Description

This program, in cooperation with the mqveh C program, is used to transmit vehicle information to Hertz's CARRENT Vehicle Tracking system, and is usually run periodically by cron. As of this writing, the record layout used by MQVEH can be used by any corporate operation in any region of the world. See the notes under GVT setup for the record layoiuts used.


A separate CARS+ program, CARRENT Whitefeed, sends vehicle movements created by opening, closing and voiding RAs and by opening and closing non-Rev tickets to the same CARRENT Vehicle Tracking system in OKC. That program is documented in a separate chapter.

Configuring the C program

The C program, mqveh (lower case), uses the common MQ program configuration items. See MQ C program configuration items.

Configuring CARS+

GVTs
1. To turn on the feature itself, create the following GVT record:

GVT Code = MQVEH

Alpha value = blank if all locations are to have their vehicles transmitted. Else enter a single Location Code or Location Group for the locations whose vehicles are to be sent.

2. To select the Hertz Record Layouts to use:

GVT "NEWMQVEH"
Record Layout Used
"wrapper" Layout Used
Note
Without the GVT
FCCRF100 FCCRF201
With the GVT
FCCRF104 FCCRF301 Contains "Brand" fields


Owning Locations:

Only those owning Locations who have the value of "Y" or blank in the Owned Loc field on page 2 of the Location record will have their vehicle's sent (see the note about RA Open for the one exception to this rule).

Use of proper Hertz Codes:

In order for a vehicle to be accepted by the CARRENT system in OKC the vehicle record must contain the Hertz approved codes and abbreviations that CARRENT requires. The following are the fields within CARS+ that are validated by CARRENT and the CARS+ tables that can be used to setting the valid Hertz Codes:

Queuing Vehicles

Vehicles are queued up for transmission via a record being written in the XREFIL file. This record will have the value "V" in the Xre-to field and "6" in the field Xre-from.

The following programs queue vehicles to be sent to CARRENT:

Vehicle Inventory Control when in-fleeting a new vehicle.

Vehicle Inventory Control when any of the following fields are manually edited on an existing vehicle:

  • Owning Location
  • Class Code
  • Model Code
  • Color
  • Acquistion Code
  • Depreciation Status Code
  • In-service Date
  • MSO Date
  • CCADD Date
  • Key number
  • Security Code
  • Neverlost Indicator
  • License plate number
  • VIN number
  • Purchase Date
  • Hold Code 1
  • Grounding Date
  • Grounding Odometer
  • Tab expire Date

Import Vehicle File Records (both IMPVEH and XCLVEH) when either importing new records or updating any of the fields listed above.

Edit Grounding Date

Set Model Codes if the program updates any of the bullet-ed fields listed above.

Set Tab Expiry

Set Owning Loc

Merge Turnback File

RA Open: If a corporate location opens an RA involving a licensee owned or cross-hire vehicle, that vehicle will be queued up for transmission.

Hold Codes can be configured to trigger a re-transmission. Therefore, any program that causes a Hold Code requiring transmission to either be added to or removed from a vehicle will queue it up for transmission.

In addition, the following two programs will also queue up vehicles for transmission:

Re-Queue Vehicle (REQVEH)

This program allows the user to manually re-queue a single vehicle or queue up all vehicles that have never been sent before. Use this later feature to initially send the entire non-sold fleet when first going up on MQVEH.

Re-Queue Vehicle (QMQVEH)

This program reads a text file containing vehicle numbers. All units in the file are queued up for transmission.

Completion of the Transmission:

Each vehicle that is queued up, is transmitted one at a time. After transmitting each vehicle, the MQVEH program waits for a response from the server in OKC.

If a positive response is received:

  • The vehicle is re-written with the transmission date/time in a field that appears on page 1 of the Vehicle Inventory Control screen (note the Vehicle's Mod Date and Time is NOT updated).
  • The XREFIL record is deleted.

If an error message is received or if after a specified time out period no response is received, the program terminates. The vehicles that have not been sent plus the vehicle that produced the error will still be queued up in the XREFIL and their transmit date/time are not updated.

End Of Day Reconcilation

Optionally, there is an additional vehicle feed to OKC, MQVEOD. This program, using record layout FSCRF096, sends the current status of all non-sold vehicles to OKC. The program is designed to be run from the CRON once a day at the end of the day. See End of Day Fleet Reconciliation.

Debugging MQVEH

The following may help you diagnose problems with MQVEH:

Running MQVEH from the CARS+ Menu

If you choose to run MQVEH directly from the CARS+ menu, please be aware that the program does NOT display anything and therefore it will appear to "hang" and when finished it simply returns to the menu. Be sure to set any environment variables needed before you start CARS+.

Testing MQVEH

When testing the fleet feed with OKC, a couple of environment variables are useful: DUMPREQ and MQVEH_FILE_NAME (remember you must set environment variables before you start CARS+).

By setting DUMPREQ to Y, you cause MQVEH to print a (four page!) report for each vehicle being sent (or written to the file).

By setting MQVEH_FILE_NAME, you cause MQVEH to redirect the data would have been sent to the named file instead. The vehicles will still be considered un-sent and will remain queued for later transmission. The filename is relative to the base CARS+ directory.

Examples:

  1. For local testing mode only (sending output to a file and printing a report for each vehicle sent):
    • export DUMPREQ=Y
    • export MQVEH_FILE_NAME=/tmp/mqveh_output.txt
  2. Testing with OKC (but still printing the report):
    • export DUMPREQ=Y

Emptying the Queue

There is no current way to empty the queue without actually sending the data to OKC.

See Also