List of External Engines (Employee)

The List of External Engines is located in the Environment module.

External Engines are used to control third-party applications for rating, scheduling and distance/transit time retrieval. The External Engine Type will designate whether the External Engine is used to perform rating, scheduling or distance/transit time retrieval.

A List of External Engine Versions can be defined for each External Engine.

External Engines for Rating

Transportation Manager (TM) can be integrated with third-party rating engines. Such integrations reduce the amount of tariff data to be set up/maintained within TM.

For External Engines used for rating, an External engine version provides a link to the individual carrier details that are supported by the External Engine. Tariff Charges are linked to the External Engine Versions when external rating is activated.

See Supported rating partners.

External Engines for Delivery Schedules

Transportation Manager can be integrated with third-party engines which return transit time information between locations. The transit time information can be used in Transportation Planner Delivery Schedule scheduling. The advantage of using external delivery schedule engines is that it eliminates the requirement to configure and maintain delivery schedules in TM.

Tariff service combinations that use an external delivery schedule will have a Delivery Schedule Mode of "External Delivery Schedule" and will reference an External Engine Version for a Delivery Schedule Engine.

See Supported delivery schedules partners.

External Engines for Distance / Transit Time Retrieval

Transportation Manager has formal integration with three "third-party" distance/transit retrieval engine vendors. These engines are used whenever a distance and/or transit time is required (for example, for routing, rating or scheduling purposes). Each External Engine where the External Engine Type is "Distance Transit Time Engine" corresponds to a third-party product offering (for example, PC*Miler from ALK Associates, IntelliRoute from Rand McNally, Telogis, i2 Distance from Blue Yonder Software Group, Inc.).

For External Engines used for distance/transit time retrieval, individual External Engine Versions are used to define different configurations for the applicable third-party product. Each version defines a set of parameters that will be passed to the third-party application when retrieving distances and/or transit times. When a Distance Engine is configured for a Tariff or Country in Transportation Manager, a link will be established with a specific External Engine Version where the External Engine Type for the corresponding External Engine is "Distance Transit Time Engine".

See Distance engines.

By default, the List of External Engines is sorted in ascending order by Engine ID.

For information on icons and functionalities available on the list pages, see Web Interface lists.

Operations

Alternate Language Descriptions: Displays the list of the descriptions for the active user locales other than the default language of Transportation Manager. For more information, see Entity Language Descriptions/Names (Employee).
Delete: Deletes the selected external engine. This operation is not allowed if the external engine is system provided.
New: Creates an external engine. This operational will only allow user to create an external rating engine.
Properties: Displays the properties of the selected external engine. For each engine, users can define the applicable versions of the engine.

Note: The Active flag available for external distance engine Versions is not considered by the processes that access the external engines. This flag prevents an external distance engine version from being assigned for use by an entity (for example, Tariff Service for Delivery Schedule Engine; Tariff for Distance Engine; Tariff Charge for Rating Engine).