If you would like to make several vehicle substitutions for the current day at once, you can upload all the data in bulk. Note that you can only bulk load substitutions for today's date; you cannot use the Bulk Load feature for future substitutions.


Note: If you just need to substitute an entire itinerary's routes (or one route's tiers, or all the assignments for one vehicle), you can more easily do so using the standard method of bus substitution. See the section "Making a Substitution for Multiple Tiers" in Making a Vehicle Substitution.


Also, note that you must have administrator privileges to bulk load substitutions.


To perform a bulk load, follow these steps:


  1. Click  >> Substitutions.
     
    The Substitutions screen will appear and show all your itineraries, listed by name/number, for today.
      
  2. Click  at the top right.
     
    The Bulk Load Substitutions dialog box will appear.
      
  3. Click Template.
     
    The bulk load template, SubstitutionsTemplate.csv, will be downloaded to your computer.
     
  4. Open SubstitutionsTemplate.csv in Excel.
     
    The file will contain all your tiers with their current vehicle assignments (in the Current Vehicle column).
        
  5. In the rows of the tiers that need substitutions made, change the Current Vehicle value to the replacement bus name/number.
    Note: You can delete all the rows of tiers that don't need changed, or you can leave all the other rows as they are. Note that if you do the latter, the number of errors reported later will be larger (as you will appear to be replacing vehicle names with the same vehicle names); this won't cause any problems with the substitutions, though.
  6. Save the file, keeping the .csv file format.
     
  7. Back in the Bulk Load Substitutions dialog box in Synovia, click Choose File.
     
  8. Navigate to and select your modified SubstitutionsTemplate.csv file.
     
    You'll be returned to the Bulk Load Substitutions dialog box, and "SubstitutionsTemplate.csv" will appear in the Data File field.
     
  9. Click Upload File.
     
    The file will be uploaded to the database, and the dialog box will inform you that the initial procedure is complete.
     
     
    Note: Don't worry if the number of records specified is larger than the number of vehicles you changed — if you didn't delete the unmodified rows in the template. All the other rows are being included in the number as well.
  10. Click Load.
     
    The dialog box will inform you of how many changes were successfully made and how many errors occurred, if any.
     

    Note: Errors can be caused by a number of things, such as leaving the Current Vehicle value empty, entering the wrong vehicle name (a name that doesn't match any of your vehicles), using a vehicle name that has duplicates, and having the same vehicle value as the current assignment. Note that this last reason can report several "errors" if you left the unaffected template rows in the file. Again, this won't cause a problem with the actual substitution process, however.
  11. Optionally, you can click View Successes or View Errors to download a text file listing which vehicle substitutions were successfully made or which errors occurred, respectively.
     
  12. Click OK.
     
    The Substitutions screen will show the changes you made.

Note: If you have any issues with this procedure, we recommend contacting your Synovia project manager or fleet advisor for assistance.