|
|
|
Short Line Data Systems Inc. ROCS Update – March 2003
Website – www.sdsrocs.com
Greetings:
We hope that everyone has survived the extreme weather of February, and as we move to Spring, things are moving towards the release of Version 6. In this update will fill you in on some new features of the new version and the LCS Car Hire system, and some of our plans for the spring.
The Importance of Listening
As some of the regular readers of this update might note, we had been planning on having Version 6 of ROCS released at the end of February. The reason for putting off the release was not because of a technical problem, but for adding more features and revisions to the system. While we would like to take credit for all of the ideas, most of them have come from our users. Our users (and prospective users) are a huge resource of railroading knowledge, and by listening to their suggestions, requests, problems, and concerns we have continually been able to sharpen and improve the product we provide to our users. We believe that we are able to turn these requests around faster than our competitors, and with this we are able to create a product more suited to your needs. With that, let us look at some of the new features that we have added to Version 6…
More readable data screens – A long standing concern with the current release of ROCS has been that the data screens have been “busy”, and hard to read. We have tried to fix that situation by making the type larger, removed a number of the boxes around the data, and rearranging the presentation of the data on a larger screen area. The new look screens are Advance List, Customer Status, New Waybills, Advance Consists, and Block Select.
New Work Lists – The original crew work lists in ROCS were very limited, only showing the specific work for customers. We have created a completely new report to replace the old one with the input of the M&E and the Housatonic. The user can select which customers are printed out, and the report now shows all cars that a customer has online. Additionally, the list shows the waybill hazmat information needed by a crew for moving cars. We have also added the hazmat information to the interchange track report, and created a similar report for released cars. One last feature added to the reports has been a count of loads and empties on the report. At the M&E we have used these new reports to replace handwritten reports that were submitted by the train crews, improving accuracy and legibility.
New Track Resequence – A new way to resequence a track has been added to the system. The user just clicks on the cars in the order that they are in a track, then clicks on a button to set the new sequence.
LCS Car Hire – The first release version of this long anticipated system is now complete. LCS events and rates are downloaded automatically, and at the end of a service month a summary, individual Appendix G & H reports, and mailing labels are available for printing. The user has the ability to add additional addition and deletion payments on the Appendix H report, and in the future we plan to add an automatic computation feature for some of these payments.
All of the above features plus the ones we have announced in previous updates are included in Version 6, and we will have new listing on our website in the new few weeks.
Plans for the Spring
We will be at TransAction 2003, the New Jersey State Transportation Conference in Atlantic City April 7-9. TransAction is one of the premier transportation meetings in the country, covering all areas of road, sea, air, and rail transportation.
We will also be in booth 604 at the ASLRRA Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Philadelphia May 18-20. We will be demonstrating Version 6, and have new handouts and demo copies available for you evaluation. We look forward to seeing everyone at both of these events.
That is all for now. We hope the end of Winter is trouble-free for everyone, and Spring is definitely on the way.
Steven Friedland President. |
Send mail to
webmaster@sdsrocs.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|