Ramps are used to integrate other systems into VIA® or to automate updates or the creation of Cards. Ramps can be found in the Admin settings within VIA®. Tranztec will assist you in creating Ramps that integrate your current systems into VIA®. You are more than welcome to experiment with the current options including setting up e-mail alerts when new Cards are created on a Board.
| title | Watch this video on creating an Alert Ramp |
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The ramp system in VIA® is a powerful tool that can by leveraged to automate processes, sent emails, integrate with external system and customize the VIA® experience to match your business requirements. There are two types of ramps that can be used in the VIA® system, the basic ramps for simple processes and advanced ramps to setup integrations and more complex processes.
Controlling Ramp Access
Ramps are setup in the administration section of VIA®; therefore, you will need to have administrative rights to access the ramps section. Ramps are powerful tools; however, they can also cause unforeseen issues if they are not setup properly or edited incorrectly. For that reason, there are additional security settings on the ramps system. From within roles you can control if a user can see, edit, delete or even enable a ramp. Using these setting can help you avoid issues where ramps are setup incorrectly and it is highly recommended that your company tightly controls who can edit and access ramps.
Viewing the Ramps
To see a list of the ramps that you have created, open the administration menu in VIA® and navigate to the Ramps page by clicking on Ramps on the left side of the screen. You will be presented with a listing of all the ramps you have available in your system.
The icon on the far left side of the screen will show either the VIA® logo or a logo similar to this one: 
Any ramps that are created using the tranztec logo are usually integration ramps created by development and should not be edited or deleted. The ramps with the VIA® logo are ramps created by users in the system. The ID of the ramp is a numeric indicator to help identify the ramp. The Trigger field denotes the action that will have to happen in order for the ramp to activate. For example, the first ramp in the screen shot above will trigger when an order reference number is added to the card. The description is manually entered by the person who creates the ramp. NOTE: It is possible to have more than one ramp with the same trigger so it is recommended that you give unique descriptions to each of your ramps. Last Change Date will display the last person who made a change to the ramp and the date the change was made. On the right side of each of the ramps are four additional buttons:
- This is the enabled button. You can create a ramp and not turn it on. Or turn off a ramp while you are troubleshooting it. If this icon is green the ramp is active; if it is red then the ramp is not active.
- Pressing this button will open up the ramp so that you can edit it.
- Pressing this button will copy the ramp. This can be useful if you are creating ramps to move cards between lists on boards and you have multiple boards.
- In some cases, instead of deactivating a ramp it might make more sense to get rid of the ramp altogether. Clicking on this button will remove the ramp from your system.
Triggers and Actions
Ramps work based on triggers and actions. When an event happens that matches a defined trigger the system can run a predefined action (or a number of actions depending on how you have configured your ramp). Here are some examples of common triggers/actions and how they combine. Note there are a number of additional triggers and Actions available to you; this is just a list of options.
Triggers:
- Add Card Attachment
- Add Card Member
- Add Label
- Add Order Reference
- Arrive Stop
- Assign Driver
- Card Added
- Depart Stop
- Ramp to be Scheduled
- Reject EDI order
- Update Card Status
Actions:
- Add Label
- Archive Card
- If Statement
- Move Card
- Send Email
- Set Card Message
- Start Tracking
Trigger and Action Combinations:
- Trigger: Assign Driver / Action: Move Card - When a driver is assigned to a card move the card to a specific list within a board
- Trigger: Depart Stop / Action: Send Email - When you depart a stop send out an email
You can also combine actions to occur when a trigger occurs:
- Trigger: Update Card Status / Action: If Statement - Move Card - Send Email - When the card status happens run an if statement. IF the status that the card was changed to is COMPLETE then move the card to the completed list and send out an email.
Building a Basic Ramp
Let's take a look at building a simple ramp to send an email when an attachment has been added to a card. To start, press the +Add ramp button
Select Basic from the ramp type screen
Press the edit button next to the description and enter a description for your ramp. Then press the + button on the Add a trigger section to choose your trigger:
For this example, we want the ramp to trigger when an attachment is added to the card. From the trigger list choose Add Card Attachment (our trigger was at the top of the list; however, you can use the filter list box at the top to filter down to the trigger you want)
The header that previously read 'Add a trigger' now reads Add Card Attachment. There are some triggers that will allow for additional information to be entered. For example, if you chose the update card status trigger you will be able to select the board that the trigger applies to. In order to check and see if your trigger has any additional conditions click on the trigger name. In our case we can add additional validations (we can include a customer or board) but for this example I will leave it blank. This means that the email will send out whenever an attachment is added to any card in the system:
Now we can add an action. For this example, we are going to send out an email to support when an attachment is added. So, let's click on the add an action option under the trigger to see our list of actions:
All standard VIA® actions will have the following icon to the left of the action description 
. The other icons that you see are related to other software integrations that the VIA® system can interact with. In the screen shot above, for example, the action can arrive stop in the 10-4 system or in the Four Kites system. This ramp requires the system to send out an email when an attachment has been added to the card so I will choose Send Email. This brings the send email action onto the screen Note: I can add more actions below this one if required. So, for example I could have an action to send an email and a second option to add a label onto the card. If I click on the Send Email header it will open to display the setting I will need to enter for the action. For this action I will need the address of the person I am emailing, the email subject and the email text.
