ParaPlan Mobile for iOS version 1.2
ParaPlan Mobile for iOS has been updated to version 1.2. The highlights of this version are Signature Capture and smarter confirmations. We are holding this for release until Monday, June 17th to allow time for driver training.
Signature Capture
Many of our clients are funded by programs that require drivers to collect signatures from a passenger at the end of the trip. This can be a tedious process that required office staff to scan or fax these signatures to the funding source. Now the signatures are collected directly on the driver's iPhone or iPad and are instantly available to the office staff where they can compile a report and electronically deliver the signatures. This saves time, saves paper and is another win in the battle against printers.
Arrive and Perform events
Version 1.1 only had a single event when performing a pick up or a drop off of a client. It is useful to know how long a driver had to wait from when they got to the pick up location and when they were able to get the client fully loaded on the vehicle. This helps tell a more complete story about the life cycle of a trip and also helps the office staff know which client might need a longer Dwell Time in ParaPlan. With that in mind, the life cycle of a trip from a driver's perspective looks like this:
- Driver arrives at pick up location. Driver swipes the stop on the iPad and clicks "I've arrived at pick up". This sends an event back to the office that contains GPS point, odometer reading and timestamp. On the iPad, the trip turns blue.
- The client is on the bus and ready to go. Driver swipes on the stop and clicks "Client is on board". This sends another event and the stop turns grey.
- Driver arrives at drop off location. Driver swipes on the drop off stop and clicks "I've arrived at drop off". This sends another event to the office and the stop turns blue.
- The passenger will signed on the iPad. The signature (along with an event) will be sent back to the office. The passenger will automatically be marked as dropped off and a drop off event will be sent to the office. The stop will turn grey.
- If the passenger signature is not required, the driver will swipe on the stop and click "Client has been dropped off".
Smarter Confirmations
Each time a driver performs an action, it provides an audio and visual confirmation. We found that requiring the driver to push "OK" on every confirmation message added too much friction to the experience. We changed it so the first 10 confirmations will display a visual dialog that will require the driver to push "OK" to dismiss it. After that, the status bar will change colors momentarily and display a confirmation. When a user has to push "OK" all the time, they get in the habit of dismissing all dialogs without reading them. They can miss important information because they get too many alerts. This will help prevent this from happening to our users.
Extended permissions
There is now a "Can call client" permission that prevents drivers from being able to directly call a client's phone number. Also, the "View other vehicles" restriction applies to other driver's manifests and other driver's GPS locations.
Other improvements
We also added smarter background GPS mode and geofencing.
The badge icon is now smarter and will always display the number of stops a driver has yet to perform in a day.
Turn-by-turn directions have been added to the long press menu from the manifest screen. Press and hold on a stop to view the long press menu.
We hope you enjoy using version 1.2!
Here are the changes from version 1.1.
We are also pushing out updates to other products today: