What’s New in Navis SPARCS N4 release 2.3?

Navis SPARCS N4 release 2.3 offers new features and improvements across the application to provide
terminals with the necessary functionality to optimize operations with improved productivity and efficiency.

Specific enhancements to Community Access Portal (CAP), Gate, Equipment Control, Expert Decking,
Rail, and Business Intelligence have been made. SPARCS N4 2.3 also extends the General Cargo
Option to support more comprehensive Cargo Lot Management, RDT Cargo Tracking, and integration
with Service Orders and EDI. Other significant new enhancements include the Multi-Gate and Multi-
Facility Gate Clerk features which provide an easy-to-use interface for multiple gate lane processing.

Generally Available: May 7, 2012

1. System Foundation II Option

SPARCS N4 Community Access Portal (CAP) User Interface
The SPARCS N4 Community Access Portal (CAP) provides an HTML user interface with access to some
basic functionality in SPARCS N4. This gives trucking companies, agents, shippers, and consignees’
web-based access to vessel, truck, and container information as well as the ability to pre-advise
containers and make gate appointments.
New to the SPARCS N4 CAP user interface is improved gate and vessel functionality:
• Gate: Enables users to pre-advise an export or storage empty container, create and manage truck
visit and transaction appointments, create notice requests, check the availability of a unit, find a
truck transaction or truck visit, view and reprint gate documents, view bookings and booking items,
view equipment delivery orders, and view guarantees. In addition, you can create and manage
announcements that display in the SPARCS N4 CAP user interface or print on gate documents.
• Vessel: Enables users to display information about the vessels scheduled for arrival at a terminal
and view bookings and booking items.

Yard Editor

Yard Editor is a graphical yard editing tool in the SPARCS N4 user interface used to set up your yard(s).
New to the Yard Editor:
• The ability to import a compiled yard file over an existing yard model in SPARCS N4.
• Add yard elements, such as a yard block, yard exchange area, track plan, and berth, to the yard
map, each with just a few mouse clicks.
• Preview yard stacks blocks in more detail.
• Configure whether SPARCS N4 allows duplicate section names. SPARCS N4 requires you to
correct duplicate stack names before activating a yard. If you configure SPARCS N4 to disallow
duplicate section names, any duplicate section names must also be corrected before activating a
yard.
• Edit certain details of a unit's history events that were recorded in SPARCS N4.
Holds and Permissions

SPARCS N4 provides the ability to define operational holds and permissions to ensure that operational
rules, customer requests, and governmental requirements are adhered to.
New to Holds and Permissions:
Define covert or hidden holds and permissions for units, which perform like operational holds and
permissions, but are hidden from users until the restricted action is attempted. For example, if a unit has a
covert hold that prevents delivery, SPARCS N4 does not display the hold until a trucker tries to deliver the
unit out of the gate. At that time, SPARCS N4 displays an error message that there is a covert hold, but
does not display any details about the hold unless the clerk has the appropriate privilege. Only users with
the covert hold/permission privilege can view the hold/permission details and release/grant the covert
hold/permission.

2. System Options

Advanced Configuration, Customization, and Integration Option

The Advanced Configuration, Customization, and Integration Option is a bundle of advanced features that
enable you to tailor SPARCS N4 to meet your specific needs. This option provides a much quicker and
cheaper solution than the traditional approach of customizing software changes directly within the
application.

Flex Fields
NEW The Flex Fields now provides the ability to add fields for specific line operators.

3. Standard Options

Gate Option
The Gate Option provides a flexible and configurable gate to meet your operational needs without the
need for costly and highly risky software customizations.
New Multi-Gate or Multi-Facility Gate Clerk

Gate Lane Monitor

The Gate Lane Monitor feature provides a Gate Lane Monitor view to display the status of the gate lanes
defined for all the gates at your site. The Gate Lane Monitor view continually updates and displays the
lane status in real time as the trucks are interacting with the lanes. In addition, the Gate Lane Monitor
view displays any defined exchange lanes as well.
New to Gate Lane Monitor:
If configured and available, you can now configure the gate to display captured images in an external
viewer, in the Multi Facility Lane Monitor or Truck Visit Inspector.
In addition, you can quickly and easily view current and historical scanned data, including data sent to
SPARCS N4 via gate APIs, in the Scan Sets view. A scan set is a collection of scanned data for a truck
in a gate lane, such as the truck license number, scale weight, and any scanned container or chassis
details.

