Feature Highlight

It has come to our attention that some technicians are taking shortcuts when they discover ABS problems during a trailer inspection.  Rather than troubleshoot and correct the problem, some choose to connect the Verifier 1010 to a known-good trailer and re-run the ABS test to get a “Road Ready” result.

An eagle-eyed maintenance manager found this problem by noticing the ABS ECU serial numbers did not match on two inspection reports for the same trailer.  It’s very difficult for humans to catch this type of problem, but very simple for our cloud, so we’ve added this as a new feature.

If a suspicious inspection report is submitted, it is put into “quarantine,” along with other related reports, if any.  This means that technicians cannot see, view, or print the inspection report until a manager has reviewed the situation.  The manager is immediately notified via e-mail about the serial number mismatch, with links to each affected report.  Upon review he can determine which report(s) are legitimate and which are not, removing the former from quarantine while deleting the latter.  Once a report is removed from quarantine it can be viewed and printed by the technician as with any other normal inspection report.

Like most options, this is configurable on a per-site basis.  Sites or customers that don’t want to take advantage of this feature can disable it by going to each site and clearing the “quarantine” checkbox.

Resolving Quarantine Situations

When you receive an e-mail notification of suspicious reports, you may follow the direct links in the e-mail to view the affected reports, or go to the main menu of the Verifier Cloud and select “View quarantined reports.”  The former lists only the reports associated with a specific instance, while the latter shows all reports that have been quarantined, potentially as a result of several incidents.

When a quarantined report is being viewed, there will be a banner at the top with buttons to allow the report to be removed from quarantine or deleted.  Once you determine whether the ABS serial number was correct for that trailer, you can decide the correct course of action.

There are two situations that can cause a report to be flagged:  either an inspection report was submitted with an ABS ECU serial number that has previously been reported on another trailer, or the serial number does not match the most recent inspection report for a specific trailer.  All reports meeting those criteria are quarantined until a manager determines which ones are valid.

Note that if a faulty or damaged ECU is replaced on a trailer, this will cause a notification for the first inspection report after that repair is made.  As soon as the manager identifies the report as being valid and removes it from quarantine, no subsequent inspection on that trailer will cause it to be quarantined again.

If you have additional questions about this functionality, or suggestions for improvements, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-800-343-8579.

In our on-going effort to make life easier for fleet maintenance managers, we’ve enhanced our e-mail notification functionality. You can now receive instant notifications when an out-of-service inspection report is submitted or when a report is quarantined due to a suspicious ABS serial number (more on that in the next post). In addition, you can “subscribe” to receive nightly, weekly, or monthly e-mails containing usage summaries or tire reports. All of these notifications can apply to your entire fleet, or a specific shop.

To start receiving one or more of these notifications, log in to the cloud (https://lcfleetsolutions.com) and select “Company Information” from the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner (for site-specific notifications rather than fleet-wide, select “Sites” instead, but all other steps are identical). Near the top of the screen you’ll see three links in blue text; click on the last, “Edit E-mail Notifications.”

Select the type of notification you’re interested in receiving from the drop-down list (see the description of each type below) and hit “Edit.” Enter the e-mail address(es) to receive the notifications. Use the trash can icon beside an e-mail to remove it from the list. When you’ve added all the recipients, click “Submit.” Depending on the type you selected, there may be other options on the form. See below for details.

Types of Notifications

Usage Summary: a brief report showing the number of inspections completed, and how many were OOS, for the selected time period (each day, week, or month).

Quarantine: an immediate notification that an inspection was submitted for one trailer using the ABS serial number of another, or a serial number that doesn’t match the last known serial number for the trailer. See the next post for more details about how the quarantine feature works, how to enable/disable it, and how to remove reports from quarantine.

Out of Service: an immediate notification that a failed inspection report has been submitted for a unit.

Tire Report: a link to the fleet tire report showing the status and condition of all tires inspected during the selected time period (each day, week, or month). To see only critical items, leave the “Include warnings” checkbox blank, or check the box to see both critical items and warnings.

As with all aspects of our products, we welcome your feedback and suggestions on this new feature.