Tracking & visibility

Read a shipment page

Every shipment in Conterminal lives at the same URL — /protected/operations/<id> — but the page you get is decided by your workspace, not by the shipment. Four meaningfully different pages ship from that one route. This is how to tell them apart, read the facts without guessing at their source, and find the action you came for.

10 minute read · Updated September 10, 2026

The URL is not the page.

Two people can open the exact same link and see different cards, different facts, and different menu items. Nothing is hidden from you because of the shipment's state — it is hidden because of the workspace you are signed in to. If a colleague describes a button you cannot find, check which workspace they are in before you check the shipment.

The four versions of this page and how to tell which you are on

When you open a shipment, Conterminal resolves your active workspace first and then routes you. A carrier workspace gets the carrier page. An importer/BCO, freight-forwarder, or warehouse workspace gets the tenant page — which itself renders one of three layouts depending on what the ID turns out to be and who you are. Any other workspace is sent to /protected/unauthorized without rendering anything.

The fastest tell is the Actions menu. Open it and read the bottom.

Version	How you know
Carrier	The Actions button carries a chevron, and the menu contains Edit Job Shell, Print POD, Upload POD, and View History. Scheduling, Billing Setup, Accessorial Charges, Rail Transfer Setup, Drayage Execution, and Parties & Contacts sit in compact disclosure rows below tracking and open only when you need them. Rail tracking keeps its steamship-line panel beside the rail evidence rather than replacing it.
Importer/BCO	A single Shipment Facts card, then Documents, DO Enrichment, Confirmation History, and — if you can confirm — Submit Confirmation. The menu has no page-type label at the bottom.
Forwarder (networked)	The Actions menu ends with a small grey NETWORKED TRACKING label. A Forwarded Source or Delivery Order Source card may sit above the facts. No Documents or Confirmation cards.
Managed tracking	The Actions menu ends with MANAGED TRACKING and offers Edit Tracking and Linked Shipment. Shipment Facts includes Booking, Container Carrier, Carrier Source, and Source — fields that exist nowhere else.

A warehouse workspace gets a fifth, deliberately stripped view: the same tenant layout with no Actions menu at all, no notes, no documents, and no confirmation cards. If your Actions button is simply absent rather than empty, you are in a warehouse workspace.

One redirect surprises people. In a forwarder workspace, opening a managed tracking item that already has a confirmed link to a delivery order sends you to that delivery order's page instead. The URL in your address bar changes. That is not an error — the linked shipment is the canonical record once the link is confirmed.

The header, order progress, and shipment journey

The header title is the container number. If no container number is recorded yet, it reads Shipment — that is a real state, not a loading placeholder. The lifecycle chip and grouped quick actions stay on that same top line. On carrier pages, a quieter second line says when provider data was last updated and offers an explicitCheck tracking now action. That action asks LongShorty to check the linked carrier and terminal sources; it is not a browser-page refresh.

On carrier pages, the container number and desktop facts preview can appear while tracking is still loading. Status, journey details, and actions become available when their data is ready. On a phone, the compact facts row stays collapsed until you open it.

If the delivery order has been cancelled, a redCANCELLED stamp appears beside the lifecycle chip. The chip stays visible because it records where physical movement last stood; the stamp records the separate cancelled disposition. The compact sticky header carries the same red marker as you scroll.

The collapsed Shipment facts row previews the bill of lading, equipment, and commodity. Open it for the full metadata and party context — including importer/BCO, forwarder or broker, carrier, and delivery parties when the active workspace can see them. An ordinary status note stays right-aligned in the collapsed row so it remains visible without adding another header line. When a shipment was deactivated as no-work, the machine audit text is kept out of the header and the human-entered reason appears underCancellation in the expanded facts instead. When a house bill differs from the master bill, it appears as a second line under the B/L rather than as its own field.

The stage chip shows At Terminal even when the container is actually available for pickup. Availability is treated as a readiness overlay, not a lifecycle stage, so the chip stays anchored to the stage. Read Availability in the facts grid or Terminal Status card — never the chip — to decide whether you can send a truck.

Scroll down and a compact one-line sticky header pins under the navigation bar with the container number, operational context, the lifecycle chip, and a three-dot Actions button labelled Open actions menu. It is the same menu, not a reduced one.

