Hey Everyone,

ServiceBeacon Mobile is now up and running! You can point you mobile browser at http://m.servicebeacon.com to access it. The mobile version is (at this point) mostly designed to provide a way of adding gas fillups and/or updating your car’s mileage while out on the road as well as offer some basic information about your car’s maintenance status and recalls. As the system is new we are hoping you will provide input and feedback (on things like other information you may want to see) as well as any issues with browsers (we like Opera Mini the best) or any errors you may encounter.

On some other notes: We really appreciate all the great feedback we got in the last post when we launched gas tracking. We are working on implementing as many of the requests as possible, starting with reports and support for Imperial Gallons. Look for those new features to go online in the next week or two.

We also had a couple of early issues reported with things like rounding - those are all now fixed!

Thanks again for all the great email feedback and comments on the blog as we continue to work on being the best maintenance system on the web.

All the best!

Team SB

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So last night we finally put gas tracking into ServiceBeacon. This is definitely the number one enhancement request we have received over the last few months. With gas prices the way they are it really isnt a surprise! So here is a quick tour of what went online, a preview of what is still to come, and some questions for you in case you want to provide additional feedback/ideas on where we should take this.

First, here is what we have done so far:

1) Add a Fillup is located under the My Cars navigation icon.

2) When you get to the Add a Fillup screen you will be presented with a form which asks questions such as the date of fillup, your mileage at time of fillup, the fillup info itself (type of gas, how much you put in, cost per gallon/litre), where you filled up, and some extra questions about whether you missed an entry and whether you filled the tank. Filling in the form should be pretty easy assuming you have the info.

3) The info you enter in the form will then be captured below and is used to calculate things like your car’s current fuel economy.

4) Manage My Cars then captures all the costs and displays them along with total service costs.

5) One of the things we took into account is the issue of multi-currency and so we actually do break out costs based on the currency of the country where the expenditure (either from a fillup or maintenance) was made. So if you are Canadian and most of your fillups are in Canada but then you go on a roadtrip to the US and fillup there, ServiceBeacon will capture your Canadian fillups in Canadian dollars and will separately capture (and display) your fillups while you roadtrip to the States. We thought this was a good way to handle what would otherwise be a messy currency conversion issue.

6) When you enter a fillup, the information is used to update your car’s mileage within ServiceBeacon. This should help make our estimates even more accurate.

Next, here is what is still to come: The big thing on the list is a mobile version of the fillup system. That way you can enter the info while you are actually in your car/at the pump. It will save you from having to bring the info home if you don’t want to. The mobile version is already being worked on and we hope to have it up and running in the next few weeks so look for more on that soon.

So here are the questions we have:

1) What sort of reports would you like as it relates to your fillups and fuel economy?

2) Are you interested in seeing gas prices as entered by other users? Assuming enough of you start using this feature on a regular basis (especially once the mobile version gets released) this sort of info may become more and more useful for things like finding the best gas prices.
Let us know! As many of you have contacted us before, you know we always take your requests and feedback seriously so we want to hear from you. And of course if you run into any issues with the gas tracking features we just put online, please let us know about them as well.

We appreciate it and look forward to hearing from you!

Team SB

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Just a heads-up that tomorrow night, Tuesday, May 27th, we’ll be shutting the system down for around 2 hours from 10pm EST to Midnight to do some maintenance on the system and add some new functionality (more on that to come once the new stuff goes online).  Hopefully this does not cause anyone any inconvenience and appreciate the understanding.

Team SB

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ServiceBeacon has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit today to browse a huge selection of complimentary magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more across 34 industry sectors including, of course, Automotive but also Healthcare, Insurance, Finance, Computers, Retail, Manufacturing, and more. The extra nice thing is that no credit cards, coupons, or promo codes are required to take advantage of the offers so check it out as we think this is pretty cool. By the way, this offer not only applies to our US users — there are magazines for our Canadian, Mexican as well as International users.

Feedback on this is definitely welcome and appreciated so let us know what you think!

SB

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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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Happy New Year!

Over the last few weeks we introduced a new help system for ServiceBeacon and implemented another two dozen or so fixes and minor enhancements to make things run a little more smoothly. A lot of the fixes were reported by users — we really appreciate it as reporting them not only helps the user who reported the issue but it helps anyone else who otherwise would have encountered it later.

A few words about the help system: When we first launched ServiceBeacon, we had a very static help system at the top of each page. It served its purpose but it was not exactly cutting edge and based on the questions we would get, probably generally ignored. The new help system is hopefully a little more inviting and user friendly and will really help users get a good handle on how to best use ServiceBeacon. If you have not yet tried it out, give it a go by clicking on the “Help” link at the top of any page within the application. Let us know what you think and how we can improve it!

Some other fixes are a little more subtle. Here are some of them:

1. We changed the login link to an image in the main navigation. A few people reported that the old text link version really was hard to find. Hopefully the new one is a little harder to miss.
2. We changed the way the server messages appear. An example of a server message is “Invalid login information” on the login page. The old version of the server messages looked too much like regular text and too easily missed. The new look is, we hope, going to grab a user’s attention and get the point across a lot better.
3. Some really small stuff got fixed like some font issues, a page caching issue, etc… In and of themselves nothing huge but the cumulative effect made for some frustrations.

