TIMOCOM’s freight exchange has a new user interface

This article contains everything you need to know about the new TIMOCOM freight exchange user interface.

Table of Contents

• Video: The new freight exchange - what is important, what is new?
• Video: Tips, tricks and the most frequently asked customer questions
• Entering freight and vehicle space
• Searching for freight and vehicle space 
• New interface for tablet and smartphone users
• Step by step instructions for entering freight and vehicle space
• Expert tip: multi-search

TIMOCOM's freight exchange has a new user interface. In addition to a new design and up to date software, the new interface fulfils many requests made by our customers and has some new and exciting features. The most important new features are listed below:

 Entering freight and vehicle space offers:

• Delete multiple offers at the same time 
• Autofill for location and post code when entering addresses
• Map is visible in the offer details and a single click takes you to the routes & costs application. 

Freight and vehicle space search:

• For multitaskers: More than five searches can be performed simultaneously
• For visual learners: Map widget in offer details 
• For the undecided: Bookmark offers to save them for later
• For those in a hurry:
  • More information is now available in the results table (company making the offer, unloading date, palette exchange)
  • Exclude certain freight offers (e.g. offers requiring a GMP certificate or a tail lift).
  • Mark offer as read 
• For those who hate missing out: New offer notifications for different yet simultaneous searches

New interface for tablet and smartphone users:

One real advantage is the improved mobile interface, for tablet and smartphone users. Take a look at the changes to how freight offers are depicted on smartphone and tablet screens below: 

For those who want precise details: 

Step by step instructions for entering freight and vehicle space offers:

Click on the red button "Offer freight" in the "Freight" area. The "Offer freight" section opens. The new interface takes you to the table with your own active freight offers. What has changed?

• Button "+ New freight", which you can now use to enter new freight.
• Checkboxes for deleting several freight offers simultaneously.
• The buttons for editing, deleting or copying individual freight offers have been moved to a new position. 
• You can use drag and drop to change the position of the columns in the table. For example, you could make the “Price” column the first column in the table, so it is always visible.

If you want to enter freight, click on the button "+ New freight". The window "New freight offer" opens in the foreground so that your table is still visible in the background:

You can now create your freight offer as usual. The new feature in the "Post code, Location" field is helpful. The System suggests possible locations starting as soon as you have typed in the first letters or numbers. Once you have entered all the information, save your offer by pressing “Publish”:

Once you have saved your offer, it will appear in the table. The entry will be blue as long as the offer is open:

 You will now see two customer requested innovations in the new freight offer:

• Buttons for editing, copying, deleting and printing the offer. 
• An integrated map to help calculate routes and costs. Click the map to switch to the routes & costs application.

If you make any changes, you can save them by pressing the “Publish again” button or discard them by pressing “x”:

For those who want precise details: 

Step by step instructions for freight and vehicle space search:

To keep things simple, we have added the “Advanced filter” section. It contains filters that are only used occasionally. You can expand and collapse this section with a simple click. 

We have also added a new filter, requested by many of our users, to this section: the “May not contain” filter. This allows you to simply filter out freight offers that have special requirements (e.g. waste transport, GMP certificate, hoist, etc.)

 You can use drag and drop to adjust the order of the columns that appear in the results list (in the screenshot, the freight price has been moved and is now the first column).

You can also now sort within the “Freight Price” column, so you can view the most lucrative freight at the top of the search list.

We have also added new columns to the results list: 

• Company providing offer
• Unloading date 
• Loading equipment exchange

If you click on an offer in the results list, you will now see the offer details on the right side of the page. This allows you to view the results list and the offer at the same time, so you have a better overview.

The offer details now also feature a map widget and the company rating. By clicking on the map, you can plan routes and calculate the associated costs.

The new “Bookmark” function allows you to bookmark offers for later. The offer will open in a new browser tab when you click on the button.

Another new feature is the option to receive browser and audio notifications when new freight or vehicle space offers appear in a browser tab that is not currently active. To activate these features, set “Browser notifications” and “Audio notifications” to “Yes.” 

If you also activate “Update automatically,” you will see new offers immediately. If you do not activate “Update automatically,” you will have to click “Apply filter” once again in order to view new offers. The “Apply filter” button will be marked with a green dot if new offers are available.

 Another feature: The freight and vehicle search now has a “read” status, just like that found in every e-mail application. Unread offers will appear in the table in bold. If, however, you have already viewed an offer, it will no longer appear in bold. 

Expert tip: multi-search:

This expert tip is for those users who want to run several searches at once and, up until now, have used several System tabs to do so. This is no longer possible in the new interface.

Instead, you can run several parallel searches using browser tabs. Click on the "New Search" button. Advantage: you can run as many searches as you like in parallel and are not limited to only five searches at once.

If you are running lots of different searches at once, you can use the “Add tab to new group” feature in Chrome or Edge to keep your searches together over multiple browser tabs.

Old view with several tabs:

New view using the “Add tab to new group” feature:

You can assign a name and a tab colour to each group:

If you start a new search from within a group, the new search tab will automatically be added to the group. You can expand and collapse the tabs by clicking on the group name (e.g. TIMOCOM) This allows you to stay on top of things even when using lots of different browser tabs.