Order progress versus physical movement

Before gate-out, a compact progress row sits directly under the header. It describes the dispatcher workflow — Received, Verified, and Scheduled — and names the responsible person and company when that attribution exists. Carrier, forwarder, BCO, and warehouse workspaces label the same data for their audience. Open the row for the stage history. It disappears once physical movement has overtaken order preparation, so a delivered shipment does not spend space restating old review work.

The separate Ocean + Drayage section is always visible when that tracking topology applies. Its baseline five-stage journey expands to one delivery stage for each canonical stop. Each label flips from forward-looking to past tense as the physical milestone lands:

On Water: The vessel. While sailing it shows the ETA facts stacked — SSL ETA first when the carrier gave one, then the winning fresh AIS, terminal, or DO ETA. Once discharged it settles to the arrival date labelled Arrived or Unloaded.
Arriving At → At Terminal: The pickup terminal. The meta lines under it carry the LFD with a lateness badge, a Good Through date, the hold label, and Appointment: with the date and · #number.
Trucker → Gate Out: Your carrier. The action link is View EIR once one exists, or Upload EIR after gate-out when it does not.
Deliver To / Delivery 1…N → Delivered: Each delivery stop is its own route leg with its destination and optional contact, requested window, and instructions. Each leg exposes its own POD action and changes to View POD when that stop has a receipt. Only the final active delivery stop completes the order.
Empty Returning To → Returned / Gate In: Before return, this shows the planned return terminal or empty-return facility. Upload EIR is available after pickup; confirm the actual date printed on the receipt before uploading. A qualified carrier return can complete Gate In while its EIR is still pending. After return, the date and terminal follow the accepted evidence. View EIR opens only the receipt selected for that return. A confirmed return without a recorded terminal says Return confirmed or Return terminal not recorded; it does not borrow the pickup terminal or another document's location. LMTFD and its badge still apply. A red Termination badge identifies a termination return.

A sixth Review cell is inserted between the terminal and gate-out cells when the shipment has an active off-site review segment. The deadline badges read 3 Days Left, Due Today, On Time, or 2 Days Late, and the late ones are tinted.

Users who can manage the shipment can choose any enabled review site when they add the assignment. A site without a tracking adapter uses four ordered manual actions: Mark Arrived at Review Site, Mark Review Started, Mark Ready for Pickup, and Mark Gated Out. ECW continues to use its provider updates instead of those manual actions. H&M Kearny reports availability from its public site and retains manual milestone actions, including gate out. Its Release and charge status panel separates availability from charge guarantees: confirm any outstanding charges before pickup. To move an active assignment to a different site, cancel it first and then add the new review site.

When Conterminal matches a pickup-side terminal TIR to the active review segment, the pickup terminal showsView Gate Out TIR and the Review cell showsIn transit to review at that TIR's time. This records the transfer to the review site. It does not change the shipment lifecycle chip from At Terminal.

The facts grid and where each fact came from

On the importer/BCO and forwarder pages, Shipment Facts carries Status, Broker Ref, Clearance, Tracking Number, Bill of Lading (B/L), Pickup Location, Delivery Location, Terminal, Vessel Steamship Line (SSL), Container Steamship Line (SSL), Container BIC, Container Steamship Line Source, Vessel, ETA, Dispatch Date, Pickup Date, Delivery Date, and Return Date. The shipment status follows the same lifecycle-v2 record as the header, not the stage of a supporting media panel. Delivery Location uses the saved delivery details or destination name; a missing destination does not fall back to the empty-return terminal. Other delivery-order facts come from the parsed document or from someone editing the record.

The managed tracking page uses a different grid — Booking, Bill of Lading (B/L), PO, Container Carrier, Carrier Source, Steamship Line / Operator, Pickup Terminal, Return Terminal, Vessel, Vessel Identity, Voyage, ETA, Discharge, Gate Out, Delivered, Returned, Terminal Status, Availability, Last Free Day, Appointment, Local Carrier, and Source. The bottom half of that list is telemetry, not paperwork.

