| You've got your railcars imported or entered into RMS and you've assigned them to various pools, if that was required. Several things will now require you to get these same railcars into a Trace List in Steelroads. One thing is the ability to take advantage of the "New Events" feature in Steelroads. This feature enables Steelroads to "save" up to 4 days worth of trace records (or sightings, as we call them) for all railcars entered into a Trace List. In other words, if you forget to schedule RMS to import sightings from Steelroads over the weekend or some period equal to or less than 4 days, the next time you import sightings you will get all sightings that happened since the last time you imported; nothing is lost!
To quickly establish a Trace List open RMS and expand the Daily Reports branch on the Home window. Double-click on the report "Last Sighting by Railcar". When the Filter Builder pops up, don't apply a filter, just click OK. Once the report has displayed, click Excel Native button on the toolbar on the top of the Report Viewer; this will export the report to a Microsoft Excel file. When the export is complete, open the file and simply highlight the railcars listed in the first column, click Edit | Copy and then open up Steelroads in your Web browser, logon, click on the Track and Trace - Trace your railcar shipments; the Track and Trace main page will appear, paste these railcars into the big text box labeled "Enter car numbers:". Click on the Save Trace command button (don't worry about any other settings such as CLM format, filters, sorts--RMS will handle all of this automatically). When prompted by the next screen, fill in the "Trace Name" text box with the name that you want to give the list (don't use spaces or mixed case); also fill in a "Trace Description". It is recommended to select the option "Private Trace", which will prevent others in your company with Steelroads accounts access to the list--this will be explained in more detail below. Click on the "OK" command button at the bottom of the screen.
If you wish to use this Trace List for the RMS import, expand the Data Management branch on the RMS Home window and double-click on "Reference Values". Select in the QuickFind a reference called "Steelroads Trace List(s)" and enter the list name (case-sensitive) in the Reference Value text box and click the Save command button. Under the Data Management branch, double-click on Import Properties; click on the Sighting Data tab and be sure that the Steelroads check box is checked (Select CLM file format D or H) and the option button labeled "New Events for Privates and Last Event for Temps" is selected. A few important things to remember: 1) you nor anyone else must not perform a trace using the Steelroads Trace List just created in a Web browser because that will "empty" the sightings that have accumulated since the last trace--if you still wish to perform traces at the Steelroads web site using your Web browser just establish a separate Trace List (for this reason--we recommend that you edit the Trace List and make sure that it is set to Private Trace); 2) whenever you add/reactivate or delete/deactivate a railcar(s) in RMS you must add or delete the railcar(s) in the Steelroads Trace List accessed via your Internet browser.
Obviously, using a Trace List and the New Events feature is, at this time, really only beneficial for shippers that have a permanent railcar fleet that changes little. Shippers who use temporary/free-running system railcars can still benefit greatly by using RMS with Steelroads, but you just need to be more careful about making sure that RMS is always left running in a scheduled mode if you are going to be gone for a few days. We had thought that dynamic fleet updating was going to be available in Steelroads Track and Trace, but that doesn’t seem to be the case now. Railinc, the makers of Steelroads, seem to be reserving that feature for their paid service. Other value added networks make dynamic fleet updating available, which is good news. The bad news is that it will cost you $10,000 or more annually if you shipment activity is 500 or more per month.
|
