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How to Use the Fare Trace and Fare Maintenance Tools

When entering reservations and generating fares, it is possible that a fare value, location name, address, travel time value, or other information may be displayed that is incorrect or unexpected.  By using the Fare Trace and Fare Maintenance Tools, you may identify where these values are coming from and then provide very precise information to the system administrator as to where updates and corrections may be needed.

Fare Trace

While on the Fare and Availability screen, it is possible to press the F11 key (after generating the fares) and open the Fare Trace Dialog window.  This dialog window is also available by selecting Tools > Display > Fare Trace.

This window allows the agent to see what raw database values are being used to arrive at and display location information, times, fare values, service types, etc.  This is the important first step in tracking down and correcting data errors.

Here is a partial, abbreviated display of an example Fare Trace window:
You will note that the very first item identified is the Fare Record, also known as the Fare Key. this is the alphanumeric identifier from the original fares.csv file that was imported for each airport and contains location address, traveltime, zone, sector and fare information.  In this example, the FareKey=7, but it may also have been 3097,  HAWK1, or some other combination of letters and numbers.

The second line in our example identifies that an Exception Record is being used to disable a Ride-Share service on this date.  If this was the service you expected to be available, you would need to check the exception records (Tools > Configuration > Exception Records) and perhaps adjust the exception record so as to exclude (NOT disable) the service.  In order to access Exception Records, you will need to have the appropriate User Access privilege enabled:  General: Exceptions Maintenance View.

The vast remainder of the items displayed in the fare trace window can be viewed through the Fare Maintenance Tool, describe below.

Fare Maintenance Tool (v 1.89d)

Once you have identified the fare record, using the tool mentioned above, you may then wish to review the other settings associated with that location in the fare files. This will be accomplished via the Fare Maintenance Tool which was first introduced in HWeb version 1.89d.  In order to access The Fare Maintenance Tool, you will need to have the
appropriate User Access privilege enabled:  General: Allowed to Access Fare Maintenance.

To open the tool, browse to Tools > Configuration > Fare Maintenance
Once open, you can select from one of the following filters to refine the records you wish to see.

Airport: 

Table: 

Platform:
Once you have applied filter(s) as described above, you can see the records that meet these criteria displayed on the left side of the Fare Maintenance window. There are scroll bars on both the right and bottom margins of this window that will allow you to quickly move through the list of records displayed.

For ease of searching, you can place your mouse on any one of the column headings (ex: Fare ID, City, Zip code,  State, etc and then click once. The contents of the displayed locations will be sorted in Ascending order.  Clicking the column header again will resort the list in Descending order.

If you know the name of a specific city that you are searching for in the list, you may click any field in the City column. Then begin typing the name of the city or town you are looking for… ex: B-O-S….(for Boston)  the system will look for an immediate match of the letters as you type them and will take you to the desired city / town.

Once you have identified and highlighted the location you were seeking in the left pane,  you can browse the tabs in the right side of the maintenance tool to review the contents of the various fields, as they were imported.

The information in the Fare Detail tabs is View-only. That is, this tool allows you to review information about the locations and fares imported, it does not allow you to edit the locations or fares, delete locations or add locations / fares.  These actions are completed by your system administrator only and are done via editing of your fare.csv files and then re-importing the edited files into the Hudson system.

File Import

If you are the system administrator and the one responsible for editing fare tables, you can now complete the edits outside of the Hudson system, using your preferred spreadsheet application.  Once the files are updated, you may use the Fare Maintenance Tool to import the fare files into the Hudson system. This accomplishes the same results as using the HWeb Utilities application to import fare tables. 

To import fare tables from the Fare Maintenance Tool:
Tools >  Import Fares
Browse the network to your location where your  csv files are stored, select the desired file, and click Open. The selected fare file will be imported (and appended to) all existing fare tables in the fares database.

If your desire is to remove a location from service,  you should begin by editing your original fare.csv table, then come back to the Fare Maintenance Tool and clear (remove) the desired fare table (Tools > Clear Fare Table), and then follow the import process outlined in the paragraph above.

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