 2101

Finally, users will be able to add vehicles without an associated device serial number. You can add vehicles as they are acquired and update with a device serial number when you are ready to install the devices. This allows you to organize in groups, add license plate info, and assign appropriate maintenance reminders in advance. You can also add assets that you may not need a tracking device for, but would like to do inspections or set maintenance reminders for.

To be able to sort based on this new functionality, three new statuses and icons will display on the Vehicles page.

Active with a tracking device
Active without a tracking device
Archived

Streamlined process for install records

Previously, Customers who employed Installers and used one of the installation websites had to navigate to a specific page to review new installation records and manually update the vehicle name, license plate and other information. Customers will now receive a prompt when there are new installation records, and can update the vehicle information using an Accept All button.

Device Data Streaming

With Data Streaming, Administrators can send share requests to partners they work closely with, and partners can subscribe to Data Streams that make sense for their business. Subscriptions are available on Base, Regulatory, Pro, and ProPlus rate plans, with easy billing that begins as soon as a share request is accepted. For more information on Data Streaming, stay tuned for Blog updates and training announcements. You can also email multistreaming@geotab.com.

New on the Map in MyGeotab Release 2101

Vehicle and Driver Label Options

Large fleets have wanted for a long time to be able to choose when vehicle names and driver names are displayed on the map to reduce clutter. Now you will be able to do just that. Easily add or remove the labels with a click.

New in Release 2101, Show Hide Labels on the Map

My Location Enhancement

If you used the MyLocation button in the past you may have wondered if it was working, as it only took you to the general area. In MyGeotab Release 2102 it will identify your actual location with a blue circle. This is a great tool to see where assets are in relation to where you are.

New Replay Feature Added to Map Options

This new feature allows you to replay trips for single or multiple vehicles adding visual insight to how the driver’s trip progressed. For example, you can focus on and replay parts of the trip there were delays or exception events to better understand what occured.

View Previous Trip & Current Position Together

You can now view the vehicles’ previous trip as well as the vehicles’ current position on the map. This feature adds context to the current location by helping users to understand the vehicles progress.

Previous trip with current location in MyGeotab Release 2101

New Administrative Features in MyGeotab Release 2101

Emailed Reports to Individual Users

Sceduling reports to be sent to individual users a convenience we have long awaited. In MyGeotab Release 2101 you can still create a group and send to everyone in it, but now you can also choose an individual user to receive scheduled reports. This will be a real time saver for administrators.

Schedule reports for individual users or groups

Select AND or OR Logic in the Groups Filter In Feature Preview

Previously the OR function was the only available operator. Now, if you need to see just the tractors in your eastern branch, you will be able to select the AND function to refine your search.

AND OR Operators in MyGeotab Release 2101

Reprocess Data for Selected Rules Only

You can now select just the rules you want when requesting a reprocess of data. Previously, the system would evaluate all the rules in your database for the specified time period. Geotab heard our concerns that after a full reprocess of data, genuine exceptions are erased.

For example, an exception event is generated when a driver speeds in a construction zone. Then, later in the year â?? when the construction is completed â?? the speed limit reverts to the original posted road speed. In cases like this, when the data is reprocessed, some exception events are removed since the system now evaluates the rule against the current posted road speed. The ability to select specific rules when reprocessing data, preserves your data to avoid similar situations.

Inside Any Added to Event Types for Zone Rules In Feature Preview

The Inside Any event type generates a separate exception event for each zone when a driver drives through a cluster of zones â?? either overlapping or in close proximity to each other â?? with the same zone type. Previously a separate rule for each zone was required to achieve this result.

Set Truck Specific Speed Limits

On some roads there are different speed limits enforced for heavy duty trucks than for passenger vehicles. This new feature allows fleet managers to apply truck-specific speed limits based on posted road speeds for trucks.

In addition, adding truck speed limits to a group rather than on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis saves you time and automatically applies the rule to any fleet vehicles added at a later time. You can set up truck-specific speed limits using the rules page. Under Conditions, click the Add speed limit button then toggle Truck speed limit to Yes.

Speeding exception reports will use truck-specific speed limits for vehicles in groups that have opted to use this. When exceptions are calculated against truck-specific speed limits, the application indicates the maximum truck speed limit for your convenience.

Where there is a custom speed limit for trucks on a specific road segment, the map can be updated as well. Click the road segment on the map to view the general posted speed limit (left) and the truck-specific speed limit (right). To update either speed limit, select Update posted road speed from the list.

Maintenance Reminders in MyGeotab Release 2101

Improved Functionality & a Fresh New Look In Feature Preview

Tracking maintenance is easier than ever in MyGeotab Release 2101. A new bulk import feature allow you to easily add previous maintenance records. Of course you can still schedule preventive maintenance, receive reminders about upcoming and overdue maintenance and log completed maintenance. All of these features come with a new and improved, simple, easy-to-use UI and intuitive user experience. Currently these updates to Maintenance & Reminder features are only available in feature preview.

View All Reminder Rules in One Place

The Maintenance Reminder Setup page makes it easier to view all scheduled maintenance reminders in a single place. For each maintenance reminder, you can also view the following details: maintenance type, repeat frequency and number of vehicles. To access the list of scheduled maintenance reminders, go to Engine & Maintenance > Maintenance > Reminder Setup from the main menu. From there select Add Reminder to quickly and easily add new reminders and assign vehicles to them.

Manage Upcoming Maintenance

Manage your maintenance schedule on the new and improved Upcoming Maintenance page! Enjoy handy filter and sorting tools for vehicle, maintenance type, status and reminders to help you find what you need fast, while avoiding overdue maintenance events. You will find this page under Engine & Maintenance > Maintenance > Upcoming. Once there you can easily add comments and details to log completed maintenance events, add a new maintenance event that was not prompted by a reminder, and view your completed maintenance records.

Import Your Maintenance History

You will now be able to import your existing maintenance records into MyGeotab to have everything in one place. Keep a complete history of vehicle maintenance in one convenient location. Geotab will provide a downloadable Excel template. Just follow the instructions provided, and upload your records using the Bulk Import tool.

MyGeotab Release 2101 adds Bulk Import Maintenance Records

Last, but not least… An easy new way to unlock user accounts

We have all received that call from a user who has exceeded their login attempts and can’t log in. Now the administrator will be able to visit the Users page, click the lock icon beside the user, then click the Unlock button.

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Avoiding Multitasking Mistakes

by Lynn Rios | Jan 29, 2021 | Data Integration, Fleet Management, Fleet Management Software, Industry Info

Multitasking Is The New Normal

In 2020 there was a huge shift in the way we do business. We were multitasking before, but often in a community workspace with more team interaction. Social distancing has forced us to re-think the workspace and work more independently. With that comes more multitasking, and a new level of stress and confusion can emerge. For drivers who have more technology to manage on the road, mistakes can have deadly consequences.

Fleets are using more electronics than ever for navigation, ELD, work orders, and communication. Fleet managers supervise drivers engaging in potentially dangerous multitasking that in some cases runs counter to the safety programs in place. Managers and dispatchers make exceptions when they need something, but later hold a driver accountable for talking on a phone while driving. Is there a double standard? Where do operational requirements supersede safety best practices? It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but one we need to be having.

Applying Wisdom From Other Disciplines

As a training center for NSC’s Defensive Driving Course, we get a lot of safety related communications and links to safety related content. A recent article “Safety Leadership: Reducing catastrophic incident potential via enhanced human performance reliability” by Matt Hargrove from DEKRA Organizational Safety and Reliability caught our attention. His post focuses on catastrophic incidents that occur on offshore drilling rigs, but there was some underlying wisdom that can be universally applied.

Given, most of our readers are not doing potentially life threatening jobs in dangerous environments, but one statement Matt Hargrove made strikes at the heart of what most of us are doing.

