Tips.htm

The Call Timers are accessed by clicking on the icon in the upper left hand corner just beneath the Back and Forward buttons. The purpose was to keep track of your online time with AOL so that you can compare the bill when it comes with your Call Timer records. But since AOL is no longer required, the call timers are now irrelevant.

1) Make Sure You Understand The Effects Of Your Criteria - The most efficient way to accomplish your searches is to add or subtract one criteria item at a time prior to initiating the search. This technique should be applied when you are attempting to do a "search within a search" on the same Bank. The less criteria you change in between searches, the better you will be able to understand the results of each search. Each subsequent search on additional Banks should have the criteria relaxed, or changed to allow more LOFs to be shown to you.

2) Understand The Recall Concept - When you are ready to add a new Bank, be sure to also use the RECALL function to save having to enter all of the information again.

3) Check Your Special Features Often - The criteria for the Legalities, Vacation, and Configure commands should be entered or changed prior to initiating any searches and should be checked often to be sure that they are not affecting the results of your subsequent searches.

4) Including The Entire Bid Package In Your Search - Occasionally, you will have a situation (like vacation bidding) when you will want to include the entire bid package in the search for one Bank. To do so, make sure that the main criteria statement reads: "1 hour Credit Time (Min)". This is because every line contains a minimum of one hour of credit time, so they all will be included in the search. Now click on the phase: 'Line Number' to engage the sort feature and arrange the LOFs in the order you prefer.

5) Processing The Entire Bid Package - When setting up a scenario such as the one mentioned above, be aware that the processing of the entire bid package may take a little longer than normal. Also, when you set the sorting function for a vacation pay, it may take a few seconds for the feature to engage, so don't be alarmed.

6) Conflicting Criteria - Be sure not to enter conflicting criteria. Example: Asking for 80% 2 day trips and 80% 3 day trips to be in the same Bank. A Line in that Bank cannot contain both 80% 2 day trips, and 80% 3 day trips. The result of a search with this combination of criteria will be zero lines in the Bank. Remember, each Line in the Bank must contain the exact criteria that you have specified.

7) Garbage Bank Technique - You may want to consider creating a Bank that only contains the LOFs that you DON'T want to see first (all-nighters, 6 leg trips, whatever). Then you won't have to worry about those things showing up in the subsequent searches for the LOFs that you do want. Just be sure to delete that "garbage" Bank prior to the upload, otherwise it will be sent along with everything else!

8) Understanding Trips That Arrive After Midnight - Occasionally you are going to run into trips that arrive after midnight, causing some confusion as to whether a 2 day is really a one day, or a 3 day is really a 2 day, how does it effect selecting days off, etc.

As many of you are aware, you can enter criteria such as latest return. So if you enter 2100 to be your latest return, that means that you will accept everything that arrives between 0001 and 2100. But wait!! You don’t want any after midnight arrivals, so what do you do??

If you look closely, you will also see a criterion that allows you to enter the Earliest Return. So in addition to stating the latest arrival your will accept, you can also enter something like “All of my line to have 0800 as the earliest arrival”.

This indicates to the program to not select any arrivals between the hours of 0001 and 0800. Now you don’t need to worry about those trips that get in after midnight.

But be aware! The opposite is also true! If you say that you want mostly 2 day trips, then any trips that arrive after midnight will still be considered 3 day trips to the computer, and therefore won’t be included in your search. So you will need to add an additional criterion or do a subsequent search in another Bank for any 3 day trips as well. Only this time you can use a variation of the criteria example above. When you look for these 2 day trips (which the computer considers to be 3 day trips because they get in after midnight), be sure to enter something like 0400 to be your latest arrival. This way it will only include those 2 day trips that get in after midnight, but not the traditional 3 day, 3 duty period trips that you really aren’t interested in. With a little experimentation, we believe that the concept will begin to be more useful to you.

If, on the Criteria Selection screen, you would have clicked on the 4th to make it a day off, you would not have seen this line because ID 1233 overlaps onto the 4th. The computer considers it a day on for selection purposes. You should not select it as either a day on or off. You should instead click on it once with the right mouse button and use the Day Expansion feature, which allows you to apply certain criteria to one specific day. You could then make the Day Expansion criteria say "Latest Return - 0200" for the 4th. That way, any trips that get in after midnight, and overlap onto the 4th, would still be selected while preserving your day off on the 4th.

Also notice that the number of days off displayed for this line is 17. In this case, the 4th is considered a day off in terms of counting days off, but not in terms of selecting criteria because of the overlap. Remember, computers are absolute in their ability to make a determination.

1) Editing, Position bidding, and Relief bidding should be done last (and in that order), after you have completed all of your searches. Any searches performed after this work is completed will cause your editing/position bidding/Relief bidding to be lost. If you attempt to perform a search after editing has taken place, BidPlus will provide a warning and ask you to confirm this action before continuing.

1) Trip Trading - Remember that once you have downloaded a bid package, you have all of the IDs in the bid package available to you for review without having to go online to see any IDs that you might want to trade with.

2) Getting Your IBS - Once you are signed onto Unimatic, clear the screen and then type IBSBDS, then hit Enter. Next, provide the requested information, then hit Enter. You will then notice a red MSG box at the bottom. Place your mouse pointer over that box and click. You will then see the first page of your IBS displayed.