April’s updates bring a series of enhancements across key areas of the Locate2u platform, rolled out across two core versions.
Locate2u Core 2.9.0 Release Notes
Locate2u Core 2.9.0 introduces several enhancements to improve system flexibility, performance, and user experience.
Summary
This release includes a new SMS provider integration, global configuration options for messaging, and improved order management capabilities.
The Support Admin Dashboard provides better visibility into Enterprise Agreement details, while new API endpoints enhance delivery management. Trip organization and optimization have been improved with better grouping of unassigned runs and visual enhancements to the optimization interface.
Performance improvements have been made to the Review Charges form, and several enhancements to order status tracking and filtering make it easier to manage deliveries. CO2 emissions tracking has been refined with improved decimal precision for better environmental impact reporting.
These updates collectively enhance Locate2u’s functionality, providing a more efficient and user-friendly experience across the platform.
Features: New SMS Provider Integration
Feature Details:
- Added support for Atomic as a new SMS provider alongside existing providers (Twilio, Plivo)
- Provider selection available at the team level
- Consistent logging and status callback handling across all providers
Use Case:
Organizations can now choose from multiple SMS providers based on their specific needs, pricing preferences, or regional coverage, ensuring reliable communication with customers about their deliveries.
Feature: Enhanced Order Management
Feature Details:
- New endpoint to update delivery dates and skills
- Automatic order status updates based on delivery date changes
- Ability to filter orders by service package
- Reorganized order status filters for better usability
Use Case:
Users can more efficiently manage orders by updating delivery details through the API and filtering orders based on service package, streamlining the process of tracking and organizing deliveries.
Feature: Improved Trip Organization
Feature Details:
- Unassigned run stops with the same run name are now grouped into a single trip when updated through the Bulk Stop Update endpoint.
- Completed stops on locked trips are ordered by completion time rather than original order
- Better visual organization of trip information.
Use Case:
Dispatchers can more easily manage trips with improved organization of stops, making it clearer which stops belong together and providing a more logical view of completed deliveries.
Feature: Optimized CO2 Emissions Tracking
Feature Details:
- Total emissions values now displayed with two decimal places for greater precision
- Updated stop marker colors to use Locate2u blue for better visual consistency
- Improved emissions calculations based on trip distances
Use Case:
Organizations can more accurately track and report on their environmental impact with precise CO2 emissions data, supporting sustainability initiatives and environmental reporting.
Enhancements and Improvements
- Schedule adjustment subtypes now include validation to ensure data consistency and accuracy.
- The Review Charges form has been optimized with backend performance improvements, resulting in faster loading times and smoother operation when changing filters.
- SMS History Report now displays dates more accurately using the time updates were received rather than carrier delivery dates.
- Order status is now automatically updated when expected delivery dates are set during initial order creation via the API.
- Customer filter functionality has been restored in the Customer Invoices page, and the missing Team Region filter has been reintroduced.
- The process of adding team members to newly created accounts has been streamlined to prevent interface issues.
- Customer creation via API now handles cases where only the company name is provided more effectively.
- Webhook event handling for notes has been improved to ensure events are triggered only after image uploads are complete.
Locate2u Product Updates: Core 2.8.19
Summary
Locate2u Core 2.8.19 update introduces significant enhancements to team member management, route optimization, and environmental impact tracking.
The new Team Member Roster system provides visual indicators of team member availability, making it easier to plan and assign deliveries efficiently.
CO2 emissions tracking has been added to help businesses monitor their environmental impact during deliveries.
This release also brings improvements to the chatbot, with expanded capabilities to answer questions about bookings, rates, and service areas. New features for frequent address management, including bulk import functionality, streamline the process of managing delivery locations.
The multi-run optimization has been enhanced to provide better visibility and control over multiple delivery runs.
API enhancements include updates to the Bulk Stop Update API, a new Service Area API, and improvements to Order Import.
Customer and team member tagging capabilities have been added to enable more targeted actions and reporting.
