Visibility For Containers

 

What is the Visibility For Containers (VFC) Online Solution?

The InTransit Visibility For Containers Online solution was created to help you to have an overview when tracking your container shipments and give you real-time information about the shipment's current status and the ETAs.

•  How to add a shipment

• Add another shipment

• Overview of your shipment

• Daily Digest Email notifications and how to enable/disable them
• "Copy Data" functionality  
• "Report your issue" functionality 
• Charge type options and how you can subscribe to this solution

 

How to add a shipment

After logging in to your MarineTraffic account, you will be directed to our LiveMap.

In order to open our Visibility For Containers Solution page, you simply click on your Account button to see the options for your account and click on My Shipments, as shown below:

 

 

Click on “TRACK YOUR FIRST SHIPMENT”:

 

Then, in order to complete your shipment addition, you need to select the Document Type, which can be Bill of Lading, Booking Reference, or Container Number; the Number of the Document Type selected:

And on the field Shipping Line, for container numbers, if no Carrier information is added, the system will consider this as AUTO.

TIP: Auto-detect works well in Carrier owned containers, but will not work well in third-party-owned or leased containers, and might lead to a return of tracking information of a past shipment that used the specific container.

Also, upon subscription of a new shipment, you can add tags, for your own reference to each shipment. If you want to add more than one tag, you can separate them using a comma. Note that the tags cannot be edited once they were added.

After this, you can confirm the details of the shipment that is being added, and click on Confirm.

 

 

 

Your Shipment has just been added to the system:

 

At this time, our system will request to wait around 05 to 10 minutes to fetch the shipment from Carrier. At this stage, the status of the shipment will be indicated as "Pending".

You can then refresh it again until the status changes to "Tracking".

In case you have no available shipments to subscribe to, the Add Shipments modal will not let you subscribe to any more new ones. In order to move forward, you will have to purchase more shipments through the pricing page here.

Add another shipment

You can add another shipment(s) either by clicking on " ADD ANOTHER SHIPMENT" at the time you have just added your first one:

 

Or by navigating to MyShipments page through either My Account, by clicking on “My Shipments” or directly by clicking on "Add Shipment":

 

From there, you can follow the steps presented here.

Overview of your shipment

You can have an overview of all your shipments added, by going to your Shipments page through My Account by clicking on "My Shipments" :

 

 

From there, you will be directed to your shipments page:

 

 There are four tracking status states:

"Pending" status, while we try to fetch Track & Trace information. A job runs trying to fetch information for batches of 200 every 10 minutes.

“Tracking” status: Once Carrier Track & Trace data are fetched, the tracking status will change to “Tracking”. 

“Completed” status: Once all Carrier Track & Trace events are marked as completed, the tracking status will change to “Completed”. The latest data calculated for this shipment will continue to be displayed. If however the shipment is completed at the time of subscription, no calculation has ever been performed, and therefore the data will show ‘-’.

“Failed” status: In case of errors in fetching Carrier Track & Trace data, a “Failed” status will be displayed, together with a description of the reason that caused the failure. See the table below for the reasons as shown on the My Shipments page of the online solution, and the respective error returned by the Shipment API endpoint. If the reason is of the nature that a retry could end up in a successful tracking, the system will automatically retry every 10 minutes and up to 5 times in total to successfully get Carrier Track & Trace data. If after those retry attempts, the failure remains, the system will automatically retry every 1 hour and up to 60 times in total to successfully get Carrier Track & Trace data.
If after all these retry attempts the failure remains, then a refund of the charge will be given, and a “refund given” will be shown under the error message within 10 minutes.
The table below indicates all "Failed" reasons, with retry eligibility and refund timeframes:

 

 

You can find any of your shipments by typing the requested information on the filters presented. Filters are personalized and will only show options according to what you have added to your shipments.

 

The available filters are:

• Number: this is based on the content of the Number column of the data grid. At least 3 characters are required and the filtering is auto-applied to the Datagrid;
• Departure Port: this is based on the name of the departure port included in the Departure column of the Datagrid. A drop-down list will be shown including only ports that are available in your shipments;
• Arrival Port: this is based on the name of the arrival port included in the Arrival column of the Datagrid. A drop-down list will be shown including only ports that are available in your shipments;
• Arrival: this is based on the arrival timestamp included in the Arrival column of the Datagrid, including ETA and ATA timestamps. A modal will open giving you some standard date range options, as well as a custom definition of the range of interest;
• Shipment Status: you can filter based on the current status column of your shipment;
• Tags: you can filter based on the name of the content of the tags column of the Datagrid. A drop-down list includes only tags that are available on your shipments;
• Tracking Status: you can use this filter based on all possible tracking statuses. A drop-down list includes all possible selections.

