Additional Transportation Information

Abstract

The transportation functionality enables you to add additional transportation data to a shipment or delivery. An example is information such as booking number, vessel name or ocean BOL number. Other examples are specific dates and times. In addition, information such as booking request date, estimated time of arrival and estimated time of departure can be stored.

The additional transportation information can only be added manually or via an API. This means that changes of the content of a shipment or delivery in M3 BE will not affect any information added as additional transportation information. It is also assumed that the additional transportation information is added to a M3 BE shipment or delivery at a very late step in the dispatch process.

The additional transportation information will be deleted when a shipment is deleted or when a delivery header is deleted. The information could also be archived together with the connected entity, for example if a shipment is archived, the connected additional transportation information is also archived.

The additional information can be read, added, changed and deleted from systems external to M3 BE using APIs.

Limitations

• There are no validations made between any data added as additional information and any similar data that exists in M3 BE.
• Additional transportation information is only applicable for outbound transactions.
• Only one set of additional transportation information can be entered per shipment or delivery.
• Any specific date or time information must be entered with a date, a time and a time zone. The time zone must exist in M3 BE.
• Basic validation, like input format, is made for each field.
• No automatic update of additional transportation information is made depending on changes in M3, except if a shipment or a delivery is deleted.
• No validation that additional transportation information has been, or has not been, added to a shipment or delivery at any step in the dispatch process.
• Changes done in M3 BE that causes a delete of the shipment or delivery will delete the additional transportation information. This limitation is important to know in scenarios like where the last delivery line on a delivery is changed, first causing a delete of the delivery header and in the next step creating a new delivery with the same delivery number (reuse delivery numbers). This will cause a deletion of additional transportation information. The recommended solution to avoid this is to add transportation information as late as possible in the dispatch process.
• Additional transportation information is connected to one entity, either a shipment or a delivery. There are no hierarchy or limitations between additional information on shipment level versus delivery level. This means that a delivery can have one set of additional information while the shipment that it is connected to has another set of information. Which level to use must be decided in each case. Infor recommends to only use additional information on either shipment level or delivery level.
• Shipments or deliveries created via load building functionality will not inherit additional transportation information from the original shipment or delivery. It must be added at a later stage in the process.

Set-up

Additional transportation information master table

Additional information is created, managed, and used per shipment or delivery. This is managed in program 'Additional transportation info. Open' (DRS102).

Detailed information

On the E and F panels in (DRS102), detailed information is viewed and maintained.

• Normal field format validations is done, for example, no alphanumeric characters in numeric fields etc.
• A date field consists of three different fields, a date field, a time field, and a time zone in which the point in time occurs.

Managing additional transportation information

You can manage the additional transportation information that are connected to shipments or deliveries in 'Additional Transportation Information.Open' (DRS102).

This program can be accessed from 'Shipment. Open Toolbox' (DRS100) and 'Delivery. Open Toolbox' (MWS410) using option 20=Additional transportation info.Open.

Here, you can connect additional transportation information manually. You can also change or delete existing records.

You are only allowed to add an additional transportation information record to the level for which is intended. Hence, it is only possible to add transportation information for a shipment with transportation information level 1 and for a delivery with transportation information level 2.

When a shipment or delivery is deleted, the additional transportation information connected to it is also deleted. There is no automatic copying or transfer of additional transportation information from an old shipment or delivery to a new shipment or delivery.

It is also possible to create, change, delete, get, and list additional transportation information by using the appropriate transaction in API DRS102MI.