FleetNotice™ Notifications FleetNotice provides you with the capability to receive notifications when something noteworthy happens among the vehicles in your fleet. What you consider to be an interesting activity, that you wish to be notified about, is up to you. By using FleetNotice, using your web browser, you can define both simple notifications that you are interested in receiving and more complex ones by combining several simple ones, as described in detail below.
You can also let FleetNotice watch zones and routes which are of interest to your business and receive notifications when there's activity in these.
Lack of activity is often important to know about. Idle vehicles, late arrivals, vehicles not departing on time or other "non-events" are critical to receive notifications while there's time to do something about them. Examples To give you an idea of the type of notifications FleetNotice is used to create, here's some examples:
Create a notification... ...when any vehicle enters any zone. ...when any express courier truck enters Terminal Area #1 or Drop Off Point #7. ...if Tanker #1 does not arrive to Paris before October 23, 5pm. ...if a security vehicle does not pass checkpoints #3, #4, #8 in that order ...if more than 100 vehicles have passed into the container yard during the last hour.
You start working with FleetNotice by selecting one of the pre-defined activity notifications already present in FleetNotice, see below for a list of supplied activity notifications.
For example if you would like to know when a particular vehicle enters a no-go zone inside a chemical plant, you would start off by selecting the Enter Zone/Vehicle activity as a base and creating a new notification, perhaps called Tanker in Danger Zone. In this way, every time anyone drives into any of the zones you specified, a notification is delivered to you. Don't mind about the "/" in the notification name just yet, it is explained soon.
Real-Time Notifications A notification is always created immediately by FleetNotice as the activity you are interested in happens in the real-world. FleetNotice is a real-time notification system and all notifications are delivered to you immediately when your vehicles perform various actions. As such, FleetNotice is not an replacement for reporting systems which creates reports from older historical data. Reporting systems are valuable for analyzing and understanding vehicle behaviour in order to determine which aspect of your fleet are best suited to be monitored in real-time with FleetNotice. From a report, you could for example, learn that certain zones are best avoided during the night as they are not safe. In order to monitor this, you would use FleetNotice to deliver a notification whenever a vehicle enters any of these zones during the night.
Monitoring Perspective Most fleet monitoring scenarios can be viewed from slightly different perspectives. If we look at a vehicle entering a zone, it can be viewed from the perspective of the zone or from the vehicle's perspective. This difference is very important in FleetNotice. Depending on what perspective you have, you would be selecting different activity notifications.
Notifications are always produced per something, this is why perspective is important. For example, a Zone Entry/Vehicle notification if produced for each vehicle entering the zone. That is what the /Vehicle in the name indicates; per vehicle. There is also a similar activity notification of type Zone Entry/Zone, produced for each zone when a vehicle enters into it. These sounds rather similar, but the first one is created per vehicle and the latter per zone. The distinction is critical and is one of the features that makes FleetNotice so powerful.
Example Depending on your monitoring scenario, you would select either of them or perhaps both.
For example if you are interested in being notified when a specific vehicle enters any zone, your scenario is vehicle centric. If you on the other hand would be interested in getting a notification when any vehicle enters a specific zone, your scenario is zone centric.
The easiest way to understand which is correct for your scenario, is to describe the monitoring scenario in plain text.
For example:
"For each delivery van I would like to be notified when they enter zones Z1 or Z2 on any Sunday (except the second Sunday in January) between 9am and 5pm"
From this description we can understand that you wish to get one notification for each van by looking at the "For each delivery van..." part, Thus your monitoring scenario is vehicle centric and you would be using the activity notifications which end with a /Vehicle, for example a Zone Entry/Vehicle.
Activity Notifications - The Starting Point Activity notifications are notifications which are built into FleetNotice, so they are available without any additional configuration from your part. These activity notifications are your starting point when defining new types of notifications relevant to your business. The activity notifications are created by FleetNotice automatically as specified below.
Activity notifications are selected using the Selector module. Before they are selected, they are not visible outside FleetNotice. Activity notifications are not available as input for other modules than the Selector, so you must select them as your first step in creating a FleetNotice configuration. Modules - The Building Blocks The FleetNotice system consists of a number of modules which can be wired together to create complex types of notifications.
All modules takes one or several notifications as their input. Each module looks at the input notification(s) and produces an output notification based on a condition and parameters which are specific to each module.
What makes FleetNotice so powerful, is that you can take the output from any module and use it as input to other modules. By connecting the modules in this way, you can create very complex notifications. Zones - Significant Areas Basic Zones can be created and changed using the Zone Editor. A zone is created by drawing a polygon on a map. A zone normally represents an area which is important to your business. For example sales districts, terminal areas, no-go zones within a plant, dangerous areas in a container yard, construction sites or other areas used in your daily business.
Advanced Zones can also be created automatically in addition to being created manually using the Zone Editor. An automatically created zone is created by another computer system based on some condition. For example, a zone used to create a proximity notification can be created automatically when a work order is created in a work dispatching system. This is used to automatically create notifications which monitor certain aspects of a work order. For example when a vehicle is approaching a delivery point. In order to create zones automatically, your IT-systems must be connected to FleetNotice. This is something your IT department will do for you.
Routes with Waypoints Routes are created and changed using the Route Editor. A route consists of a path with a starting and an ending point. The path travels normally along roads. The path of the route can also be created where no roads exist. For example in open-pit mining or forest operations, roads that vehicles travel along are not always public roads that can be found on a map.
Between the start and end points of a route you can create a number of optional waypoints. Each waypoint can be given a descriptive name and short description. The waypoints are also used to guide the route to go along specific roads. Without waypoints, the route is automatically drawn along the shortest road between the start and end. This shortest path is only a suggestion and waypoints are used to guide it along the roads that you intend. The waypoints are also used to create certain activity notifications, you could for example used waypoints to get notifications as a vehicle progress along a route.
Points of Interest Points of Interest, or POI for short, are specific locations which are important to your operations. They could be gas stations, bridges, tunnels or truck stops. Each POI is created using the POI editor. Each POI is marked on the map using a marker and given a name.
A number of activity notifications are created when a vehicle arrives at a POI. By positioning POIs at strategic positions you can track movement and progress of vehicles. A vehicle crossing a bridge or toll booth could be detected using a strategically placed POI.
Notification Limits A central concept in FleetNotice are the usage of notification limits. These limits allows you to use only selected notifications as input to a module, notifications can be selected based on vehicles, zones, waypoints, points of interest or routes.
As a part of the input notification definition in each module, a limit is used to restrict which notifications are used as input to a module. For each module, you specify what type of notifications you wish to use as input. Without a limit, all notifications of the specified type, or types, are delivered to the module. In many cases you are not interested in all notifications of a specific type. You might, for example, like to receive notifications only when a specific vehicle enters a specific zone. Not all vehicles and all zones.
When you start by using the Selector module you are presented with a list of pre-defined notifications generated internally by FleetNotice. All these activity notifications are documented below. As part of the documentation you find specified what the notification is created per something. The Zone Entry notification for instance comes in two versions, one that is created for each zone, and one that is created for each vehicle. So for each vehicle and zone defined in the system there is a Zone Entry notification created. When you like to select, using the Selector module, one of these notifications you might want to restrict the input to just certain zones and vehicles. Otherwise the Selector module will produce an output notification each time any vehicle enters any zone.
Depending on if you like to focus on a vehicle or a zone you would select the Zone Entry/Vehicle or Zone Entry/Zone activity notification. If you select the Zone Entry/Vehicle notification, you are given the choice to first limit the vehicles and then the zones. Without any limits, the notification is created for all zones and all vehicles. The most restrictive limit would be to select only one vehicle and one zone. This would allow you to receive notifications only when a single vehicle enters a single specified zone.
If you on the other hand wish to focus on the zone, you are given the option to limit which zones that you care about and the restrict which vehicles to consider even further.
FleetNotice Modules The FleetNotice system consists of a number of modules which are used, often in combination, to define the types of notifications you are interested in receiving.
All modules share some common properties:
Each module creates a new output notification depending on conditions which depend on the type of the module. The created output notification can be made externally visible outside of the FleetNotice system, meaning that you as the user can receive it. Notifications which are not made visible to the outside are only used as inputs to other modules.
The description should contains a short note on the purpose of the module.
These common properties are not described for each of the modules below, only properties specific to each module are described.
Module - The Activity Notification Selector Description The Selector module is the starting point of any notification produced by FleetNotice.