New Multi-Gate or Multi-Facility Gate Clerk

The Multi-Gate or Multi-Facility Gate Clerk feature provides a single unified interface for a clerk to process
gate transactions for trucks at different gates or facilities in a complex. In SPARCS N4, each gate is
linked to a specific facility and yard. However, with this feature a gate clerk can log in at the facility level
and process gate transactions for a truck in any gate lane at any gate within the facility. In addition, a gate
clerk logged in at the complex level can process gate transactions for any gate lane at any facility in the
complex. All of this is done from the Multi Facility Lane Monitor tab in SPARCS N4.
In addition, you can create filters to display only the gate lanes that the clerk can service and you can
prevent certain users from viewing all active gate lanes, allowing them to see only the filtered results.

With this feature, a gate clerk can:

• View all active gate lanes and truck visits for the all of the gates in a facility or all of the facilities in a
complex depending on the scope level the clerk logs in at.
• If a filter is applied, view only the gate lanes that the clerk can service.
• Use polling so that SPARCS N4 automatically selects the next longest waiting truck among the gate
lanes that the clerk is allowed to service and automatically opens the appropriate gate stage form
for gate processing.
• Start and stop polling as needed.
• When polling is stopped, manually select the next longest waiting truck or select any gate lane they
wish among the gate lanes the clerk can service for gate processing. In this case, SPARCS N4
automatically opens the appropriate gate stage form.
• For a truck in a gate lane, manually open any gate stage form for gate processing if assigned the
privilege to do so.
• Process gate transactions for the selected gate lane and print gate documents to a lane printer.
• Open, close, or clear scanned data for a gate lane.
• View scanned images for the selected gate lane.
• Fix scanned information and resubmit for processing

• Prioritize a truck.
• Reprint the most recent gate document for a truck.
• Cancel or close a truck visit.
• Resolve trouble transactions for any truck visit among the gate lanes a clerk can service.

Appointments Option
The Appointments Option provides a flexible and fully configurable appointment system to better manage
gate peaks and troughs.
New to Appointment Management
The appointment date and time now also displays in XPS, enabling yard planners to make planning
decisions based on appointment data. You can also configure yard block quotas in SPARCS N4 to limit
the number of delivery appointments made for a yard block during each appointment time slot. This
prevents users from making too many appointments for the same yard block during the same time slot,
preventing congestion at that yard block.

Vessel Option
The Vessel Option provides full configuration and execution of vessel-related tasks from the configuration
of vessel types, vessels, and vessel visits to the execution of all vessel-related activity as it pertains to
each vessel visit at the facility.
Vessel Visit Management
The Vessel Visit Management feature provides the ability to create, edit, and fully manage each vessel
visit, including full vessel visit details and cut-off times.
New
For multi-facility operations, you can also define the vessel transit time between facilities in a complex.
This provides planners at each facility the information needed to determine if the vessel is ahead or
behind its ETA (expected time of arrival) and if the vessel arrival will create any berthing conflicts or
impact operations.

General Cargo Option

The General Cargo Option provides a simple, fast, and efficient way to manipulate non-containerized
cargo, such as break-bulk, rolling cargo, and bulk cargo. This Option enables you to view and track non-
containerized cargo and perform actions, such as stuffing and striping cargo, manifesting cargo, and
loading and discharging cargo from a carrier.
New to General Cargo:
• you can directly split cargo lots from the same bill of lading into a new bill of lading.
• Optional Functionality: With the Advanced EDI Foundation Option, you can create and maintain
cargo data, including bills of lading, bill of lading items, and cargo lots (and how does this interact
with EDI?)
New to Cargo Lot Management
The Cargo Lot Management feature enables you to track cargo in various ways. In addition to existing
features, you can now also:
• Record damages against a cargo lot..This enables SPARCS N4 to automatically split the cargo lot
to segregate the damaged cargo. This is to segregate the damaged cargo from the un-damaged
cargo.
• Record damages for identified cargo lots even before you manifest the cargo lot. Re-consign
selected cargo lots associated with different bills of lading and combine them into an existing or new
bill of lading.
Cargo Operations
The Cargo Operations feature enables you to receive and deliver cargo through a gate or load and
discharge cargo from a vessel or train.
New
• Configure validation rules for delivering and receiving cargo at the gate.
• Record damages against a cargo lot
Optional Functionality: With the Service Order Management Option you can also deliver break-
bulk cargo using a service order. With the RDT Cargo Tracking Option, you can load or unload cargo
on a vessel, train, or truck and inspect and record up to two damages for cargo.

Business Intelligence Package Option

The Business Intelligence Package Option includes options that provide a complete business intelligence
solution in SPARCS N4.

