It has been a while since we last posted an update of what is going on here at ServiceBeacon and for that we do sincerely apologize! Thanks for putting up with the silence - it has really not been for lack of caring.

So why the post today? Well, over the last few weeks we have made some changes and enhancements to the application that we thought we had definitely post about so as to hopefully head off some questions from users (at least some).

The major change we made that we felt is in need of a post deals with car recalls in the system. Yesterday we went and added around 1400 recalls that were associated to around 10,000+ cars (year, make, model combinations). 1400?? That is a lot! Why so many? Up until now, we have only been showing recalls issued by the car manufacturer (the OEM). That certainly covers the vast majority of them which was definitely good. But now, we have added all the third party parts manufacturer recalls as well. So, as an example, if you have a replacement fuel filter in your car that there was a recall issued against, you would now get notified whereas in the past, you would not have as it was not a recall issued by the car manufacturer but by the third party.

So what does that mean to you? Well, if you already have a car/cars in ServiceBeacon, you may see new recalls show up in your car maintenance schedule. Or, if you are setting up a new car, any third party recalls issued against your car will show up alongside the recalls issued by the OEM.

Does this mean that the recall(s) really apply to your car? No, it does not. Going back to the filter example, if you did not use that filter in your car as a replacement filter then it would not apply.

This may be a good time to mention this point about recalls in general: Recalls, whether issued by a car manufacturer or a third party parts manufacturer, are issued a specific range of cars or car parts. ServiceBeacon will show you that a recall has been issued against your car but that does not necessarily mean your particular car was affected. Your best approach is to call your dealer or local service center and have them check your car’s VIN against that recall if it is an OEM recall or, if it is a replacement part, check the part to see if it is affected by the recall. Hopefully it is not but if it is, at least you now know about it and can take appropriate measures to fix it.

The next change we made to ServiceBeacon addresses the issue of a recall that was added to your schedule but does not actually apply to your car (i.e. you called your dealer and they said your car was not affected by the recall). In the past, there really was no great way to remove the recall from your schedule without actually adding it to an order and then completing the order. That was definitely not the best solution and a number of users pointed that out. So to resolve that issue, we added the ability to delete a recall off your schedule. The deletion process is pretty easy - you will notice there is a trash can at the end of the line with the recall.

In case you missed it, it’s this little icon:

Anyhow, clicking on the trash will give you a popup to confirm the deletion. If you are sure, just click on the confirmation and bingo! Recall is gone for good.

The process of adding these recalls was a ton of work but hopefully will pay off for you, our users. The nice thing is that now that it is done we should be in a position to add recalls to the system way more often, hopefully every month or more.

On other items, we have a ton of enhancements in the pipe so keep an eye out and keep sending in requests as we read every one and they help us gauge the relative interest level of each.

Thanks again!

Team SB

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One of the most frequently requested enhancements we have received is the ability for users to add their pre-signup maintenance service history to ServiceBeacon. Their reasons for asking for this enhancement can, for the most part, be divided into two categories:

1. They want their service history to be complete and capture everything they have done on the car, including service performed prior to signing up.
• Basically they want a way to take all their service records out of their glove compartment and quickly capture that information electronically in ServiceBeacon.
2. They needed a way to tell ServiceBeacon when they are really due for service next.
• The idea here is allow you to set up ServiceBeacon’s service schedule to match exactly what is due. ServiceBeacon makes assumptions about your car and when you did your service. Using Service History, you can align your real service with that of ServiceBeacon.

The new service history system accomplishes both request very nicely:

First, the user can enter all their service history - it creates an order which is immediately completed and posted to the car’s service history, bypassing the normal order completion step that occurs in the regular order creation process.

