There are two sections in the VIA® administration menu that will control the VIA^® mobile’s experience when using the app on their phone; the board administration screen and the mobile administration screen. Editing either of these sections will allow you to control the feel of the mobile app as well as show or hide specific information. To get started, you will need to open the VIA^® portal on your computer and access the administrator menu in VIA. Open a web browser, navigate to https://www.viaboards.com/sign-in,  and login with the email or username provided to you and enter in your password.

There are a number of different settings available in the administration screen; however, in this tutorial we will be focusing on the Boards section and the Mobile Settings section of the admin menu.

Board Settings

When you open up the boards menu you will see all your boards much like the appear in the home VIA^® screen. You may see more boards than normal since the boards in your home screen are only visible if you are a member of the board but all boards show up in the admin section of VIA^® .
You can filter the boards by typing into the search button at the top right section of the screen. To edit the settings on your board click simply click on the board.  Not all settings on the board administration screen are related to mobile communications and not all board types have the same settings. For the purpose of this documentation we will be looking at boards that are either Orders or Segments as they are what will be available on the mobile device. The settings mentioned in this section are unique to each order or segment board. If your company has multiple order boards that VIA^® Mobile users will be accessing you will need to apply your changes to every board. 

This tutorial will only focus on the settings that will effect the VIA^® Mobile users experience.

Application Theme

The board color will determine the color that appears when the driver opens an order or segment card. For example, this is what the card looks like when the board setting is purple or blue.   The app title can also display a custom logo if applied.

When you are looking at the colors the color with the check mark signifies the current color scheme for the board. To change the color simply click on another color and save your changes by clicking on the save button on the top right side of the board admin screen.

Geo-fence Settings

There are additional settings further down in the board admin screen that will effect how the system is updated. Please note that these settings will not appear on every type of board. Ensure when you are making changes that you have selected the board where the orders or segments are located.

The first field on the left side of the screen determines how the workflow will progress the order/segment throughout the life of the trip. This field is a drop down field and clicking on it will provide the following options:

• Off – There will be no automation in the trip workflow. The driver will have to manually send back arrival and departure messages to update the card in VIA.
• On – The system is set to full automate the movement of the trip. As the driver passes through the geo-fence the cards will be updated with arrive and depart messages. Note that if this is selected the driver can still manually update the trip if a geofence is not triggered.
• Prompted – This is a hybrid of the first two options. When a driver passes through a geo-fence they will be prompted to accept the action. For example, when they drive up to a stop location they will be presented with a popup that they will have to manually click to send the arrive stop.
• Locked – The locked option will completely lock the driver out of overriding the automation. They will not be able to mark a stop as arrived or departed if the geo-fence does not trigger

To the right of the auto arrive and depart section is an option to allow the VIA^® Mobile user to complete the stops out of order. This would be used if the driver was not able to complete the nest stop in his list due to customer/traffic or other reasons.

If VIA^® is set to make use of the geo-fencing workflow  than the next field will help determine how big the default geo-fences will be for each of the locations. By default, this setting is 0.25; however you can make the radius of the default geo-fences larger or smaller as your business requires. If you have specific locations that you would like to customize your geo-fences for you can do so from within the location board/map view.

If you selected Prompted under the Auto Arrive/Depart field then you will need to set the Re-prompt time (min) and the Prompt Time (sec) in the final two fields of this section. The prompt time determines how long the message will stay on the device after the geo-fence has been triggered. The re-prompt time will set the length of time that the message will wait before it triggers again. For example, if the driver passes through the geo-fence they will be prompted to arrive at the stop for 30 seconds (prompt time) and then the message will disappear; however, it will appear again after 2 minutes (re-prompt time).

Board Mobile Settings

Below the workflow automation section are the some mobile settings for the selected board. Please note, that as with the setting described above, these are board based and if there are multiple order or segment boards they will all need to be updated.

The background options controls whether the background image configured for the board is to be displayed on the VIA^®Mobile app. There are also settings to determine where to position the screen both vertically or horizontally. There is also a setting where you can alter the size on the app.  

