Container Tracking with Freightower

Freightower follows an ocean shipment's containers at the carrier and at the US terminal and sends every change to Linbis. Linbis turns those pushes into tracking events on the file, keeps the container dates current, stores the terminal snapshot, and raises an alert when the carrier reports something abnormal. Nothing is sent to the carrier: Freightower only reads.

Connecting the company (administrator)

Settings → Integrations → Freightower holds the company's connection.

1. Enter the credentials Freightower gave the company and press Connect. Linbis checks them with Freightower before saving; a wrong credential is refused with Freightower's own message.
2. Test re-checks the saved credentials at any time. When Freightower rejects a request, the page shows a credential banner with the last error code until the next successful call.
3. Pause stops Linbis from applying new pushes and from creating new subscriptions; Resume turns them back on. Disconnect ends the connection; the files keep the events already received.
4. Rotate webhook token issues a new token for the Freightower push endpoint. Freightower keeps working with the new token; the old one stops being accepted.
5. Automatic tracking (on or off). On, every new ocean shipment that carries a master bill of lading or a booking number is tracked as soon as it is saved, with no click. Off, a member tracks each shipment by hand with Track (below). Turn it on once the first manual subscriptions have proven the account on real files.

Only an administrator sees this page. Credentials are stored encrypted and are never shown again after saving.

Tracking one shipment

Open an ocean shipment. The Overview tab shows the Freightower panel above the carrier panel. The panel is hidden when the company has no Freightower connection.

• Track subscribes the shipment's master bill of lading, booking number or containers. The carrier code is optional: leave it empty and Freightower identifies the carrier from the reference. A code Freightower does not list keeps the dialog open with the field marked.
• One badge per subscription shows its state — Pending (Freightower has not answered yet), Active, Completed (the containers were delivered or returned), No data (the carrier reports nothing for the reference yet), Abnormal (the carrier flagged the shipment), Stopped and Error — with its reason and the time of the last update received.
• Under the badge the panel lists what the last push changed and what it left alone: fields kept because the file is locked, a value a member overrode by hand, a date Freightower sent in a form Linbis could not read, and containers the carrier named that are not on the file.
• Stop ends the updates in Linbis only. The reference stays on the file, and Track can start it again.
• A house shipment is tracked through its master: the panel says so and links to the master's tracking.

Track and Stop need the shipment: update permission; reading the panel needs shipment: read. A member who only sees the shipments assigned to them sees the same files here.

Pressing Track on a reference that is already tracked changes nothing and says so.

The terminal snapshot

On the Cargo tab, Terminal (Freightower) shows, per container, what the US terminal last reported: the last free day (a calendar date, shown as that day in every time zone), whether the container is available for pickup, any holds (customs, freight, terminal), the yard location and the moment of the snapshot ("as of", in the company's time zone). A house shipment points to its master, where the terminal data lives. "Unavailable" means the last terminal request failed; the previous snapshot stays visible.

The map

The Tracking tab of a tracked shipment embeds Freightower's map for the reference, with the vessel's position and the ports of the voyage. The map is Freightower's own page; it opens only for staff with access to the shipment.

The Freightower overview

Tracking → Freightower (/tracking/freightower) shows how the company's tracking is doing.

• The summary strip: the connection status, whether automatic tracking is on, the references per state, the open Freightower alerts, how many pushes Freightower sent in the last 24 hours and how many Linbis rejected, and the last update received.
• The table lists every tracked reference, 50 per page, newest update first (or oldest first). Filter by state or by "only with open alerts", and search by shipment number, bill of lading, booking number or container number. Each row links to the file, shows the state and its reason, the last update, the last carrier event with its port and day, the open alerts, the last free day and a Map link.

Both the summary and the table refresh by themselves every minute while the page is open.

Alerts and locked files

An Abnormal or Error state, a rejected push and a terminal hold each open an alert on the shipment, in the same place as the other tracking alerts. The alert closes by itself when the condition clears.

A shipment whose file is locked keeps its values: Freightower's push is recorded as an event, but no date or status on the file moves until the lock is released. The panel says which fields were kept for that reason.

What customers see

A customer who follows the shipment in the portal, in a tracking email or through the public tracking page sees the carrier events and the container dates. The Freightower state, its reasons, the terminal snapshot and the apply notes are for staff only.