Second, the service history will affect the current maintenance schedule IF a service item added to a particular service history order fall within the next service interval for that particular service item. Here is an example of how and why this is needed and works:

A user creates a new car, e.g. a 2007 Chevy Trailblazer, and puts in the mileage as 2900 miles. The first interval on the maintenance schedule is at 3000 miles so the system just creates the car and new schedule and assumes that service is due in 100 miles. But what if the user went in a little early and did their service last week at 2800 miles? Now the car is not really due for service in 100 miles — it is now really due in another 3000 miles (from when they did service at 2800 miles) at 5800 miles as opposed to the 2nd interval which by default is 6000 miles. So the service history system allows the user to enter the service performed at 2800 miles and because it is within the service interval range (3000 miles) it knows to push all those items out to when they are really next due.

You can find the service history enhancement under My Service as Create Service History.

One other enhancement that is now at least partly in place is the ability to capture the cost of the service.

This was missing from the first release of complete service order so when we added service history we added a Cost field to both the service history and regular complete service order pages. We plan to add some new reporting features on Manage My Cars which will add up all the costs and show them there.

That’s it for now — thanks as always to all our users who keep sending in ideas for enhancements! A lot more things coming soon so look for more posts in the coming weeks.

Team SB

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A couple of new things to blog about this week, one is sort of minor and the other is more significant.

First the minor item: We loaded up a bunch of car recalls. The joy of being a startup is that sometimes things that may seem simple end up being more complex than they probably appear. Over the last few weeks we made some very significant changes to our database structure which gave us a lot more flexibility as we add new schedules and recalls. What prompted our having to make these changes was a significant change in the model of the data we have been receiving from our data provider (no, we don’t create the schedules on our own). Making the changes temporarily delayed our ability to add new car schedules and recalls but now that the changes are done we have a lot more flexibility to adjust to any future changes that may arise (and we have no doubt they will). In any case, this week we added a batch of recalls we received and we expect another batch over the next few weeks.

The more significant change we made this week was the ability to add a 2008 model car. As you’ll see in the example below, a 2008 will still be considered “custom” as we dont yet have any 2008 schedules but the process is pretty straightforward and in most cases any car you add will have a schedule assigned that should be pretty close to the correct one - certainly close enough to have little to no negative impact. Here is the process:

First, when adding any car, the first thing you do is go to My Cars/Add a Car. From the drop down, select Model Year “2008″ and then pick the make of car you are adding which in our example is a Scion. You will then notice that the Model Name drop down wont have anything to choose from. The reason is, as explained above, we do not yet have 2008 schedules. This is not a problem though as you can still add your car by checking on the “Model not here” checkbox which will then also check on the “Engine not here” checkbox and display a drop down box of schedules we have that are a close enough match. You then fill out what car you have which in our example is a tC with a 4cyl, 2.4 liter DOHC VVT-i. Then from the other schedule drop down, ServiceBeacon displayed schedules that are a close match and in this case we selected the 2007 Scion tC schedule. Note that in some cases, a user may see this drop down if we have all other information for the car except for the actual schedule.

Once you complete adding the car, you’ll be taken to Manage My Cars which will confirm that your car was successfully created. You will also see that in the area where it says “Schedule Type” it says “Alternate Schedule”. If it was the 2008 Scion schedule this would say “OEM Schedule”.

A couple of final points on what happens when we get the OEM schedule. Right now the Switch to OEM Schedule button is disabled. This button will become active when we load up an OEM Schedule that we believe is the correct one and will then walk the user through the process of confirming whether you want to switch to the new schedule we have identified.

The other place you will get notified of an OEM schedule being loaded that is a close match for your car on an alternate schedule is on the Dashboard page in the messages area for that car. You’ll notice that right now nothing is displayed as we currently do not have that schedule.

Hopefully this all makes sense. If it doesn’t or our process is more confusing then it should be, please let us know.

Until next time, thanks for reading our blog!

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A new set of maintenance schedules went online today along with that promised batch of dealerships (see yesterday’s post). 220 new schedules got added along with IDs for 181 cars. The majority of the new batch was for 2007 model cars. A big upload of recalls will be going online in the next day or so. The other big change that is coming is support for the 2008s so look for that in the coming days/week.

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