The fields that lie if you misread them

Container Steamship Line Source / Carrier Source: How Conterminal decided which line owns the box. Manual Override means a person set it. B/L Prefix and BIC Prefix mean it was inferred from the bill of lading or the container prefix. Unresolved means nothing decided it — treat the line name beside it as unconfirmed.
Terminal Status: The terminal adapter's own status text, passed through verbatim by LongShorty. When there is no terminal reading at all, this falls back to a Conterminal enrollment message about tracking, which is not a terminal statement.
Availability: Available or Not Available, straight from the terminal adapter. Blank or Unknown means the terminal has not answered — it does not mean Not Available.
Last Free Day: The terminal's LFD when LongShorty has one; only when it does not does the stored delivery-order LFD show through. The two can disagree, and the terminal wins.
Appointment: Rendered as the date, then · # and the appointment number. A date with no number means the terminal reported a slot but no confirmation reference.
Source (managed only): How the tracking record got created: Email Forward, PDF Upload, CSV Upload, XLSX Upload, or Manual. Managed Tracking means the origin was not recorded.

A dash means no value is stored. It does not mean zero, and it does not mean the field was checked and came back empty. Terminal and vessel names render as links when they resolve to a known Conterminal terminal or vessel page, and as plain text when they do not — an unlinked terminal name is a hint that the name has not been matched to reference data.

Facts that LongShorty maintains are updated by the worker that signs in to terminal, rail, and steamship-line systems on your behalf. Rail milestones reach the page from a direct CSX adapter, from SSL sources such as ONE and Maersk, and from BNSF and CN credentials you supply. Nothing on this page is parsed from your PDFs by LongShorty — document parsing is a separate pipeline, and it is what fills the delivery-order half of the grid.

In a trusted carrier email workflow, Conterminal can start the first LongShorty lookup as soon as the received confirmation is queued, before a person finishes Delivery Order review. That can make vessel and terminal facts available earlier; it does not confirm the parsed delivery-order fields for you.

Terminal status and holds

Red Hook barge shipments show an expanded Barge transfer listing above terminal evidence. It identifies the Brooklyn to Port Newark route, current location, next expected update, pickup readiness, and the Red Hook update time. The listing distinguishes awaiting transfer in Brooklyn, transfer in progress, arrival in Port Newark, and availability for pickup. A container can remain On Water while awaiting or making that barge transfer. When the feed has no barge departure or arrival time, the schedule row says so; it does not substitute the ocean vessel ETA.

The Terminal Status card is the rawest view of what the terminal said. It carries Tracking Resolution, Tracking Status, Adapter, Availability, Terminal Status, Last Free Day, Appointment Date, Appointment Number, Yard Location, Terminal, Discharge Port, and Holds. A Delivery Type field appears only when the adapter is octopi.

Availability here is explicit about ignorance: it reads Unknown when the terminal returned no answer, and Available or Not Available otherwise.

“Clear” in the Holds field is weaker than it looks.

The Holds value is built by listing only the hold flags whose value came back exactly true. Everything else — a hold object with no true flags, and an entirely absent hold record — renders the same word: Clear. So “Clear” means “no flag came back held,” not “the terminal confirmed there are no holds.” If a terminal portal is telling your driver about a hold that Conterminal calls Clear, believe the terminal, refresh, and check the Adapter and Tracking Status fields on this same card before escalating.

Separately from the terminal's own hold flags, the shipment carries a clearance status shown as a badge in the header and as Clearance in the facts grid: Clear, Customs Hold, Terminal Hold, or Freight Hold. A dispatcher's manual override wins over whatever the provider reported, so the badge you see may be a human judgement rather than a terminal reading.

On a forwarder networked page the Terminal Status card is suppressed whenever the rich media panel is present, because the same telemetry is rendered inside the stage panel. If you want the flat field list, look at the shipment from the importer/BCO side.

Documents and media

The large panel under Ocean + Drayage is stage media. What renders depends on where the box is: a vessel map and voyage calls on water; the terminal's cameras, address, and routing facts at the terminal; the gate-out EIR; the delivery POD; then the return terminal. Each terminal, steamship-line, and evidence source has one standardized summary row with one logo, source name, quiet status, and a disclosure chevron. Panels stay collapsed by default unless they contain an actionable exception; their entire summary row has the same hover and keyboard-focus treatment. Carrier tracking can also contribute a branded evidence panel here. For example, a Crowley shipment can show the Crowley logo, carrier ETA, and current-booking-cycle movement history. The panel names the one event driving its ocean stage and labels origin activity and booking context separately, while the terminal source remains authoritative for yard status, holds, demurrage, and terminal receipts. Rail movement retains the supporting steamship-line panel so ocean evidence is not lost when rail becomes primary. Comments are the first panel directly below the lifecycle timeline; miscellaneous documents remain after operational media — see notes and @mentions for how they work. The Comments dialog here is the same thread you get from the Container Dashboard and your homepage watchlist: it is headed by the container number, reserves one compact row while the thread loads, opens with a single-line composer that grows as you type, and lets the author — or an admin at the author's company — archive a note by hovering it. Archiving hides that note on every surface at once.

