Asset Alerts Import

The solution is designed to import alerts into your FASTER Web system. Alerts can include diagnostic trouble codes (DTC), fault codes or issues found as a result from an inspection. Within FASTER Web you can easily sort and filter to identify alerts that warrant a critical maintenance need, providing shop floor managers the ability to receive, view and take immediate action.

These alerts can be viewed for diagnostic or historical purposes in the Assets module under the Asset Alert tab and also in the Maintenance Module under the action Service Request & Alerts. They also can be viewed in the Technician’s Workstations when a technician is logged onto a specific repair, in the My Repairs Page they can see the fault code history.

In addition, once alerts are imported into FASTER Web, your staff can manually associate a fault code to a repair type and then manually create a pending repair for it. This is done in the Maintenance module under the Service Requests & Alerts action. Once an alert is associated to a pending repair, anywhere you can view the repair, you will also be able to view the details of that alert.

Important Note: We recommend you choose a telematics vendor who can provide trouble codes with an accurate, meaningful description. The vendor should only export codes that are important enough to warrant a critical maintenance need. For example, you do not want to import the many hundreds of codes that would not warrant or justify a speedy repair action.

However, FASTER provides an Optional: Alert Filtering and Mapping Add-on that will enable you to have alerts automatically create pending repairs or service items and/or automatically send text or email custom notifications. It can also be used to aid customers who use telematics vendors who cannot provide filtered alerts or effective descriptions. It permits you to assign custom descriptions to alerts.

(Using this solution would require that your vendor can provide the alert data you desire in an XML flat file that meets the below XML Export File Specifications. Please note that if your vendor has the ability to provide this data via APIs, see FASTER Web’s API options .)

Prerequisites

• FASTER Web 6.4.89 and up
• View 6.4 System, Environment & Configuration Requirements
  • This documentation is accessible with FASTER Customer website credentials.
  • This is an SSIS based integration and requires you meet the Integrations Services (SSIS) Software Requirements listed in the above documentation .
• The Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) will be the common data key between FASTER Web and the vendor’s system to identify data records belonging to an asset. For assets without a VIN, this integration requires a unique serial number as a shared key used by both systems.

XML Export File Specifications

Before you purchase the Asset Alerts Import, FASTER recommends you receive confirmation from your vendor that they can meet the XML Export File Specifications. These specifications provide the requirements for FASTER Web to import alert data.

File Upload

For the Asset Alerts Import, FASTER recommends the alerts be imported as an hourly batch. If no new alerts have been received since the last batch file, there is no need to upload a file with no transactions.

Export File Location

In order for FASTER Web to import alert data from the vendor, the data file must be accessible to the FASTER Web application. This may be achieved in one of the following three methods:

Method 1 – Customer Hosted File Server: This method requires the vendor to transfer their export files to a file server hosted within your network, such as FTPS/SFTP or network share. Your IT can work with your vendor to determine the best solution for this transfer to occur. The files then have to be made available on a network share that is accessible by the FASTER Web application server.

Method 2 – SFTP Site: You or the vendor will host an SFTP site where the exported XML file(s) will be placed. SFTP credentials will need to be provided in the FASTER Web application for the import utility to retrieve the file.

• • • FASTER Web 6.4.79 and above supports SFTP
    • Proper permissions will need to be granted for FASTER Web to access the file.

Method 3 – FASTER Web Cloud Customers (where the customer has contracted FASTER to provide hosting of FASTER Web) the following two options are available:

1. 1. 1. The vendor can opt to transfer their export file to an FTPS location that FASTER provides.
      2. or FASTER can fetch the export file from the vendor’s SFTP location (see Method 2 above).

File Naming Convention

• • The export file must have the prefix “ALERT_” followed by date, time and UTC offset the export occurred. Date, time and UTC must be in the following format YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS-0000. Example: “ALERT_2015-08-19_010000-0500.xml”.
  • Leading 0s must be maintained
  • Offset must be included (represented in the format above as 0000)
  • The naming convention ensures files will not be overwritten in the upload process and are easy to identify.

Export File Data

The following data fields are required within the export file.

XML Export File Format

FASTER has already created the middle-ware in order to import the export files in the defined XML schema below.

Example XML Export File Format