“We make more mistakes when our work is designed to have us multitask.”

Matt Hargrove

Principal Consultant, DEKRA Organizational Safety and Reliability

That statement is true for drivers, managers, support staff, vendors… all of us. And with all of the technology we use day to day, everyone is multitasking. So, how can we support employees to make fewer mistakes while still accomplishing all that needs to be done?

The author listed 5 specific “layers of protection” to be considered to “further reduce potential for catastrophic incidents”. If we consider those same recommendations with a fleet based operation in mind, are able to identify specific actions we can take to prevent the common multitasking related mistakes we make everyday.

Five Layers of Protection

“Creating clear alignment on prioritization of competing organizational targets and objectives.”

Make sure drivers, managers, and support staff are clear on their own priorities, and each other’s. A manager that needs something done right now must consider a driver’s first priority is arriving safely. It’s OK to communicate urgency, but not to pressure the driver to hurry unduly. If he is a few minutes late due to driving on icy roads, express that it is OK.

“Creating brain-aligned standard operating procedures and documents in which design and content are developed in a way that highlights critical steps and prompts specific actions that reduce potential for critical error.”

Maybe it’s time to take a good look at our forms and processes. Do forms follow the work flow so that drivers and other workers can document what they are doing in the order they normally do it? Are the fields for must have information required fields on electronic forms and highlighted somehow on paper forms? Are you using checklists to confirm the proper steps have been taken?

3. “Creating specific lines of inquiry related to human performance and human-machine interface to understand how errors might occur/or have occurred post-incident.”

When mistakes are made, they should be reviewed to determine why they were made. Take advantage of every opportunity to learn from mistakes and understand if multitasking is contributing to errors made. That responsibility needs to be owned by someone in the organization. Once we identify the common threads when mistakes occur, we can take steps to mitigate their re-occurrence.

“Deploying a structured technique for hazard identification (going from looking to seeing and mitigating hazards). Creating prompts that move people out of the default autopilot (fast brain) during safety-critical transitions within work tasks.”

Within our own departments we do things out of habit because that’s the way they have always been done. Perhaps we should get a fresh set of eyes on our procedures and forms to help us identify areas we might improve. For instance, we recently identified that two employees in different departments were both creating and uploading a nearly identical document into the same shared folder. We determined it made more sense to share a single document cutting both workloads. Now, both know to check the folder for an existing document before creating a new one. It’s a small thing, but every little bit helps.

“Training frontline team members to understand the causes of performance errors and co-develop the techniques and system changes necessary to control for them.”

This goes hand in hand with #4 on the list. Management needs to be on the lookout to identify wasted effort wherever it lives. It could be anything from an employee spending hours doing something manually that could be done more efficiently with the right software or integration, to identifying overlapping tasks that can be shifted to the most appropriate team member. If we can split the workload we can eliminate some of the multitasking.

A Few Simple Ideas You Can Implement Now

Some suggestions from our own staff include completing the task you are working on before starting another, closing your email client to avoid distractions, and organizing your email inbox with folders to prioritize and group similar tasks together. It all seems to come down to being open to change. There are a plethora of apps designed to help us get more done in less time and with less error. Being willing to evaluate and invest in those new solutions can be a game changer!

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Leveraging GPS Data Pays Off!

by Lynn Rios | Nov 11, 2019 | Fleet Management, Data Integration, Fleet Management Software

GPS Data can be mined just like precious gemstones…

In my time at Fleetistics I have noticed the clients we speak with generally fall into one of 3 persuasions.

Those who remain unconvinced of the value of GPS data, undecided, and plan to deploy the technology someday.
Clients who understand the value, deploy and then underuse their GPS data.
Intentional users who deploy, immerse themselves in the value of the information at their fingertips and become POWER users.

If you are still just thinking about telematics for your fleet, every day you delay is costing you cold hard cash.

For those who have already deployed, are you using your system to its fullest potential?

And to our POWER users, I say CONGRATULATIONS!

