Today we have updated the map data and traffic flow data on our servers.
Changes in the road network and driving speeds may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change when updating the schedule next time.
In addition, when displaying maps in portatour®, the loading times might take a little longer since the map details need to be downloaded to your device again.
Today we have updated the map data and traffic flow data on our servers.
Changes in the road network and driving speeds may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change when updating the schedule next time.
In addition, when displaying maps in portatour®, the loading times might take a little longer since the map details need to be downloaded to your device again.
As of today, new and improved online help for portatour® is available.
Click the question mark symbol in the main menu bar or in the pop-up windows of the portatour® application to open the new online help. Alternatively you can also navigate to help.portatour.com directly.
Using the new search function, you can quickly find the articles or videos in the online help that are relevant for you. Simply type in the search terms and the results will immediately appear, sorted by relevance.
We have given the online help a fresh coat of paint. Both functionality and user-friendliness have been improved.
The online help is also now easier to use on smartphones and tablets while on the move.
In the menu (next to Help Center For), select your portatour® product variant (Anywhere, Salesforce, Dynamics CRM, etc.) and your authorization level (user or administrator).
The range of languages has been extended. In addition to English, German and French, the portatour® Anywhere online help is now also available and updated in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. When no translation is available, the English version is displayed.
We are constantly working on improving the online help and adding new content. If you have any comments, please send them to feedback@portatour.com You will also find a feedback section under the individual articles. Please let us know whether an article was helpful or what we can improve. Of course we are also happy to receive positive feedback.
We wish you much success with the new online help!
After an intensive development period, we have rolled out a major update of portatour® today. To read details about the new features, scroll down or use the following links:
We wish you much success with using the new features and look forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.
One of the most frequently used functions in portatour® is the customer search. It is available as quick search, extended search and saved search.
As of now the same functionality is also available for appointments, tasks, reports and users. One difference: whereas in the customer list the search function is always displayed, in the other lists you have to switch to the search mode by clicking the magnifying glass symbol. Another click on the magnifying glass symbol ends the search mode; you will see the standard view of the respective list again.
For those of you who don’t already know, in the quick search, you can enter multiple search terms in the search field. For example, if you enter “Turner Oakland” in the search field, all customers containing “Turner” and “Oakland” will be found – in this example in the name and the city. The words do not have to be written out in full.
If you are planning routes with overnight stays on the way, the new function “Find hotel” can be helpful.
You will find this function in the following places in portatour®:
When clicking “Find hotel”, you will be forwarded to the Booking.com website in a new window where hotels nearby your overnight stay location will be suggested. You will see the availabilities and prices for the date of the overnight stay. The room search uses the criteria “1 adult” and “business person”. You can set further filtering criteria on Booking.com.
After you have booked a hotel on Booking.com, use the function “Change overnight stay location” in portatour® to enter the hotel address. This will create a new overnight stay appointment that replaces the old overnight stay suggestion or overnight stay appointment.
Hint: If you would like to stay overnight at a hotel more often or if you want portatour® to suggest this hotel on its own for overnight tours, enter it in portatour® by clicking main menu > My Places > New accommodation. Up to 25 accommodations are possible.
As a user of portatour®, have you ever been faced with the following situation? portatour® has suggested a route for one day, which you would like to follow in exactly the same way, but for whatever reason you would rather drive that route on another day? Then you will enjoy the new functions “move day” and “swap day“.
You can find these new functions in the schedule and in the calendar:
In the schedule, switch to the desired day. There, scroll down to the bottom, click More and then the menu item Edit day.
In the calendar, click the header of the day, then the menu item Edit day.
A window opens for you to select the target date.
In the case of “Swap day”, select both days to be swapped.
Note that moved or swapped call suggestions are discarded when the schedule is updated. To fix these call suggestions on the desired day, they must be converted into appointments. In the selection box, choose between fixed appointments, where the time is kept exactly the same, or appointments flexible on the day, where the time remains flexible.
In addition to the major enhancements described above, the update features the following minor improvements:
Symbols relevant to planning are frequently displayed in the customer list. So that new users of portatour® don’t have to look up their meaning in the online help, they are now also displayed on the customer detail page. A single click is sufficient to open the description.
When entering or editing an address, the corresponding map in the window now has an improved appearance to make better use of space. You will find the zoom buttons in the upper left corner. The “GPS” button for capturing the coordinates of your current location is located in the upper right corner with the crosshair symbol.
If you edit a customer’s business hours, you can simply copy the business hours of one day to days below. A single click on the downward arrow is sufficient for the business hours of the day to be copied to the following day with currently different business hours.
Example: To change the business hours for each working day to 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm, enter these business hours only on Monday and then click the downward arrow four times. In this way, these times will also be entered for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
As usual, a click on the recycle bin deletes the business hours of a day.
The same functionality is now also available when editing working hours.
In addition to the existing program setting to determine which navigation app should be launched when you click the “Navigation” button in portatour®, you can now also set whether the address or the geoposition of the customer should be sent to the navigation app. If you maintain the geopositions in portatour® accurately, it may be advantageous to use those.
Note that not all navigation apps support both modes. portatour® will automatically use the other mode if necessary.
This new Excel export format differs from the original Excel format in that the data in the Excel worksheet is marked and formatted as a “data table”.
The new format is also available when exporting via the API if you specify the parameter format=xlsxtable in the URL. This format is useful, for example, if the exported data is to be processed automatically using Microsoft Flow.
We have just updated the map data and traffic flow data on our servers.
Changes in the road network and driving speeds may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change, when updating the schedule for the next time.
We hope you enjoy this software update and look forward to your feedback at feedback@portatour.com.
In addition to the “+” and “-” zoom buttons, you will find a third button in the upper left corner, which switches between important map sections including the zoom level:
If you save your call reports only with date but no time, these reports have been displayed side by side in the weekly calendar at the beginning of the day. From now on, these reports are listed one below the other, which significantly improves readability:
Sorting is done alphabetically by subject including symbol.
Since the July update, hours and minutes can be selected faster together in a selection box in the appointment window. This selection box can now be found in many places in portatour® for time entry. By clicking the keyboard icon, you can enter hours and minutes separately – e.g. for the exact input of minutes.
Also in the July update, it was started to output durations of more than one hour separately in hours and minutes for better readability. Instead of e.g. “105 min”, “1 h 45 min” is displayed. This new type of display is now implemented everywhere in portatour®. In addition, an entry of long time periods separated by hours and minutes is now possible.
In the cleanup dialog, portatour® offers to delete old reports. It has already been ensured that for each customer at least the last call report remains, no matter how old it is. Now, you can choose to preserve not just the last, but the last two or even three reports per customer, no matter how old these reports are.
If you have subscribed to your portatour® calendar in other calendar programs such as Outlook using calendar sharing, there was a limit of 100 requests per day. We have now introduced smart caching, which allows us to raise this limit to 500 requests as of now. This allows the calendar of a user to be easily subscribed to by multiple people without having a problem with the request limit.
In addition to “Keep” and “Overwrite”, the new update mode “Overwrite if greater” is available. This new mode makes sense if you enter customer calls not only in portatour® but also in other systems (e.g. the CRM system) and regularly transfer customer data to portatour®.
Depending on whether the last call date from the import file or that in portatour® is more recent in the customer import, the last call date is overwritten or kept. This is evaluated individually for each imported customer.
This new update mode also prevents the last call date from being erroneously reset to an old date by an import.
If you are administrator of a portatour® Anywhere company account, an improved online manual for the API (=programming interface for automatic import & export) is now available. Among other things, you can expect a new table of contents and a clearer structuring of the contents. You can reach the manual in the options under “API” or under https://my.portatour.net/a/Docs/APIManual . By the way: You can now also forward this link to IT staff without portatour® access. A login to portatour® is no longer necessary for reading the manual.