October 2006

Tizbi, Inc., a Raleigh-based company that automates the manual tasks involved with school transportation, has released WhereBus Version 3.6. The new version includes changes that improve functionality and optimize the WhereBus system. Refer to the list located below to learn about each change. If you have questions or concerns, please contact Tommy Zwirblia at tommyz@solutionsgo.com.

• Added a “Bus Breakdown Types Editor” option in the Administration section of WhereBus. This addition gives WhereBus administrators the option to add and edit breakdown types. WhereBus administrators can now create new breakdown types so that users can select the appropriate type when submitting a bus breakdown incident report.
• The “Bus Incident Types Editor” has been modified. Now WhereBus administrators can add and edit bus incident types so that users can select the appropriate type when submitting a bus incident report.
• A WhereBus printing bug in the Requests List was corrected. Now users can select the printer icon in the first column of the Requests List without uploading unnecessary pages.
• The effective date format of boarding passes has been changed to year-month-date-am/pm (ex. 2006-09-25 AM).
• The Bus Status form logic has been redesigned to improve performance.
• Transportation Specialists were given the rights to approve and decline CMS unsafe stop requests.
• CMS Routing Technicians and Transportation Specialists were given the rights to view standard MVA requests.
• A CMS workflow bug that did not allow statuses to automatically move from the submitted status was corrected.

May 2006

Tizbi, Inc., a subsidiary of ISS, Inc., develops new processes using Web Portal, IVR and Barcode technologies that greatly reduce the confusion about bus assignments at the beginning of the school year. Tizbi, along with CMS Transportation, have created 2006-2007 databases that will track all student bus assignments that are processed during the summer break. This gives school administrators the abillity to login to WhereBus.com and print student boarding passes on the first day of school.

February 2005

Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools Transportation Department (CMS Transportation) mailed approximately 110,000 letters to the parents of students who are eligible for school transportation in the 2005–2006 school year. Tizbi, Inc. provided CMS with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system and web-based response form that received all responses back to a centralized database. The data was then imported into CMS Transportation's Transportation Information Management System (TIMS). TIMS automatically updated the information, which allowed the transportation department to plan for the necessary resources for the upcoming school year. Tizbi committed to deploy the Web and IVR interfaces within a two week time frame. The development cycle included all telecom procurement, code development, testing and finalizing of the programs. The program saved CMS Transportation a sufficient amount of time (automated data collection from the Web and IVR systems) and money (cost of reply mail and manually entering data).