Taxi Driver Online

Neither is it understood by some people who distribute the software. Another good night with Excells cracking system last night, NOT.

True. The autocab system differs from the auriga sirius system in that it has a huge amount of user definable parameters that allow you to tailor the system to your needs. (I cannot comment on evocab as I have not seen it running). However, when our autocab system was first installed these were not explained and were only covered briefly in a manual.
Having said that autocab (and when we used them auriga) have some very helpful and knowledgeable technical support people on the phone who are happy to assist in this.
I believe a great deal of users do kot know what their system is capable of.
Sales persons from both firms tend to know very little on the technical details , though they are usually totally honest about this.

I must point out that Sirius and Evo are miles apart.

Perhaps someone can ask AutoCab the definative questions at the Taxi Exhibition because I am still not quite convinced it is not a DOS system from some people I have been talking to.

Unless of course the confusion here is that the AutoCab Windows system is very new. It certainly hasnt been fitted on a recent system, about 5 months ago.

at least its nice to see sombody who uses the autocab system come onto the forum & tell us something about it so centralns can you tell me some good bits or even unique bits with the autocab system myself i am a auriga evocab system user so i cant really compare the autocab to the auriga sirius system cuz the sirius system is well out of date now the good bits with the evo system are driver chooses how far he gets pulled to jobs from his or her data unit no gps no work numerous amounts of despatching methods from busy to work share pmr & gprs mixture fleet to mention a few over to you centralns

Most companies haven’t got a clue what their system is capable of let alone set it up so you just need to bear this in mind when making comparisons here. We spend half our life building in options that don’t get used because owners can’t be bothered reading our newsletters. It’s even more frustrating when they tell you a company down the road has a brilliant facility that they don’t have when the reality is they’ve had it all along and just never enabled it.

We held a customer seminar last month and part of this was to explain about the benefits of some of the features. Out of about a hundred, only five people actually knew the password to access the settings and this just about sums the majority of taxi management. As long as people aren’t complaining they just leave things alone rather than look for ways to make things better.

At the end of the day, most software suppliers need to ensure that the product meets the customers needs and the only time to start worrying is when your told that’s as good as it gets!

Bill

Very difficult to say what is unique as its so long since I saw another system in detail. When we switched to it I was all for looking at evocab but at the time auriga had just about priced themselves out of the market!
Autocab has many handy features which im sure most sytems will have now, e.g:

- changeable bidding methods - fastest first, closest zone, closest zone but if more than 1 car in closest zone then car who been idle longest gets it, and in the latest version - closest car bidding (all bids in a certain time logged with cars gps coordinates - closest car in a straight line to the job gets it). Not perfect as its a straight line ignoring roads but still fairly accurate.

- user definable "strictness" - if your drivers/office staff are honest then the system can be set accordingly, if you have troublesome drivers/staff you can be much stricter. e.g. with sirius we had several drivers put meter on and off to clear when getting a job they knew was a poor or short one. Yes its a management issue to sort but we have the system set now so that drivers must use a meter and that meter must be on for x seconds. This doesnt trouble genuine drivers only the non genuine ones. There are lots of parameters that can be set - pin numbers to identify drivers on system, break times, shift times, how long driver can have a job before reporting as a blank etc etc.


-No gps no job is another feature.

- Inbulit gps meters in dataheads - not my favourite and seldom used but very handy as a backup (and surprisingly accurate) when your standard meter breaks at 11pm Friday night. And no they dont record takings unless you specifically set it up to do so (i dont know any user that does)

- detailed data log - so that you can check on disaptchers and what work went where and why. Useful in sorting queries over jobs and increases fairness and transparency from drivers point of view.

- more backup zones. With sirius I think we were limited to 5 for normal dispatching. We can have smaller zones with as many backup zones as required

- route tracing - not precise by any means but if you have a doubt over the route a car has taken you can retrace its gps coordinates to a cetain extent

Im sure evocab will have some/all of these. As Bill-datamaster says most systems can do most things if they are set up correctly. We have 150 cars running now and most people are happy with it.

I like the evocab different dispatching methods - thats something we dont have. Sounds a handy feature.

Evo works on a "Points" system as well. This adds points to each vehicle in different circumstances and works thru a "cycle system" (all vehicles are considered for the job rather than one at a time.

Points are designated for each vehicle type and also for customers.

Driver preferences set up to mulit-choice i.e. Shopping - Animals - Meal delivery - Airport and so on.

If you have VIP customers and you dont want a brand new driver doing these particular jobs until more experienced then this is very usefull.

Vehicle Options: Saloon - Estate - Mulit-Seater - TX

For example, for your priority customers you may award, say 1000 points compared to less important of say 100 points.

Search scripts are fully customised by the user at any time.

Mulitple Scheduling for different times of day which allows different search scripts to be used.

Driver distance choice: The driver can choose how far he wishes to run at any time. I know that when I looked at AutoCab they did not know what this meant and asked why it would ever be used.

DOS and similar type 'older or older looking' operating systems can have advantages for certain applications that require a 'real-time' operating system, which Windows is not. This is so that timings and calculations needed by the end application are guaranteed. With Windows it cycles around e.g. looks for the mouse input, any plug and play equipment etc etc all which detracts from the CPU concentrating on the task in hand which means it can 'miss' timing events. I guess for a despatch system the radio timing would be important to send messages out. It needs, however, a decent front end as this is what is expected which is somewhat difficult to acheive in DOS.

None of the systems I know of (Dos or any other system) perform any time critical functions what so ever as just serial transmit and receive buffers alone would make such a task virtually impossible. Timing issues are always dealt with by the TNC unit that uses it’s own dedicated processor and in this way, instant responses can be generated irrespective of what the main PC’s doing.

This is interesting. We run Autocab, although I'm unsure as to whether we're on Windows or DOS. It was, I believe, sold to us as Windows but I have my doubts.

To my point: I frequently miss fleet wide messages sent out by the controller. Is this because they occur at the same time as, for instance, I am changing zones?

Well you could do us all a big favour. How about email Auto-Cab as a customer and ask them whether the system is DOS or Windows.. unless Bill_Datamaster can tell you how to find out.

However, I presume that if you are unable to use a mouse then perhaps it is indeed DOS.

I spoke with an autocab engineer and the newer systems are windows, although the booking and dispatch screens look exactly like the old dos screens they do actually run maps on these screens also which dos would not do.

Thanks... that for that. Although it would be interesting as to when the new Windows system was introduced. There is nothing on their web site that mentions this.

Where as on the Auriga sit it state "....and peace of mind that you have the kind of stability provided by a system with the likes of Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco and HP on its side".

Westside

Global messages unlike individual messages don’t contain a reception acknowledgement and because of this they’re not guaranteed to get through 100% and this is true for all PMR based systems.

On the Dos / no Dos issue, clearly there is a Windows application running but the actual booking and dispatching side seems to be pretty much the same as it’s always been. The total absence of even the most basic of Windows functions is a clear indication that this part of the package was not written for Windows. What you’re seeing is most likely to be the original Dos application but running inside a Windows “wrapper”

Doe's that make it a Window’s based program? Yes, but only if you believe putting a Ferrari badge on an your old car makes it into a Ferrari.

Actually, this is what I have been told, & suspect that you are correct. I think that very possibly if Auto-Cab are insinuating they are in indeed running a full Windows based product then they could be accused of not completely telling the truth.

Im not able to get to the show next week but I know others that are so I will ask them to "enquire" on the Auto-Cab stand. If anyone else is going then ask those questions too.

Bill, are you going to the exhibition ?