You can also click on the button “LIVE TRACKING”, as shown below:

 

and get an overview of your Shipment’s Details including the status of your shipment, an embedded map with the live satellite position of your shipment, a full transportation plan visibility, and a table with all carrier’s milestone events. This link is shareable and by clicking the “Share” button you can easily send it to any stakeholder you want. Also, it is updated with each page refresh for real-time visibility.

 

 

Regarding the Shipment Details, presented on the Live Tracking at the top of the page, it includes the details of the shipment identification such as Carrier and Type of transport document number, port of load and discharge, tags, the total number of containers and the container ID's included on a shipment. It also features a "Share" button which copies the URL to the user's clipboard for sharing. The specific URLs are accessible by whoever has the link, so it is meant to be shared with other stakeholders of the shipment, as mentioned above.

Additionally, the Shipment Status section includes the same tracking status as mentioned in the "My Shipments" page, the Planned ETA, and a visual representation of the progress of the voyage. The representation is based on the percentage covered from ATD to ETA.​

 

The Live Position section features a Map showing the current position of the shipment. In cases where the shipment awaits at a port, then a container icon will be shown over the location of the specific port. In case the shipment is loaded on a vessel, then the latest vessel position and Area will be shown. A hyperlink “Show On Live Map” of the specific vessel carrying the cargo is also available above the map, however, in the OnLiveMap users can see the latest position of the vessel based on the level of access from other MT plans/services.​

 

The Events Timeline section includes the Carrier events tab and the Transportation plan tab.​
On the Carrier events tab we can find the Carrier container milestone events for each container number included in a specific shipment and below each container number, there is additional information as well about the size & the type of each container.​
On the Transportation plan tab, we can see a visualization of the journey of the shipment, based on AIS data & Carrier events data.​

 

Daily Digest Email notifications and how to enable/disable them

Daily Digest email notifications is a feature of VFC that allows all types of users (API or Online Version) to get notified about the status of their tracking shipments via email.

You will be notified in the following cases:
- When a tracking shipment has arrived in the port of Destination, with the additional information on how many days is already there.
- When a tracking shipment will arrive in the next three days at the port of Destination, with additional information regarding whether the shipment is delayed or not.
- When a tracking shipment has a Delay of 1 day or more based on identified differences between the Planned ETA and Predictive ETA.

How to Enable/Disable feature

The feature is enabled by default for all types of VFC users (API or Online version). However, you can always disable or enable again this feature just through a button in the Online version.
To manage the feature you may access the My Shipments page and then click on the Notifications button:

 

From here you can either disable or enable the feature from the switch and apply your new preferences:

 

 

"Copy Data" functionality

“Copy Data” functionality helps to extract the information of a user for their shipments through MyShipments page, for data management, analysis, and entry purposes.
The button "COPY DATA" on MyShipments page allows effortless copying shipments information with a simple click.

 

So how does it work?

• Locate the button: Users will find a COPY DATA button above tracking status information on MyShipments page
• Click and copy: Users with a click will seamlessly copy from MyShipments page their loaded shipments data into their clipboard
• Ready to paste: All the copied data can be pasted directly into an Excel spreadsheet, a Google Sheets, or a Numbers spreadsheet.

 

Why use the COPY DATA Button?
• Quick and Convenient: Save time and effort by avoiding the need to manually copy text. One-click is all it takes!
• Accurate and Error-Free: With the button's help, you'll ensure accurate data transfer without any risk of typos or mistakes.
• Share with Ease: Easily share vital details with colleagues or partners.
• Simplify Data Collection: Gather information efficiently enabling you to focus on analyzing and utilizing the data rather than wasting time on mundane tasks.

 

"Report your issue" functionality 

Charge type options and how you can subscribe to this solution

The solution supports two different types of subscriptions. The paid period-based subscriptions, with an annual commitment of shipments, and, a free-of-charge period-based subscription with 10 available shipments to track within a year.

In both types of subscriptions, the charging unit is per shipment and covers tracking the shipment until completion. When subscribing to a shipment with a bill of lading or booking a reference transport document number, you will be charged for one shipment even if this document number refers to more than one container. When subscribing based on a container number, each container number will be considered a separate shipment and charged separately.

Each shipment is pre-charged against your annual subscription limit upon subscription of a shipment but will be refunded if the system has finished all possible retries and is unable to successfully fetch track & trace information.

Based on your needs you can purchase a paid or free annual plan here. 

 

NOTE: If track & trace information is available but ETA to the final destination cannot be calculated for other reasons (e.g. a vessel's next port does not match the expected one), charging will be applied.