The Selector module allows you to select one of the pre-defined activity notifications. The activity notifications are created automatically by FleetNotice. But they are not visible outside the FleetNotice system and thus never delivered to an user before they are selected with the Selector module.
When choosing an input notification using the Selector module, you are presented with a list of all available activity notifications. These activity notifications are created using the conditions specified below.
The Selector is a bit special in that it is the only module which can use the pre-defined activity notifications as input. All other modules use as their input the output of other modules.
The selected activity notification can be limited to only include notifications which are limited to selected vehicles, routes, zones, points of interest or waypoints. Exactly which limits are available depends on the type of the activity notification. Using a limit you could, for example, select only those zone entry activity notifications which corresponds to specific zones and vehicles. Without limits, you would get a report when any vehicle enters any zone.
The simplest use of the Selector module is to select an activity notification and make it externally visible using a new name. It is also possible to select an activity notification without making it externally visible. This would make sense if you plan to use the output of the Selector module as an input to another module.
Specification Inputs Number of inputs: 1, a pre-defined activity notification. Output A notification immediately when when the input is seen.
Module - Sequence Finder Description The Sequence module allows you receive a notification when an interesting sequence of notifications has been seen in a specific order.
The Sequence module creates an output notification when the specified sequence of input notifications have been seen. The output notification is created when the last notification in the input sequence is seen.
The Sequence modules also requires you to specify a duration during which the sequence is expected to happen. The duration is the maximum time that you expect to elapse between the first and last notifications in the sequence. If the last notification is not seen within this duration, FleetNotice simply stops looking for the sequence and nothing happens.
The duration is required in order to stop looking for a sequence which will never happen. It is possible that, for multiple reasons, that the notifications in a sequence is never seen. A notification which is expected could unexpectedly be missing. For example due to a malfunctioning GPS receiver or simply because a vehicle is not moving as expected.
The duration could also be used if you are interested in receiving a notification of a sequence if it happens within a limited time period. This is usefull when the actual duration of the sequence is as important as the sequence itself. Specification Inputs Number of inputs: 2-n, a list of notifications. Output A notification when the last notification in the input sequence is seen. Parameters Examples Report when any vehicle enters any zone Report when vehicle #123 arrives at Point of Interest South London Truck Stop Report when any tanker truck departs from Chem Plant #7
Module - Out of Order Detection Description The Out of Order module can be thought as the reverse of the Sequence module. It creates a notification when the input sequence deviates from an expected order. You list the expected order of the input notifications and the Out of Order module produces the output as quickly as a notification is seen which is not the next one in order to happen.
The Out of Order module looks for the notifications in the input list one by one. If the next notification is of the wrong type, the output notification is immediately created. When the output notification is create, the module stops looking for any further notifications. Examples Guard on Patrol The Out of Order module can for example be used to report when a guard on patrol, which is expected to visit a number of waypoints in a pre-defined order, misses one waypoint. The input sequence of notifications would give the correct order and a notification would be created at once when the guard arrives to a waypoint which is not the next one in order.
Count Description
The Count module allows you to receive a notification when there have been a excessive number of a particular notification recently.
You can also reverse the function of the Count module to receive a notification when there have been too few notifications recently.
The input notification to the Count module is the notification that you wish to be notified of if there are too many, or too few, of recently.
You specify the time period and number of input notifications that should trigger the reporting of the output notification. The time period is specified as the last n minutes, for example that last 30 minutes. This would direct FleetNotice to count the number of input notifications during the last 30 minutes and produce an output notification is there are more than the specified amout of them, or less than if using the reversed operation.
Examples Specification Inputs Number of inputs: 1 Output A notification when the last notification in the input sequence is seen. Parameters Duration - Maximum duration between first and last notification in the input sequence. If the duration is exceeded before the last notification in the input sequence is seen, FleetNotice stops looking for the sequence and not output notification is produced. Count — The number of input notifications to count in the interval specified by the duration.
Module - Deadline Description The Deadline module is used to detect when a notification has not happened as expected. The Deadline module takes one single notification as its input, the notification you expect to happen, and produces an output notification at a specified deadline if the input is still missing. The deadline is specified as a date and time.
If the input notification is seen before the deadline, the output notification is not created and nothing else happens.
Examples Receive a notification if a delivery does not arrive on time. Receive a notification if a vehicle does not visit all 10 customer drop off points before end of day, minus one hour.