The on-water AIS row follows that same adapter pattern. It names the vessel and shows the AIS arrival only while the underlying fix is fresh. When AIS is stale or offline, it labels the signal and shows where the vessel was last seen and when that position was observed instead of presenting the old AIS ETA as current.

Saved terminal evidence stays visible under Tracking sources while a shipment is On Water, including when vessel position or steamship-line evidence is unavailable. Expand the source row to read the terminal's status, location, and update time. Showing that evidence does not change the shipment's lifecycle stage.

A public tracking link can reuse the vessel or terminal map, but it is a reduced view. Workspace-only cameras, addresses, appointments, yard details, documents, notes, contacts, and actions are not included. Maps are display surfaces only; if a map is unavailable, the shipment's tracking facts and milestones remain available.

A confirmed return can have a date without an attached terminal receipt. The page keeps that confirmation and identifies the missing receipt separately. Other return documents remain available as history, labeled Not selected for this return; they do not replace its date, terminal, or primary receipt link. Uploading a document alone does not establish that it is the evidence selected for the return.

The importer/BCO page also has a fixed Documents card with exactly four slots. They do not grow and you cannot rename them:

Outbound TIR: Terminal Interchange Receipt (pickup).
Delivery Receipt: Proof of delivery.
Inbound TIR: Terminal Interchange Receipt (return).
Return Receipt: Empty return confirmation.

Each empty slot offers an optional Document date (optional) field and a Click to upload target that accepts PDF, JPG, PNG, TIFF. A filled slot offers View and Delete.

Below that, DO Enrichment lists the delivery-order documents that have been ingested against this shipment. On the tenant pages it is read-only — the Attach PDF button is deliberately not rendered there. Carriers upload from the Actions menu instead, using Upload POD, Upload Pickup EIR, Upload Return EIR, and Replace DO, and print with Print POD or Print Signed POD.

Carrier users can also open Edit Job Shell. Each delivery leg has its own POD slot, so uploading, printing, or sending an Electronic POD acts on that stop only. A completed Electronic POD is retained for audit and cannot be deleted. An earlier-stop receipt does not set Delivery Date; the final active stop's receipt sets or clears that milestone.

Correct the delivery date used for status

In Edit Job Shell, Delivery Date shows the date in use and its source. Open the proof used for that date, enter the actual delivery day, and save. The correction updates both the job date and the date read from the proof; the original file is kept. Shipment status updates afterward. If the evidence changed while the form was open, refresh before retrying. Save delivery-stop changes first, then correct the date. Completed Electronic POD dates cannot be changed here.

Uploading a signed POD requires its actual delivery date. Quick upload asks for that date after file selection. If the date is unreadable, review the document before uploading; do not enter the email or upload day. A return dated before delivery is a reason to check the proof, not to change a known return date just to make the dates agree.

Actions available to you

Confirmed carrier shipments also have a small share icon in the header and sticky header. It shows an upward arrow above an open tray, and its tooltip says Copy tracking link. It copies a public link for that shipment only, including when the original delivery-order document lists several containers. A brief checkmark confirms the copy. The recipient needs no login, and the link grants tracking visibility without document or billing access.

On delivery-order pages, the grouped quick-actions toolbar keeps Watchlist, Mark Hot, Check tracking now, and Actions together at the right of the header. The stateful controls read Watchlist / Watching and Mark Hot / Hot. The Actions segment opens the menu for comments, documents, history, and other conditional operations.

