Vehicle Constraints, Troubleshooting Tools, and pretty polishes

Hooowhee, this is a big release that might not seem like it at first glance. The biggest news is that now (drumroll) one can very effectively control a very diverse fleet of delivery vehicles and dynamically route orders to the appropriate trucks, each with their own schedules.

VEHICLE CONSTRAINTS Let's say that you have several smaller trucks that don't require a CDL to drive. Then, let's say you invest in a larger truck that does require a CDL and thus a more expensive delivery given the added truck & driver costs. Previously, if you just added this truck into the mix, it would be on the hook to take small loads. We have always included upper end weight constraints, so that the schedule of a larger truck would only appear for BIG loads, but we've never had LOWER END constraints in place, like we do now.

This means that you can now enter in a truck and set a weight value that an order must exceed before that truck's schedule will be available. It will no longer get triggered for loads that don't weigh enough to warrant the larger truck.

Similarly, we've included optional min/max constraints for volume as well. Just like weight, a larger truck won't be triggered unless the order volume warrants the bigger rig.

This set of changes is arguably one of the biggest and most valuable updates to BDP so far this year, and makes your schedule and fleet infinitely customizable.

SLOT TROUBLESHOOTING When adding products to BDP, you are given the option to add in as many "Product Prices" as you like. These are essentially "attributes" of the product that let you control the exact volumes that work for your business. You can enter as many or as few as you like. The challenge here is that it is possible to inadvertently enter a volume for sale that cannot be delivered with your currently active vehicles. If this happens, we now display messaging to alerts your admins so that they can fix things up tout suite.

CUSTOM ORDER CONFIRMATION This allows BDP customers to both keep as much traffic on your own site as possible AND trigger any sort of ad conversion scripts, if you're into that sort of thing. Please contact BDP Support ([e-mail]) for the nuts-and-bolts on how to bring this to life and start tracking your ROI!

DRIVER DASHBOARD "LOOK AHEAD" A long-requested feature, drivers can now "look ahead" on the Driver Dashboard (both list and map views) to see what orders are scheduled for future days. This data has always been available via the calendar page, but it is WAY more convenient to take a peek at what's coming up (including dump locations via the map) with this new addition.

PRODUCT WEIGHT & COST FIELDS There's long been a field on the Product page that captured the weight of a product in "tons per yard", which has always been...well, confusing. This is a somewhat common way to reference the weight of an aggregate/gravel product, but makes little to no sense for woody soft goods & soils. We've adjusted the weight value now such that we just capture the weight of a yard of the material and we apply our tonnage conversion behind the scenes. This should make things much easier to fill out and can be calculated (albeit a bit roughly) by measuring the weight of a 12" x 12" x 12" box of material (less the box weight) and then multiplying by 27. Reach out it that needs further explanation! Lastly, we're prepping for some new features related to "Product Cost" and have updated the field that stores this information to be either "Cost per Yard" or "Cost per Ton". This is all optional right now, but how cool would it be if you could see (in real time) the current value of material inventory?

ADMINS WHO DRIVE We accidentally made it annoying for Admins who have Driving capability to use the Driver Dashboard. They'd click into the "Details" of a delivery and then the breadcrumb navigation would take them back to the "Orders" screen, not the Driver Dashboard. For the people that this affected, we're sorry...it is now possible to select which screen you want to return to with the addition of some new icons. Same is true for "Loaders" and the "Loader Dashboard".

TOOLTIPS We're starting to weave in some little "?" icons throughout the app. Clicking/hovering on these will offer some additional info re: specific fields/tools and will link to more info in our BDP Documentation when needed. Speaking of....we're hustling to get V1 of our documentation out soon. Stay tuned there!

ORDER EXPORTING It has always been possible to export (to and .XLS file) all of one's orders. But that's annoying when you only need a smaller subset (date range, product, customer, etc). Now, whatever filter you've put in place via the "Advanced Search" tools will also apply when you "Export Orders".

OTHER FIXES We cleaned up the look/feel of the calendar view (more to come there) and fixed some layout bugs with the driver delivery map and about a dozen other little spots around the app where we're (hopefully/probably) the only ones who'll notice