You are leveraging GPS data to save your organization money, providing every department with valuable operational data to do their jobs better, encouraging safe driving, and quite possibly saving lives.

So what do the POWER users do differently with their GPS data?

First of all, they never forget that they have valuable GPS, telematics and diagnostic data to leverage. Frankly, I learn new methods to dig for data from the POWER users all the time. It usually starts with a question. “How can I find out (you fill in the blank)?”

We look at what GPS data is available to answer the question. Then we create new rules or zones if needed, and set alerts if appropriate. In most cases, we can customize a report to sift to the data that answers the question. If we cannot solve a problem with the GPS platform, we look to develop something custom or find a partner whose technology solves the problem.

Dashboard reports

Finally, we schedule the distribution of the report to the departments that it provides value to. The departments can take appropriate action based on the data they receive. With this flow of information, departments can evaluate ongoing improvement effortlessly.

5 Proven Ways to Lower Fleet Costs using GPS data that you may have never considered.

1. Wage war on distracted driving.

A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study concluded that drivers that text while driving are 23 times more likely to have a collision or a near miss. Other VTTI studies have shown that taking your eyes off the road just prior to the occurrence of an unexpected event is responsible for up to 90% of collision and near-miss events.

A simple camera system can monitor for distractions like phone use, texting, and smoking. There are also clues in the GPS data. Frequent hard braking and hard turning events, especially when they occur in pairs, are a strong indicator that drivers are not paying attention.

Once you identify drivers that are at risk you can institute a driver training program, incorporate cell phone supression technology in vehicle, or start a program that recognizes and rewards drivers for improvement and safe driving scores.

2. Slow down your speeders

Speeding is dangerous and wastes fuel. As a result, if you can slow drivers down a little you lower risk and save money.

Wage war on speeding in the same manner as distracted driving above, but also look at why your drivers feel the need to speed. Review routes for efficiency, number of stops and factor the time each stop may take. It may be time to look at route optimization software to streamline routes and understand where you can and can’t fit another stop in.

Last question… Are your expectations of what a driver can complete in a workday reasonable? Really think about that considering speed limits, traffic patterns, and areas that get congested at certain times of day. If not, consider this.

What comes out of pocket depends on your insurace, but I expect it would cost your company less to hire another driver and spread out the workload.

3. Weather Factoring

For a ridiculously low investment, MyFleetview weather overlays can be added to your GPS system. When the weather is an issue in your area, you can see what vehicles may be affected and easily reschedule jobs or reshuffle deliveries to keep drivers away from unsafe conditions.

This is especially critical when doing outdoor work like roofing or landscaping. You are already conscious of the weather. Being able to see where a storm is headed in relation to your jobs and vehicles on the map makes those last-minute decisions faster and easier to make.

MyFleetview Weather Overlay

4. Develop and retain safe drivers

Sometimes we overlook the GPS data that shows us there is not a problem. We all know that onboarding a new employee and getting them up to speed is costly and time consuming. Keeping the experienced drivers you have is just good business, and it seems like really good employees are getting harder to find.

You can use the GPS data and score card reports to stay up to date on who your safest drivers are. Make that a point to cover in performance reviews and again, recognize and reward employees that are saving you money by reducing company risk exposure. Employees that feel appreciated stay longer.

5. Hire a GPS Administrator... no, really!

I know what you are thinking… add another salaried employee to save money??? Well, yes! First of all, your Managers have time to log in and see where their people are, but not the time to dig in and analyze all of the GPS data being collected.

If you hire someone whose primary job is to find ways to save money and streamline operations the payoff can be huge. They will have time to optimize the GPS system and use the GPS data to find ways to save you money, and their bonus incentive can be tied to those proven savings. Now you might just get everything you want out of your GPS data and more.

For a fleet of 20 vehicles, saving just $5 per vehicle per day, which can be achieved by controlling idle time alone, gives you $26,000 toward an Administrator’s salary package.

Fleet Administrator

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