Several improvements have been made to enhance system performance, user interface consistency, and data accuracy throughout the application.
Feature: Team Member Roster Calendar and Availability Indicators
Feature Details:
- New roster calendar showing team member availability across days and weeks
- Visual traffic light system indicating team member availability (green for available, red for unavailable)
- Availability indicators in team member dropdown lists throughout the application
- Filtering options by team region, role, and search
- Availability indicators in the optimizer interface for route planning
Use Case:
Dispatchers can quickly see which team members are available on specific dates when assigning stops or planning routes, improving scheduling efficiency and reducing the need to reassign deliveries.
Feature: CO2 Emissions Tracking
Feature Details:
- New CO2 per km/mile field added to team member profiles
- CO2 emissions column in the optimizer showing emissions per trip and total emissions
- Emissions calculations based on total kilometers for routed trips
Use Case:
Businesses can monitor their environmental impact during deliveries, track CO2 emissions across their fleet, and make data-driven decisions to reduce their carbon footprint.
Feature: Enhanced Chatbot Capabilities
Feature Details:
- New question types supported including booking statistics, rate calculations, and service area inquiries
- Ability to provide summaries of customer ratings
- Address validation for stop creation
- Service area availability checking
Use Case:
Users can quickly get answers to common questions without navigating through multiple screens, such as “How many bookings were completed today?” or “Do we service this location?”
Feature: Frequent Address Management
Feature Details:
- Bulk import functionality for frequent addresses
- Import mapping configuration for frequent addresses
- Improved address code uniqueness at the customer level
- Pagination added to the Frequent Address form
Use Case:
Teams can efficiently manage large numbers of frequent delivery addresses by importing them from Excel files, saving time and reducing manual data entry.
Feature: Customer and Team Member Tags
Feature Details:
- Ability to apply tags to customers and team members
- Tag-based filtering for invoice runs
- Tag-based selection for team member invoicing
Use Case:
Businesses can categorize customers and team members with tags like “fortnightly” and then use these tags to perform targeted actions such as creating invoices only for team members with specific tags.
Feature: Multi-Run Optimization Enhancements
Feature Details:
- Accordion view showing each run a driver will have
- Option to set return-to-start location duration
Use Case:
Dispatchers can better plan multiple delivery runs for drivers in a single day, with improved visibility of all runs and better control over loading times between runs.
Feature: New Service Area API
Feature Details:
- API providing delivery dates and times for specific locations
- Checks delivery windows, override days, and blockout days
- Returns available delivery windows for service areas
Use Case:
Customer service representatives can quickly check available delivery dates and times for customer addresses, providing accurate information without manual calculations.
Feature: Bulk Stop Update API Enhancements
Feature Details:
- Added support for updating run name, duration minutes, trip date, and notes
- Improved handling of batch updates
Use Case:
Businesses can update multiple stops at once with more flexibility, streamlining the process of managing delivery schedules and information.
Enhancements and Improvements
- The map display now correctly shows the latest route information when reassigning trips to drivers.
- Processing of Shopify requests has been optimized to prevent duplicate stops from being created.
- Order import now correctly uses the API user in any ‘created by’ field for better tracking.
- Order API responses now include item line descriptions for improved clarity.
- The chatbot title has been updated to “Locate2u AI” to better reflect its capabilities.
- PDF run sheets have been improved with better address display and icons for service and item types.
- Condition blocks have been added to the ‘service status changed’ custom action email configuration.
- Team member-specific scanning behavior settings have been added to allow different scan types for groups of team members.
- Frequent address codes are now unique at the customer level rather than the team level.
- Warning modals now appear consistently when switching tabs while editing specific fields.
- The total number of frequent addresses is now displayed on the Frequent Addresses page.
- The New Jobs form now adheres to current Team Region logic, showing only relevant information.
- The capacity display in the optimizer has been improved to prevent showing values beyond vehicle capacity.