Monitor Option
The Monitor Option enables you to monitor various types of operational data at a glance by providing the
ability to display performance information in a dashboard with automatic just-in-time updates.
New Enhanced Dashboard Configuration

The Dashboard Configuration feature enables you to choose the layout for a dashboard and decide which
gadgets to display and where to display them on the dashboard. With this feature, you can create and
manage dashboards for a user role to enable only that user role to access the dashboard per the security
model in SPARCS N4. In addition, you can save a dashboard layout as a default layout to use as a
template for configuring additional dashboards.

New Yard Crane Metrics

The Yard Crane Metrics feature provides various metrics for automated stacking crane (ASC) operations
to measure the efficiency of moving containers in the terminal or in a block and to measure congestion in
the terminal. These metrics enable you to better manage congestion in the yard that could affect the
productivity of your container handling equipment (CHE) or other operations.
This feature provides the following metrics:
• Unit facility visit move count: This metric allows you analyze container movement efficiency. You
can view all completed unit moves by specific container attributes, such as line operator, status, and
category. In addition, the UFV Move Count report enables you to view a unit's completed moves for
a departed facility visit based on a specified date and time.
• Equipment block visit count metrics: You can use this metric to optimize yard moves at a facility.
This metric allows you to view completed moves for an active unit at the facility level. This includes
unit moves within and between different blocks in the yard, such as ASC blocks/stacks, RTG blocks,
ASC transfer zones, and straddle rows. This metric does not consider moves completed without a
CHE.
 • Internal trucks wait time metric: This metrics allows you to monitor the number of internal
trucks/straddles waiting at a yard block and at the quay area and balance congestion across
different yard blocks to reduce unproductive wait times. Wait times for a truck/straddle are based on
the move kind and use the CHE Move Statistics reporting entity for the purposes of reporting the
wait time. In addition, the Internal Prime Movers report provides information on a truck/straddle
waiting at a yard block or at the quay area based on the specified date and time.
• External trucks wait time metric: You can use this metric to monitor the daily congestion pattern
of external trucks and balance congestion accordingly. SPARCS N4 uses the Truck Transaction
Stage reporting entity to compute queue time and wait time for external trucks at an exchange area.
Queue time is the time a truck waits after completing the previous gate stage until starting the yard
stage at an exchange area. Wait time is the the time it takes to complete the yard stage from start to
end. In addition, the External Trucks report provides truck-wise queue time and wait time for an
exchange area based on the specified date and time and also considers canceled and closed visit
transactions.

4. EDI Options

Advanced EDI Foundation Option

The Advanced EDI Foundation Option enables you to easily provide EDI to your trading partners and
quickly respond to new operational and customer based requests.
New EDI class, the supported EDI message, and the provided XML schema files:

EDI Class EDI Message XML Schema File

MANIFEST CUSCAR (IN/OUT) manifest.xsd

5. Facility Planning and Control

Equipment Control Option

The Equipment Control Option enables you to cut back on equipment idle time and use less equipment to
achieve the same or greater throughput as before. This option includes functionality to efficiently
choreograph real-time container moves among operators of container handling equipment (CHE) via a
network of vehicle-mounted terminals (VMTs).
New to the Equipment Control Option:
• The ability for dispatchers to indicate from which drive direction the CHE should approach the quay
crane to mitigate traffic flows. Once dispatchers set the drive direction for a quay crane point of
work, ECN4 displays a message in the CHEs VMT indicating the driving direction.
Optional Functionality: NEW: Automatically merging a TBD unit and actual container when a CHE
lifts the container, including yard moves to or from a transfer area when licensing the Advanced
Configuration, Customization, and Integration Option.
Detailed Modeling of Container Handling Equipment (CHE)
The Detailed Modeling of Container Handling Equipment (CHE) feature provides the ability to model your
entire container handling equipment fleet to enable XPS to:
• Validate lifting constraints.
• Provide extensive detailed reporting of CHE statistics.
• Provide real-time graphical monitoring of container handling equipment.

NEW In addition, this feature supports modeling for Wide Span Gantry Cranes (WSGCs) for use in
quayside operations. WSGCs combine the operations of the hatch clerk, quay cranes, and yard cranes
recording vessel moves in and out of the quayside yard block as well as moves to and from yard trucks
and external trucks.

Equipment Control Configuration

The Equipment Control Configuration feature provides high configurability to enable you to tailor the
Equipment Control functionality to match your terminal's needs.

Job Lists

The Job Lists feature enables a CHE operator to request a list of pending work in his assigned area and
allows the operator to choose the most appropriate job to do next. You can dispatch a job to any vehicle-
mounted terminal (VMT) for the supported CHEs.
NEW The supported CHEs now includes reach stackers and wide span gantry cranes (WSGC), in
addition to RTGs, forklifts, top picks, and straddle carriers.
NEW functionality to this feature:
• Search for jobs in a VMT by the truck license number, BAT number, or truck ID.