The checkbox in this section, when enabled, will cause the application to send GPS position reports back to the system as the unit moves through the workflow.   This option should not be enabled when the mobile application is working in conjunction with a in-cab ELD solution as that hardware will generally send its own GPS data.     

Finally, there is a setting for the permissions role. Roles in VIA can control if someone can see or edit specific fields. By default this will be set to Global; however, if there is an specific role that you want to assign to users access the system using Via Mobile you would assign that role in that field.

Global Mobile Settings

Global mobile setting can be found in the mobile settings menu of the administration screen. To access this screen click on the Mobile settings option on the menu along the left side of the administration screen.  These settings affect all VIA^® mobile users within a company regardless of board or other configuration settings.

The left side of the screen controls some of the global settings associated with the mobile application while the right side of the screen can display a live view of the application on various devices.

Authentication

Let’s look at the settings on the left side of the screen first. The first setting is authentication type. When the application is first launched you can customize which field the user will be presented with for authentication purposes. The field you choose :

• Trip ID – If you will be dispatching trip segments (you can tell this by looking at the boards to determine if they are segments) you can select this option and the VIA^®Mobile app will require the user to know the trip number in order to access the application. Each new trip the driver starts will require them to login using the new trip number.
• Trip ID with MC Number – If you are dispatching trip segments that could have multiple carriers assigned to different sections you can use this option. Users will need to enter in bother the trip number and their associated MC Number.
• Driver ID – If you would like to have your driver’s login with their Driver ID they can then see the orders or segments that they are assigned to in the VIA^®  boards.
• Order Number - This will work similar to trip ID but will work for boards that hold orders instead of trip segments.

Commodity

The commodity display field will allow users to control how the commodities appear on the application. Your options are listed below:

• Name – The name is the extended description of the commodity.
• Class – If you have a class associated to the commodity the class is what will be displayed
• Code – This option will display the shortened code on the mobile application instead of the long description or class

Display ID

The Display ID controls which reference number (Order #, etc..) will be displayed to the driver when using the application.  The selection available will be set based on if you are dispatching orders or segments.
If you are not sure what you are working with you can see the type of boards by looking at them on the main screen. The board type will show up on the bottom right of each board.

Location Display

The location display option will determine if the location code or the full location name of the location will show up on the stop screen. If you do not always use predefined locations that have ID’s it is recommended that you choose Name instead of ID.

Reference Numbers

Below the field listing is a section that can determine which reference numbers will be displayed to the users of the mobile app.

To add a new reference type simply start typing in the box. To remove a reference number click on the x on each number. These reference setting will determine both what reference numbers the users can see as well as which numbers the VIA^® Mobile users can enter.

Attachments

In the same way that reference numbers can be defined in the mobile settings you can determine which attachments the VIA^® Mobile users can view and update. To add a new attachment type simply start typing in the box. To remove an attachment, click on the x on each attachment type.

Miscellaneous Options

At the bottom of the settings you will see a number of checkboxes. These checkboxes will update the following settings:

Allow driver to change loads – If your authentication type at the top of this screen is set as driver id and you enable this checkbox your driver will be able to change the load they are active on. Once they login they will see a list of active loads and they can select the one they want to use.

The show loads tab on login will display a quick link to all the loads assigned to the driver if the authentication type is driver id.

For safety purposes, you can have a popup warning to remind the drivers that they should not use the application when the vehicle is in motion.

The final setting can be used to default the time zone to UTC. Enabling this option causes the application to return all date and time information in UTC instead of using the timezone of the phone, tablet or device.  Generally this options should be checked for most applications unless you have specific timezone requirements for your organization.

Testing Settings

If you would like to test out the effects of any settings you have edited; you can see the changes in real time by using the Live View on the mobile settings administration screen.
When you check off the Enable Live view checkbox an image of the device will appear on the screen. You can change the type of device using the dropdown menu under the enable live view checkbox. You can also press the rotate button to change the view from landscape to portrait: