How you and your partners add and publish events

Publishing events is crucial to keep track of your consignments, transport equipment, and shipments. Using the Event Publisher tool, you and your partners can easily add events with a few clicks from multiple (mobile) devices without investing in heavy system integrations.

In this article

What is the Event Publisher?

The Event Publisher is a tool in the Shipment Manager (User Interface) where you can easily provide the necessary data to create and publish an event. It avoids the need for system integration via APIs, instead, the user interface is easily, directly accessible through your browser and from multiple devices which streamlines the creation of events for all parties involved.

The tool is designed to publish an event in as little as five clicks containing more than 9 pieces of information, such as container/booking/bill number, event type, time, location, container status, sender, and transportation phase. 

GIF from user interface#1(TA Event Publisher Rec 1)

What challenges does the Event Publisher address and why should you use the Event Publisher?

Today, the most common way to publish data and events to the TradeLens platform is via a system integration to the TradeLens APIs. This requires setup, resources with the necessary know-how, and proficient system capabilities to integrate the APIs.

To lower the hurdle for clients and partners to publish events, no matter your system’s maturity, available resources, and time, TradeLens has developed the Event Publisher. It avoids integration periods and can be set up effortlessly to publish events to the platform’s interface.

Use Cases: Who can use the Event Publisher?

I am an Importer/Customer …

• that does not want to spend time or resources on heavy system integrations and data mappings but
• wants to track the movement of my goods and see the queue of consignments, containers, and the associated events
• that has partners onboarded to TradeLens that can also use the Event Publisher to add events

I am a Trucker/Freight Forwarder…

• onboarded to TradeLens and want to create transparency around my services by supplying information around the events from my transportation and
• that wants to update new information around containers from multiple devices with only a few clicks

How to use the Event Publisher?

Access the “Event Publisher” from the TradeLens Platform and get an overview of your current “queue” listing those Equipment Numbers, Bill of Lading Numbers, and Carrier Booking numbers that you recently added into the queue and are currently working on.

The queue allows you to publish multiple events to the same container as they occur without the need to enter the references multiple times. From here, you can add containers and respective events to those containers by entering the equipment number, and if available, other references. Or you can remove containers from your queue in case you have completed the work and no events remain to be added from your end.  

How to add a container (in case it is not visible in your queue yet):

1. Enter Equipment Number, and if possible, Bill of Lading Number & Carrier Booking Number (these references can also be added after adding the container to your queue)
2. Choose “Add to Queue” or directly “Add Event” for the container to be added

GIF of these steps in recording #3 (TA Event Publisher Rec 3)

Add an event with 5 clicks:

1. Choose “Add Event” for the container (optional: adjust the event information & occurrence time)
2. Select the event category and receive the list of event types based on the chosen category
3. Click on the event type to be added
4. Select an existing location from the dropdown list or add a new one that will be stored for future events (optional: add enriching information in fields dependent on event type chosen, e.g., a license plate for 'gate-in' events)
5. Click “Add Event” and receive a pop-up notification that your event was successfully published

GIF of the 5 clicks from desktop #4

(back-up GIF: TA Event Publisher Rec X)

After creating the event, you’ll return to the overview of your queue in the Event Publisher.

How to set up the Event Publisher?

As an administrator, only a few settings need to be made once to set up the Event Publisher. In your “Account and Organization Management” make sure you:

• enter the appropriate “Display Organization Name” that becomes the “sender name” used to publish events. This is also the name that business partners will search for to connect with you
• add “Default Event Publishing Locations” to publish events even faster by entering location details that will be available as options in the dropdown list when adding events in the Event Publisher. These locations should be places most often used by your operations, like your warehouse, the nearby container depot, or the port or terminal. A city, country, and (implicit UN Locode) are mandatory, but you can provide further address information optionally.

GIF/Screenshot of org admin page (“TA Event Publisher Rec 5“)

Disclaimer:

The Event Publisher is currently in a beta version and future features will be added over time such as increased visibility via an event log and mass-adding multiple events at once. We always appreciate your feedback on current and future features to further improve this tool!