6. Radio Data Terminal Execution Options

Vessel Hatch Clerk Option

The Vessel Hatch Clerk Option enables hatch clerks to record container moves on and off the vessel
using the Navis SPARCS N4 Mobile Hatch Clerk.
New to this option, a hatch clerk can:
• Record direct vessel-to-rail discharges by discharging containers departing by rail to a heap where
they are then planned from the heap to a railcar.
• Query for a container.

Rail Clerk / Rail Inventory Option

The Rail Clerk / Rail Inventory Option enables rail clerks to inspect rail loads and discharges on and off
rail using the Navis SPARCS N4 Mobile Rail Inspection. This option also enables rail clerks to facilitate
inbound and outbound inventory tracking using the Navis SPARCS N4 Mobile Rail Inventory while
walking the train.
NEW: The rail clerk can automatically move to the next railcar on the train without having to enter the ID
of the next railcar.
New functionality to the Rail Inspection, a rail clerk can:
• Create containers being discharged that are missing in the system
In XPS, you can also plan To Be Determined (TBD) units to designated slots on railcars for outbound
trains.
NEW: Once the actual container is loaded to the railcar, XPS deletes the TBD unit from the load list.

RDT Cargo Tracking Option

The RDT Cargo Tracking Option enables a clerk to perform various gate, vessel, rail, and yard operations
for cargo using the Navis SPARCS N4 Mobile Cargo Inventory.
NEW: to this Option, a clerk can:
• Record damages for cargo during any of these operations.

7. Advanced Rail Options

Rail AutoStow Option

The Rail AutoStow Option enables you to automatically plan your train load based on a stowage strategy
that you customize for your site.
NEW Functionality in this option:
• Configure AutoStow to first select and plan priority containers that a rail planner nominated for
loading priority. This strategy is useful when there is not enough space available to plan all of the
containers. Priority selection works in combination with the other load pattern AutoStow parameters.
• Configure whether AutoStow allows overstowing any tank, only empty tanks, or does not allow
overstowing tanks on a train.

8. Advanced Yard Options

Expert Decking Option

The Expert Decking Option provides a yard optimization module that reduces yard congestion and
planning labor by automatically distributing containers throughout the yard with minimal on-going
management from yard planners. This option enables you to fully automate yard positioning without
configuring detailed yard allocations.
NEW in Expert Decking:
Configure the algorithm to factor in container attributes, including container nominal and basic length.
ECN4 and SPARCS N4 Mobile Support for Multi Lifts
The ECN4 and SPARCS N4 Mobile Support for Multi Lifts feature provides multi-lift functionality and
visibility for CHE operators and hatch clerks.
o NEW: In addition, with the PrimeRoute for Terminal Tractors Option , ECN4 supports load swaps
for tandem and quad lifts at the quay. ECN4 swaps jobs when trucks carrying containers that are part
of a tandem or quad lift arrive at the quay out of sequence. This reduces wait times at the quay and
increases productivity.

ASC Interface
The ASC Interface provides the main communication path between ASC Manager and an Automated
Crane Control System (ACCS). The primary function of the ASC Interface is for XPS to receive the status
and the orders being worked from the ASC, and for XPS to send orders to the ASC for optimization
purposes. Specifically this includes:
• Issuing ASC orders
• Monitoring ASC status and order status
Navis has a long history of working with leading and legacy technology partners. For ASCs, Navis is
hardware agnostic, which leaves the equipment decisions up to you. This option supports Automated
Stacking Crane Systems (ACCS) that use a web service-based API, such as the Gottwald Port
Technologies (GPT) Automated Equipment Management System (AEMS). With the AEMS interface, you
can also communicate information about the status of stack areas, such as setting stack status values for
safety and dispatching rules, and the stack positions.
NEW: In the 2.3 release, ASC Manager also supports systems that use a database-based API, such as
TMGE Automation Systems. The database-based API is similar to the web service-based API used by
AEMS, with a few modifications. Support for the database-based ASC interface includes:

Gate Automation APIs

The Gate Automation APIs feature provides a full set of process APIs for various types of automated
gates, such as gates with scanning devices or an interactive trucker kiosk system. These APIs enable
SPARCS N4 to receive data from third party gate devices, create truck visits, automatically process gate
transactions, and send and respond to specific requests.
NEW: With this feature, SPARCS N4 can:
• Receive scanned images for each gate lane and display these images in the Truck Visit Inspector
in SPARCS N4.