[miks]

Hello all,

Has anyone out in the forum had experience in setting up OTM to integrate with the major Ocean carriers? My focus is on Ocean Export only.

I'm looking to initially obtain status information. My questions are, which carriers will integrate with OTM? How timely is the data? How clean is the data? What are the specific events most carriers will provide?

Any insight, or shared experiences, (or nightmares) would be greatly appreciated.

- Mike

[rvhaaster]

Hi Mike,

I do have experience in integrating OTM with Ocean carriers via the portals INTTRA and GTNEXUS. The list of carriers linked to the portals can be found on the portals' websites.
Part of our integration is receiving status messages from the carriers. For both portals we receive them as EDIFACT IFTSTA messages.
In general it's working ok and the six messages that you should get from all carriers are:
- Gate Out Empty
- Gate In Full
- Vessel Loaded
- Vessel Unloaded
- Gate Out Full
- Gate Out Empty
Timing of the messages is something else. So far we have seen that we only received Gate Out Empty after vessel had sailed. In this case it was due to a restriction in carrier systems which prevented sending GOMT before booking had reached a certain status. So I wouldn't count on receiving status updates real time and in the correct order.

Rob van Haaster

MavenWire Europe

[miks]

Thanks for the insight Rob,

A few questions for you. Is the timeliness of the data an operational problem, or an electronic communication problem. In other words, if I went to look up a shipment manually on the carriers web site, would I see the shipment there?

The second question, typically tracking is done by container. How have you related the status information you receive back to an actual shipment in OTM?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

- Mike

[rvhaaster]

Hi Mike,

The timeless of data may both be operational or electronic. It's depending on the port infrastructure whether statuses are processed straight away or not. The electronic reasons we've seen were that carrier systems were not able to pass on the events although they were avaialbe.
But you can track on carrier websites as long as you know booking nr or container nr; we haven't seen any problems there.

You're right, all the status messages are container based and they contain the container number, booking number and, if available, bl number. We've chosen for an approach where shipments in otm are updated with container id by means of shipment event entered via GUI, at time when actual loaded quantities are confirmed. Then incoming status messages are linked to the shipment by using an integration saved query based on container nr. When no shipment is found, the status message is staged and processed later when a shipment with that container number is available.

Hope this explains,

Rob

[krishna.kk]

ROb,

Can you explain in detail how do you link the container number with the shipment do you use reference Quailifer .

When a shipment is built in OTM in the second tab of the shipment(Equipment) there is a feild called Shipment equipment does this feild contains the Container number .

Rgds
kishore

[rvhaaster]

Hi Kishore,

We're entering container number during Dispatch advice (shipment event) against a shipment refnum. Agent workflow is then updating the s-equipment with the container nr, which will appear in shipment on equipment tab / eqmtn nr.
You can use shipment actuals screen as well to update shipment with equipment.


Rob