Module - On Dates The On Dates module allows you to receive a notification only if the module's input notification is created on specific dates. If the input notification happens on a day which is not listed, nothing happens.
Examples
Module - Time Interval The Time Interval module allows you to create a notification if the input notification is seen during a specified time interval during a day.
If the input is received after the start of the interval but before the end of the interval, the output notification is created.
The time intervals start and end times are normally considered to be on the same day. For example is you would like to constraint the output notification to be generated during normal working hours, you might specify 9am as the starting point and 5pm as the end time.
You can also specify a time interval that spans over the night, with a starting time specified in the evening and the end time point in the morning the next day. For example if you specify 10pm as the starting time and 8am as the ending time, it is assumed that you mean 8am the next morning. This allows for easy definition of nightly time intervals that spans two days.
Module - Any The Any module allows you list a number of input notifications. The output notification is created when the first of the listed input notifications are seen. Any notification in the list will do.
An optional parameter to the Any module can specify how many of the input notifications should be seen before the output notification is created. This creates the output notification when a specified number of the input notifications are seen. The order of the input notifications is irrelevant.
Module - All The All module allows you to list a number of input notifications. The output notification is create when all the input notifications are seen at least once.
Activity Notifications Activity notifications are special types of notifications which are pre-defined in FleetNotice. These built-in notification types are automatically created by the system as defined below. Even though an activity notification is automatically created within FleetNotice, you must use the Selector module to select one particular activity notification in order to make it visible outside FleetNotice.
The purpose of the activity notifications are to give you convenient starting points when defining complex notifications. The simplest use of FleetNotice is to select an activity notification and make it visible. More complex notification can be created when one or several activity notifications are used as inputs to other modules.
Reported Per Vehicle Zone Entry/Vehicle The Zone Entry/Vehicle activity is a notification which is reported when a vehicle enters a zone.
In order to avoid erroneous notification reports, FleetNotice introduces a slight delay in reporting this notification. When a vehicle drives very close to a zone border or stays still close to the border of a zone it is possible that the vehicle reports a GPS position which is erroneously reported to be inside the zone even if the vehicle is actually outside the zone. This is due to lack of precision in many GPS receivers and the inherent inaccuracy of the GPS system itself.
A vehicle can enter multiple zones at the same time. This happens if there are several overlapping zones defined.
A vehicle which turns on its GPS inside a zone is not considered to enter is zone. A zone is entered only when a vehicle passes the zone boundary from outside the zone into the zone.
Zone Exit/Vehicle The Zone Exit notification is reported when a vehicle leaves a zone.
Route Start/Vehicle The Route Start notification is reported when a vehicle arrives at the first waypoint of a route. The first waypoint of a route is always the starting point of a route.
Route End/Vehicle The Route End notification is reported when a vehicle arrives at the last waypoint of a route. The last waypoint of a route is always the end of the route.
Join Route/Vehicle The Join Route waypoint is reported when a vehicle joins a route from by passing arriving to a waypoint somewhere between the start and end waypoints.
Leave Route/Vehicle The Leave Route notification is reported when a vehicle leaves a route which it is traveling along.
Arrive at Waypoint/Vehicle Reported when a vehicle arrives at a waypoint Arrive at Point of Interest/Vehicle Reported when a vehicle arrives at a point of interest
Moving/Vehicle Reported once each minute if the vehicle is moving
Idle/Vehicle Reported one each minute if the vehicle is idle.
Reported Per Zone Zone Entry/Zone The Zone Entry/Zone notification is reported when a vehicle enters a zone. Zone Exit/Zone The Zone Exit/Zone notification is reported when a vehicle exits a zone.
Reported Per Route Route Start/Route The Route Start/Route notification is reported when a vehicle starts to travel along a route.
Route End/Route The Route End/Route notification is reported when a vehicle arrives at the end of a route. Join Route/Route The Join Route/Route waypoint is reported when a vehicle joins a route from a waypoint somewhere between the start and end waypoints.
Leave Route/Route The Leave Route/Route notification is reported when a vehicle leaves a route which it is traveling along
Reported Per Waypoint Arrive/WP The Arrive at WP is reported when a vehicle arrives at a waypoint Reported Per Point of Interest Arrive/PoI
The Arrive at POI Is reported when a vehicle arrives at a point of interest.
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