Carrier menu: Edit Job Shell, the document action — Confirm DO, Open DO PDF, or Upload PDF depending on state — Delivery Order Details, Replace DO, Print POD, Print Signed POD, Upload POD, Upload Pickup EIR, Upload Return EIR, View History, and Billing for admins and managers.
Tenant delivery-order menu: Edit Tracking for forwarder admins and managers, Change History, Source, Linked Shipment on a managed item, per-document replacement uploads, and the page-type label. When available, Check tracking now, Watchlist, Mark Hot, and Actions share one quick-actions toolbar.
Managed-tracking-only menu: Edit Tracking for forwarder admins and managers, Change History, Source, Linked Shipment, per-document replacement uploads, and the page-type label. Check tracking now, Watchlist, Mark Hot, and Actions share the same header toolbar as networked forwarder shipments.

Two carrier items are restricted to tenant admins on an active shipment: Deactivate No-Work / No Pickup, and Deactivate Duplicate Shell, which additionally requires the shipment to have been created natively rather than imported. Both are destructive and both are rendered in red. A tenant admin also gets Run One-Time LongShorty Sync and Turn Tracking Off For This Shell / Turn Tracking On For This Shell.

Run One-Time LongShorty Sync requests a fresh check from every active adapter linked to the tracking item, including steamship-line and terminal adapters when both are present. The quiet tracking action shows the combined request's progress.

The tracking action reports back in place. While it runs you get Waiting for LongShorty to start and then Syncing with LongShorty with an elapsed counter. On success it holds Last synced just now for a minute, or Checked just now, no newer terminal data when the run found nothing new — that second message is a successful check, not a failure. A failed run reads Terminal check failed. When the shipment is not actively tracked, the quiet label reads Waiting for LongShorty sync or LongShorty not tracking.

Editing: confirm workspace vs job-shell override sheet vs tenant edit form

Three different screens edit shipment data, and they are not substitutes for one another.

The confirm workspace. Reached from Confirm DO in the carrier Actions menu, which only appears while a delivery-order document is still pending confirmation. It opens a dedicated route with the source PDF beside the fields so you can check every value against the paper. Once the document is confirmed the route stops offering the form and shows the confirmed stage instead. See confirming a delivery order.
The job-shell override sheet. Opened from Edit Job Shell, a side sheet titled Edit Job Shell. It is the widest editor in the product: Order Basics (Container Number, Broker Reference, Purchase Order (PO), Pickup Number, Tracking Number, Seal Number); Billing Customers; Documents; Route, Schedule & Status — including Status Override, Hot Load, ETA, Dispatch Date, Pickup Date, Gate Out Date and Time, Delivery Date, and Gate In Date and Time. Its Delivery Route uses the same ordered stop cards as confirmation. Each stop can select a Deliver To company, an optional Care Of company, and a site; carry its own Goods, Pieces, contact, window, and instructions; and move up or down before execution begins. Changing Care Of updates the generated POD party details for that stop. Shipment Details; Assignments; Notes & Clearance; Container Steamship Line (SSL); and LongShorty Tracking. The Billing Customers group renders only for users who can manage billing — everyone else sees the sheet without it.
The tenant edit form. A full-page form at /protected/operations/<id>/edit, headed Edit Delivery Order, with the line “Editing scope for this session:” followed by your role. It ends in Save Changes and Cancel. It requires write access on that specific shipment; a collaborator has no editable fields at all and is bounced straight back to the shipment page.

Carriers cannot open the edit form; tenants cannot use the override sheet

These two editors do not overlap, and neither one is discoverable.

A carrier workspace that navigates to /protected/operations/<id>/edit is redirected to /protected/unauthorized — the edit form is not available to carriers at all, however senior the role. Conversely, the tenant Actions menu is built without an Edit Job Shell item, so importer/BCO and forwarder users cannot reach the override sheet by any route. Do not spend time hunting for either one from the wrong side.

There is a second, sharper edge here: nothing anywhere in Conterminal links to the tenant edit form. No button on the shipment page, no row action in the container list. The only way in is to type the /edit URL onto the end of the shipment address yourself. If someone in your organization told you “just click Edit,” they were either on a different page or working from memory of the URL.

What each role may change on that form is fixed by role rather than by screen. Tenant admins, managers, and users share essentially the same editable field list; only a tenant admin may also reassign the broker and forwarder, and only admins and managers may set the shell-level billed parties.

Superseded shipments

When a delivery order is replaced, the old record is marked superseded and points at its replacement. Old links keep circulating in email long after that happens, so the two page versions handle them very differently.

