Database Setup
The Loadman Fleet Manager (FM) database stores static information about your
business (Customers, Services, and Routes) and dynamic data related to the
Service having actually been performed.
The database content includes ...
- Customer - Site - Service: This is where you provide your Service.
In the FM, a Customer may be simple (one location and one Service), or it may
have multiple Services, or it may take place at multiple Sites. Sites may
be simple or have multiple Services. This options may be selected to be
different for each Customer.
- Trucks and Drivers: The FM also keeps track of your fleet and your
operators.
- Routes and Route Stops: The FM manages Routes, groups of Routes,
and the list of Route Stops for each.
- Products and Problems: These optional tables contain information that
allow your Drivers to report field operations in greater detail. When a
load is performed, the Driver can indicate Product and Problem that become
part of the record of the load.
- LoadData: The LoadData view shows the data merged with the rest of
the FM database such that load data is available in the context of any
other information (such as Customer, Truck, etc) that was provided to the FM.
Filling the Database:
It is possible to just start typing, the FM provides a complete set of data
entry/edit tools to allow the database to be maintained completly within the
FM.
However, in many cases the data already exists in some other computer
application or database. The FM provides facilities to import data from
just about any computer based source. This process involves you providing a
description of the data, Creative Microsystems then provides you with one or
more special files that customize the import facility of the FM to your needs,
and you import your data. Of course some situations are simpler than others.
The fields that can be imported are...
- Route
- Customer, Customer Name, Contact, Phone, Fax
- Address, Address2, City, State, Zip
- Lat, Lon
- Site, Site Name
- Service, ServType, LoadName
- Truck, Truck Name, Truck Meter Number
- Driver
- Region, Zone, Type, Frequency
- Quantity, Driver Instructions, Notes
The bare minimum required is a Customer identifier and a Route
identifier. In this case the Route would be simply a list of Customer
indentifiers making up each Route. The LoadData collected after the Route
was run would be date/time, load, GPS, etc along with the Customer identifier.
If more data is provided to the FM then the FM can do more,
such as provide addresses on the Route sheet, use your 16 character
loadname to be displayed on the meter instead of the FM generating one
from the Customer identifier (and optionally other fields), or provide
more complete data export.
Also, if the import includes enough data, the
FM can generate the Routes. If this is of interest, see the
Route generation tutorial.