When more than one reservation is needed for a vessel departure from a water terminal or for a blending operation, they can be grouped together so, when activated, the reservations will roll up under a permit number. If your coal destination is a river, lake or ocean terminal you will be able to group those reservations that are meeting a vessel or need to arrive at the destination for a blending operation. For user able to place orders on ShipCSX, they will see links that will take them to the grouping and permits pages.
You also have the ability to change vessel names and vessel ETAs after groups have been activated and become Permits. You can make these changes all the way up to when the reservations arrive at their destinations.
Requests that have already been grouped will show with a grouping number (1). These will change to a permit number (e.g., P235) when they are activated.
To group your requests, click on any one of these links. It will open the page that will allow you to build your groups and manage them (see below).
Group Management:
The first step is to build a new group so that you can associate the appropriate requests to them. Decide on a vessel load date, load time and vessel name (or use "Don't Know Yet" if not known), and the total tons for all of the group's reservations (1). Then click on 'Build Group' (1).
Now start selecting the specific requests to group together (2). The group you just built shows as the default in the 'Selection your vessel grouping' drop-down (2). Finally, click the 'Group Selected' button (2).
You will see the screen refresh with those just grouped shown below.
If you need to make changes, you can select the ones to change (3) and click the 'Ungroup Selected' button.
Viewing Groups and Permits:
Once requests are grouped, you can easily change vessel information for the group by making the necessary changes (1) and clicking the update link (2). This could be valuable if you learn the vessel's name or the vessel loading changes.