I can reference information from the card from within this action. For example, if I want the email to have the order number in the subject I can use this syntax to display the order number: {{$card.carddata.OrderNumber}}
Here is how my send email action may look when filled in:
When you are finished you can press the Save ramp button at the top of the screen. By default, the ramp will not be enabled when you first create it. Click on the red enabled button to change it to green. You can not test your ramp by adding an attachment to a card; and seeing the resulting email.
Building an Advanced Ramp
The simple ramp setup screen has been replaced with a more advanced and user friendly interface known as advanced ramps. We will setup an advanced ramp to move the card to another list when the status changes to COMPLETE and send out a corresponding email. Creating an advanced ramp is similar to the basic ramp setup; open the administrator screen in VIA® and navigate to the ramp screen. Press the +add ramp button and choose Advanced. Your screen should look similar to below:
The top of the screen that shows the basic ramp information such as description has not changed. There is also a bar labelled Add a Trigger that is much the same as the basic ramp setup. The bottom of the screen however, shows the advanced method of assigning actions to your triggers. For this example, we are going to have the ramp trigger when a status change happens on a card. To achieve this I will press on the + button on the right side of the add a trigger bar and select update card status. This trigger requires me to define the board that I want to have the trigger run for so I will choose the tracking board. I can find this by pressing on the update card header and then choosing from the dropdown list.
I can also stipulate a list if I would like the ramp to only trigger on a specific list within the Tracking board. You can select multiple boards or lists in this field.
The bottom part of the screen is divided into the following sections:
Logic - This includes if statements, equal statements, and statements etc
Loops - These actions control if you want a statement or process to happen a specific amount of times.
Text - These actions are usually nested in other actions such as logic actions and include different functions you can do with text. You can also find a basic text field in this section
Math - If your action requires a mathematical calculation you can find those calculations in this section
Lists - These action items can be used to create or search for list items.
Variables - You can create a variable from this action item
VIA - These actions are common procedures that you want to do in the system. The list will expand when you click on it and will include actions such as Add Label, Remove Label, Move Card etc
For this example, we want the card to change lists as long as the status is complete. To check on the status we will use a logic action first. To do this press on logic and look for the if-do option and when you find it drag it into the main part of the screen.
Next, we want the system to look at the current status of the card and see if it is complete. To add the status condition we will need another logic item that is comparing two items (in the screen shot above it would be the item below the if object).
As you drag it onto the main part of the screen the two sections where your objects can link will highlight. Line up the highlighted sections and your two pieces should link together.
Now we need to configure the = statement. On the left side of the equal statement we want the system to look at the status of the card. Specifically, we want the system to look at the trip status in the current card. This can be found in the VIA section of the action lists. Once you find it move it to the puzzle piece to the left of the equals.
We want the trip status to be Complete and in order to type that in I will need a text object. I can find it under text and move it into the final puzzle piece on the row.
Now, all we need to do it type the status name we want the system to look for.
Now to add the 'do' portion of the if statement; and since we are looking at the system to perform some steps in VIA® we will look for the options in the VIA section of this screen:
The first thing I want to happen is for the card to move so I will choose the move card to board and list:
the system works based off of ID. So to get the board ID I can open the tracking board and look at the address in the address bar. The highlighted section is my board id
To get the ID for my list I click on the menu item associated to the list and I can see the address in that list:
if you click on the address it will copy and email address automatically. You will have to paste it into a word processor and pull just the list ID (MwTGgryRkEWPKTnnJ for this list)
Once you have the information that you need you can paste the board and list id into your ramp:
we also want the system to send out an email when the status is updated. To do that we will add another action. Keep in mind that we want this to happen as part of our if statement so we need to make sure it connects just under the move card action we show above. This action could have also attached under the do statement but then it would not apply only if the status was changed to Complete.
Your ramp should look similar to below - NOTE that the send email action is connected to the move card to board action.
Now we can fill in the send email fields such as the to field and the subject field. Let's assume that we want to put the order number in the body of the email. Then we would grab another object from the text section of the ramps called create text with. This object will allow me to use both text and a field from within VIA to write the body of the email. I want to drag it into the text section of the email so that it looks like this:
I can go to the text section of the ramp to get a text field and drag it into the top section.
then I can enter in the static text that I want to appear in the email. For this example I want the email to let the user know that an order was completed in VIA. I also want the user to see the order number that was completed and I can do that by pulling in the order number. To do that I can click on via and look for the get "field" from current card. When I find that I can drag it onto my ramp. By default, the field will return the trip status but if you click on the down arrow beside trip status you can choose order number.
If you make a mistake while building the ramp you can highlight the section you don't want and either press the delete button on the keyboard; or you can drag the piece into the trash can on the lower right side of the screen.
When you are done with your ramp click the save ramp button on the top right side of the screen.
As you can see some of these ramps can get rather large. As a result, you can zoom in and out of the ramp using either your mouse scroll button or the + - buttons on the right side of the screen above the trash can.