1. General.

Streamliner is a B2B platform, bringing companies together to collaborate on the inbound supply chain.  For more info see our website www.streamliner.cloud or consult our knowledge base on support.streamliner.cloud  

A user in your company will be invited to onboard your company in a streamliner community, based upon an invitation to collaborate as a carrier. 

This mini guide describes the following steps

• Book an appointment to deliver in location of the 3PL
• What if you want to book outside the offered availability
• Centralize communications for any question

This mini guide is one of the 3 mini guides that are available to support you as a carrier on the Streamliner platform. Read more in the following mini guides

• Onboard as a carrier.
• Book an appointment to deliver goods. (this one) 
• Collaborate on the reception of goods as a carrier. 

Prerequisites

• Be invited by your customer to participate in the inbound community of a 3PL

2. Prepare your company

Before we start booking, we show you how to set some defaults to make life easier. 

In the community of the 3PL, go to the companies page and search your own company. 

You can set your default truck if you wish.  

P.S. You can see on the same page which companies perform the role ‘Carrier’ in this community.  You can make a difference by adding your logo to your company! See 'Manage account' on the main page. 

3. Book a slot. 

Go to the dashboard page, enter the Streamliner application inside the community of your 3PL.  It’s the yellow plugin on the dashboard screen:

When you enter Streamliner you see packages and shipments. By default screen of packages will be selected. 

3.1. Shipment overview 

This is your main overview screen with all shipments that are placed. In the top left you can filter on the different locations if needed. You see date, start hour, operation loading/unloading, the shipment number for the kiosk, the reference, the principal, the location, assigned gate and state. This is real time information. You will see that state changes as soon as your truck arrives at the location. 

As a carrier you can add a shipment. You can do this by clicking on "Add shipment" in the top right corner. 

When you click on "Add shipment" a screen like this should appear on your screen. 

Fill in all the blank spaces, start by selecting your customer, select your operation and the location. The location depends on the selected customer. Streamliner makes it easy for you to limit the n° of warehouse you can select. Continue with the truck type, the reference and add the N° of pallets, parcels, containers or whatever you need to load or unload. Streamliner is an intelligent slot booking tool, the duration of the timeslot depends on the  type of goods and the volumes. After you filled in your detail, you can select a date to book a slot.

When you selected your customer, the operation, location, the delivery type and the principal packaging reference, Streamliner will suggest the first available time slot for the date that you selected.  

It is very important that you add a method of packing, otherwise you can not book your slot. 

Congratulations you just booked your first shipment. 

What information is available: 

If you click on the shipment you can see additional details.

• Starthour of your slot. Please present yourself BEFORE this starting hour
• Time of the registration points
• More information about the needed capacity to unload or load
• Pallets and parcels
• Issue management
• Attachments
• History
• Comments   

A click on a shipment line will open the detail of that shipment Make your self familiar with the filters, search functionality and the information on detail pane. One of the most innovative features is the possibility to communicate within the community. Simply start a discussion about this shipment in the right pane to centralize ALL communications and avoid point-to-point emails. An email will be sent automatically to the concerned persons of the receiver and vice-versa. 

On the top left you can see the start hour, it is very important that you register at the desk with your shipment number before this hour. 

3. What if you want to book outside the offered availability.

When you select a time slot where one of the rules is not respected, the time slot turns into a red time slot and a warning is shown which rule(s) that are not respected. 

The most common issues are the following: 

• Time window to deliver is not respected
• A time slot is chosen outside opening hours
• There are no resources available
• The slot is already fully booked
• ...

Please select another date/time to book a slot. Depending on the choice of the 3PL, the 3PL will allow you to book a slot with warnings or not. If you persist to book the slot, a message is sent to the 3PL asking to approve the time slot. So Streamliner can not guarantee that this slot will be approved. Your 3PL can deny or approve your proposal. 

4. Centralize communication. 

You can, at any moment, place comments or pose questions regarding the shipment. Streamliner will send an email with a hyperlink to the persons who are responsible for the follow-up. See user management to accept the notifications of Streamliner

This is how you can centralize all communications regarding an order in Streamliner to keep track of all issues, remarks or whatever. 

Please consult the knowledge base for more in depth articles. Good luck and happy visibility with Streamliner.