On the carrier page: The old ID resolves through to the canonical record and an orange Superseded Delivery Order strip appears at the top, naming the tracking number, container, and BOL you asked for, plus when it was superseded and the canonical ID. An Open Canonical URL button takes you to the clean address. The cards below are already showing the canonical shipment.
On the tenant pages: No follow-through and no notice. The importer/BCO, forwarder, and managed pages load exactly the ID in the URL. A superseded ID that you can still read renders as an ordinary shipment; one you cannot read is simply not found.

If a tenant colleague and a carrier colleague open the same old link and describe different shipments, this is why. The carrier was silently forwarded to the replacement; the tenant was not. Before you reconcile numbers across a shared link, confirm nobody is reading a superseded record.

One more asymmetry in the same area: the carrier page also accepts an old numeric ID and resolves it to the current shipment. The tenant pages require a proper UUID and will not find anything for a numeric one.

Unavailable tracking does not mean no tracking

If a vessel read fails, its panel shows an unavailable notice instead of implying that the vessel has no containers. Independent carrier and terminal information remains visible. An unavailable At Risk alert also does not prevent you from reading the shipment; open the alert and use Retry to request the watch again.

Troubleshooting

You land on /protected/unauthorized

Your active workspace is not permitted on this route. That is a workspace problem, not a shipment problem — switch workspaces and try the same link again. Carriers also get this from the /edit URL specifically, which is expected.

The page says the shipment was not found

On the tenant pages this usually means the ID in the URL is not a UUID, is superseded, or is not readable by your organization. Search for the container number instead of reusing the link, and open the shipment from the result.

Cards keep appearing for several seconds after load

Shipment identity and facts appear first. The carrier journey and tracking sources then appear together, with their space established before the workflow rows below them. Optional media and comments can finish loading afterward. Order progress stays inside Shipment facts, and comments remain directly below the journey.

The page says “Preparing tracking” after Confirm

Confirmation is complete, but the canonical tracking timeline is not ready yet. Leave the page open. It checks again while the tab is visible and opens the shipment automatically; do not confirm the order a second time.

“Tracking Paused: Identity Conflict”

LongShorty saw the same tracking identity claimed two ways and stopped rather than guess; the strip ends with “LongShorty paused this tracking identity; no automatic correction was applied.” The refresh chip is disabled and the sync label reads “Paused: identity conflict.” Activity Feed and watchlist-email alerts link directly to this strip. Resolve the conflict from the buttons in the strip — refreshing will not clear it.

“Pickup Terminal Mismatch Review”

The stored pickup terminal and the terminal LongShorty is tracking at disagree. Choose Apply LongShorty Terminal to accept the tracked terminal, or Dismiss / Keep SQL to keep the stored one. The strip shows how many times the mismatch was detected and when it was last seen.

“LongShorty Subject Ambiguity”

Multiple candidate tracked subjects matched this active delivery order, so terminal telemetry is withheld from the authoritative cards until ownership is trusted again. Facts that look stale here are being suppressed on purpose; do not paper over them by editing the shipment. Abandoned no-work shells omit this warning because they no longer require an operator tracking repair.

“LongShorty Tracking Needs Repair”

Same-container tracked subjects exist but none holds an active canonical link, so terminal tracking stays withheld until ownership is repaired. This needs a tracking fix, not a data entry fix.

Availability is blank but the box is on the ground

Blank means the terminal has not answered, not that the container is unavailable. Refresh LongShorty, then check the Adapter and Tracking Status fields on the Terminal Status card to see whether that terminal is being polled at all.

Holds says Clear but the terminal disagrees

Clear only means no hold flag came back true, including the case where no hold record was returned. Trust the terminal portal, refresh, and raise it with support with the container number and the adapter name from the Terminal Status card.

Change History will not open

On a managed tracking item the item is disabled until a tracked container exists. If it opens but fails, it reports “Could not load change history.” — close and reopen the menu, which refetches.

The Terminal Status card is missing entirely

On a forwarder networked page it is suppressed whenever the media panel is present. The same values are in the stage panel and in the Shipment Facts grid.

“Operation shell not synced yet.”

The Billing Customers card has no operation shell to read from, so freight and accessorial billed parties cannot be shown. Charges generated before the shell exists will not know who to bill — raise it rather than adding charges over it.