Shipwell’s Track and Trace AI Worker is an autonomously operating AI worker that provides maximum visibility of shipments throughout Shipwell by taking on the research and carrier and driver follow-up tasks that your team would normally need to do to ensure shipment tracking is occurring. This article covers how you go about activating and setting the AI worker up.
Before getting started it is important to keep in mind that the AI worker is meant to behave in a similar capacity as your team would in that it only acts when there is an exception identified.
How to Setup Your Track and Trace AI Worker
Let your Customer Success Manager know that you want to leverage Shipwell’s Track and Trace AI worker. The Track and Trace AI worker is a separate add-on product offering that must be activated to be leveraged within Shipwell.
Set your ‘Company Email’ (e.g. tracking@companyabc.com) if looking to have the Track and Trace AI worker leverage a ‘Company Email’ address via Microsoft or Google as one of the communication options. Select ‘Email Configuration’ under ‘Global Configuration’ and then select ‘Connect’ for either Microsoft Outlook or Google Gmail. Then, follow enter the email address and password and authorize the AI worker. Note you can have multiple emails authenticated and have different agents use different Company emails if you prefer.
As a Shipwell Company Administrator user, go to ‘Manage’ → ‘AI Studio' and select ‘Purchase Agent’ and then select 'Confirm Terms’.
Once you have agreed to the terms, then select ‘Configure Agent’ and this will bring you to the AI worker’s configuration page.
The following items need to be completed:
Worker Name: By default, the tracking worker’s name is ‘Track & Trace’. You can modify this if desired. Note it will be occasionally used in communications so identifying as your company name with Company ABC Tracking Agent might be desired for example.
Model Type: This identifies which model is the model used by the tracking AI worker. Any of the models selectable should work well for the tracking agent. Customers sometimes have model preferences based on familiarity with the modeling companies and/or their policies. At any point you can switch the model being used.
Agent User Account: This identifies which user account the agent acts on behalf of and gains its permissions to act. It is highly recommended to setup a separate user account that the AI worker can act as (e.g. trackingagent@companyabc.com). This user needs to have the following user permissions at a minimum:
Shipment (view, update)
Address Book (view)
Users (view)
Shipments Monitored: This section identifies which shipments are monitored based on selecting which modes and/or carriers. If no carrier or mode are selected then it defaults to all modes and all carriers that are available. Note parcel is not currently available as a mode to perform Track and Trace actions. Further, some modes have more or less utility so best to read the overall Track and Trace AI Worker Overview documentation to learn more.
IMPORTANT: For a shipment to be monitored, the shipment must be a covered mode and a covered carrier. Accordingly, even if you have FedEx as a covered carrier then it will not be a shipment monitored from FedEx if it is a Full Truckload mode for example.
Modes: Select if modes should be included or excluded. If no modes are referenced, then the tracking worker will interpret that ALL modes available should be monitored.
Carriers: Select if carriers should be included or excluded. If no carriers are referenced, then the AI worker will interpret that ALL active carriers should be monitored. If you want the AI worker to leverage all existing and new carriers, then select the ‘Include All Carriers’ checkbox.
Data Actions: This section identifies whether AI worker can modify shipment data and if there must be a human in the loop approval. The options are as follows:
Allow Changes: This means the tracking worker will automatically make shipment data changes when it believes they should be completed.
Verify First: This means the tracking worker will send an email to the internal users to verify that it can make a shipment data change prior to the change occurring.
Don’t Change: This means the tracking worker will NOT modify data changes but will still notify internal users when it thinks these changes should occur. However, the changes need to be completed by the internal user.
Communication: This section identifies who, how, and how much the AI worker will communicate with each respective party. Note while Customer and Suppliers are indeed configurable sections right now, there are not any communications currently performed by the AI worker at this time. This will be supported in the future as more capabilities arise.
Communication:
Communication Level: Choose from ‘No Outreach’, ‘Light’, ‘Moderate’, and ‘Heavy’ for each party. If you select ‘Light’, ‘Moderate’, and ‘Heavy’ then it will follow the configurations identified in the ‘Outreach Levels’. Note for ‘Customer’ and ‘Suppliers’ there is no available communication types from the AI worker so it will not reach out to these parties anyway.
Communication Party: Select the order of communication usage for track and trace follow-ups or leverage default communication mode priority selecting ‘Use Default Priority.’
Review Before Sending: Activating this means you will get notified prior to the party being communicated with. This is rare to have activated as it means any request for a tracking update would need to be approved prior to sending the request for tracking for example.
Contact Configuration:
Carrier Contact Roles: This allows you to identify carrier contact roles that the AI worker will use when communicating with your carriers. If you do not choose a carrier contact role then the tracking worker will assume that you want to communicate with ALL roles for your carrier’s contacts. Note if you do not have carrier contacts setup then there will not be proper outreach happening to your carriers.
Internal Contact Override Emails: This allows you to identify which users should receive communications when the agent is sending out requests to internal contacts at your company. If no ‘Internal Contact Override Emails’ are provided, then the agent by default uses the ‘Created By’ user and any ‘Rep' users on a shipment to be the contacts. However, some teams will want a centralized group of people to receive these requests and why this configuration is available.
Outreach Levels:
Maximum Frequency: Identifies how often the agent may reach out to a carrier per day. It also represents the number of updates that you expect to be coming from a carrier per day. For example, if you expect a carrier to provide at least two updates per day for tracking then you should have this identified as 2. Note that if tracking is occurring then the tracking worker does NOT contact carriers. It simply is contacting carriers that are not providing the tracking updates expected.
Outreach Interval: This identifies how much time between communications when the TTAI should seek another tracking update if one is not occurring.
Outreach Start Level: This identifies the amount of time to wait after when a missed stop or tracking or other triggering event prior to the AI worker initiating a communication. For example, a pickup was supposed to occur between 8:00 and 18:00. It is now 18:00 and no pickup has been indicated yet. If this is set to 01:00 Hour:Minutes, then the tracking worker will wait until 19:00 prior to it follows up with the carrier.
Time Windows : This identifies the timeframe when the tracking worker operates and reaches out to parties. Note the AI worker will always be active and take in communications that were sent to the AI worker, but it will not initiate communications outside of the timeframes (days / time) identified.
6. Once all the configurations are complete then it is time to activate the tracking worker by selecting ‘Activate Worker’.
Your agent should now be activated and configured, and it may take up to 20 minutes for actions to start occurring (assuming you are configuring during the time when your agent is set to be active).