That’s it for now. We are very close to launching the history system for users who want to enter service they did prior to sign up. Look for that to come in the next week or two.

Thanks and if you have any feedback or other suggestions, please send them in!

SB

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As mentioned in the last post, we just put up a new layout for the recalls. When you create a new car. users will see that recalls are now showing both the NHTSA recall Campaign ID number as well as the date the recall was issued.

If a user wants to look up the specific details of a recall, they can now go to the NHTSA recall site and enter the recall ID and be provided with specific information about that recall.

SB

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Thanks again to all the users who have contacted us with requests for enhancements and new ideas, as well as letting us know if something isn’t working quite right. One thing is for sure is we have some amazingly smart and creative users!!

We thought at this point it would be a good idea to let everyone know what is happening with fixes and what is coming with enhancements
First some fixes:

• Some users have reported some issues where they made a change or did something like create a service order and then they wouldnt see it anywhere. For example, they would create an order and then they would not see it on the open orders page. We think it is a caching issue some browsers are having and we believe we have resolved that issue now. If you experience any similar issue, please let us know!
• Some users have reported not getting the email to confirm their registration. We believe that there are two reasons for this:
1. The email does not show up as quickly as they expect they think something is wrong. For most people the email should in fact arrive pretty much right away. For others though it may take a little while - maybe as long as ten or fifteen minutes. That’s just the way the Internet works sometimes, not much we can do about it unfortunately.
2. The other issue is that some spam filters are taking the registration email and then people end up not seeing it at all. This is something we are going to try and fix and we are already taking steps to help the matter. That said, there are some super aggressive spam filtering systems and we wont be able to help all our outbound emails from going to your inbox instead of your spam folder. So it you were expecting an email and it doesnt arrive, check there.
• We have had a few users who are trying to register email to say the system is telling them their email is already on file even though they have never registered before. We are going to change some stuff on the signup page to make sure users know they registered and to check the email, including their spam folder. We think there are two possible explanations for the issue occuring:
1. Users get trigger happy and hit the signup button twice. The first time sends the registration and then they push it again and get the warning.
2. A similar possible reason is the user signs up, doesn’t get the registration confirmation email as expected (as quickly as they thought or it goes to spam) so they think their registration failed and then they try and register again and get the warning.
• We had a user report an issue where they selected items from step 3 of add a car — the missed service items step for used cars. He created an order with just items from that step and it did not update his service schedule. That is now fixed so if anyone experiences a similar issue, please let us know.

Now some of the stuff that is coming (and approximately when):

• Some users said they would like us to better identify the login link.
1. We have some designs created for that and should have a new graphical version done and on the site by next week.
• We have had a number of requests for more info related to the recalls we show so they can talk to their dealer about them in detail.
1. Based on the feedback we got we are going to be changing a number of things related to the recalls section. Among the changes, we are going to start showing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) number and the issue date of the recall. This change should go online tonight.
2. In addition, we are also going to see if we can figure out how to link to that particular recall on the NHTSA site itself. This may or may not be feasible but we plan to try.
• The ability to enter previously performed service.
1. Once we get past some of the critical issues, this is going to be a super high priority. It’s not a hard one to do so hopefully we get it online in the next week or two.
2. In addition, this is going to help a secondary issue which is have the system setup based on what was done when the car was last serviced. For example, if you tell the system your car has 54,000 miles, the schedule will setup based on that mileage. If the next service interval is at 55,000 miles, the system will show you are due for service in 1000 miles (55,000 miles less your current 54,000 miles). That is fine unless you just serviced your car and are not due until 58,000 miles. So to get the system to say you arent due until 58,000 miles the way to do it is to enter the last service that was performed.
1. There is a way to resolve this today but it just isnt as obvious as it should be: Just create an order with what was done and save it with the mileage it was performed at and the schedule will adjust itself.
• A time based option for service.
1. We have had this request and it makes good sense. Right now the system tracks when service should be done based on mileage. We are going to add a time based system so that the system says, for example, you should do your oil within 5,000 miles or 6 months, whichever comes first. We have to figure out how long this will take us to write and test but hopefully it is pretty quick.
• Ask users up front how many miles/km they expect to drive the car per year.
1. Pretty basic request and something we should be able to add pretty quickly.
• Have a better help system.
1. We have a help system now but the new one is going to be far superior. We are working on it now and it is on its way.

There are some other things on the list but these seem to be the most pressing ones. If you submitted an idea and don’t see it listed here, dont worry, we kept track of all of them and I dont believe we excluded a single idea from our to do list.

Thanks,

SB

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Kim Komando, America’s Digital Goddess, made ServiceBeacon her Cool Site of the Day today. Wow, we are thrilled! We had some heads up and have tried to make the system scale to support the traffic and so far so good from what we can tell. If you have any issues, definitely let us know. Also, if you have any support questions or any issues, definitely let us know by using the contact forms either on the public site if you have not yet signed up or within the application if you are already a registered user.

Thanks!

SB

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