Veraterms

VeraAlert Business: user manual

VeraAlert Business is the part of Veraterms for businesses and organisations. You enter the products, raw materials, consumables, medicines or vehicles you work with. VeraAlert compares their details with the texts of official recalls and safety warnings, marks the notices whose text contains them and writes a report every day.

The check is a rule-based text comparison, without artificial intelligence. What a notice means for your business is your decision.

What you need

  • A current browser and an internet connection, on a computer or a phone.
  • An account on veraterms.com with the email address you gave for the account owner in the order form. If you do not have one yet, create it with “Create account” and confirm the address.
  • Activation: Veraterms activates VeraAlert Business on this account once the payment has arrived.
  • A Business account has exactly one user account, the account owner's. A Business account covers one site; each further site needs its own.

Step 1: Signing in for the first time

  • Sign in on veraterms.com and open “VeraAlert Business” from the menu.
  • The first time, “Confirm the contract documents” appears with the Additional Terms, the Service Description, the AGB and the Data Processing Agreement. Tick the box and tap “Confirm and continue”. VeraAlert stores the time and the version of the confirmation.
  • When a new version of the documents is published, the confirmation appears again before you continue.
  • You choose the screen language (German, English or Greek) at the top under “Language”. It applies on this device.

The menu

  • “Overview”: the main figures for 7, 30 or 90 days, the latest marked notices and the latest daily check.
  • “Notices”: the official notices for your categories and countries, marked ones first.
  • “Monitored products”: your products with their lots, with search, import and export.
  • “Action log”: all records about marked notices.
  • “Check archive”: every daily report.
  • “Settings”: business, categories, daily email and contract documents.

On a phone some entries are shorter, for example “Home”, “Products” and “Log”. The bell at the top counts the marked notices without a record.

Step 2: Adding a monitored product

A monitored product is one entry for exactly one product with all its lots. Different products go into separate entries.

  • Tap “New monitored product”.
  • “Category”, “Product name” and “Country where bought or used” are required. Category and country decide which sources are checked for the product. Enter the product name exactly as it is printed on the packaging or the label.
  • Under “Product details” further fields appear depending on the category, for example brand, manufacturer, barcode, model, catalogue and serial number, and for vehicles the sales designation, production period and the manufacturer's recall code. If your browser supports it, you can read the barcode with the camera using “Scan”.
  • Under “Lots” enter each lot with its code and, if there is one, its date (best before, use by or expiry). “Add a lot” adds a row; each row needs a code or a date.
  • Enter “Other spellings of the brand” and “Other names of the product” as packs or invoices write them, also in another language. VeraAlert searches them as you write them, without translation.
  • “Supplier and storage” is optional: supplier and contact, location on site, quantity, unit, date received and notes. These details are for your own organisation; VeraAlert does not search them in the notices.
  • The box “What VeraAlert will look for” shows before saving which details will be searched in the notices and whether they allow “Unique detail”.
  • Tap “Save product”. The first check against the notices already held starts right after; the result appears on the product page, usually within a few minutes.

On the product page you keep a photo or an invoice under “Photo and documents” for your own use; a new file replaces the current one.

Many products at once: CSV import

  • In “Monitored products” open “Import CSV” and get the template with “Download the template”.
  • Fill it in with Excel or LibreOffice and save it as CSV (UTF-8, semicolon). The same internal_code on consecutive rows means one product with several lots.
  • After “Choose a CSV file” VeraAlert reads the file and shows a preview. The file is taken only as a whole: if it contains an error, no product is saved and VeraAlert shows the row, the column and the reason.
  • Per file up to 500 products, 1,000 rows and 1 MB; at most 10 imports per hour.

How VeraAlert checks

  • For each product VeraAlert checks the notices of the sources for its category and its country, and for countries of the European Union, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, also Safety Gate and RASFF, and for Switzerland also RASFF. The sources are listed on the page Official Sources.
  • The search covers the title and the text of the notice, in the language of the source and without translation. Names count only as whole words. In codes, spaces, dashes, dots, slashes, asterisks and underscores do not count. For Safety Gate the data fields of the notice are searched as well. Dates are searched as DD.MM.YYYY, DD/MM/YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY (with or without a leading zero) and as YYYY-MM-DD; spelled-out month names and two-digit years are not found.
  • A new or changed product is checked once against all the notices held. Under “Sources checked” the product page shows, for each source, from which date notices are held (“Checked from”).
  • VeraAlert checks new notices against your active products continuously, usually every hour. If an authority changes the text of a notice, the notice is checked again.
  • A vehicle's VIN is only stored: public recall data carries no VIN, so VeraAlert does not search it.

The two levels of a mark

  • “Unique detail”: the notice text gives your product's barcode or, together with the brand, manufacturer or name, one of its lots, dates or codes (a code made only of digits counts from four digits). For vehicles the name or the model is also enough, together with a production period that includes your production date or overlaps your production period.
  • “Some details”: the text gives brand or manufacturer and the name without a unique detail, or one of your product's codes with digits and at least six characters without brand, manufacturer and name.

If the text gives only the brand, only the manufacturer, only the name, only a date or only a shorter code, VeraAlert does not mark the notice. For vehicles it does not mark it either when the notice gives a production period that does not overlap yours. A notice without a mark can still concern you, for example when an authority publishes the details only in attachments or images. If you have similar products, open the official notice.

Step 3: Reading the notices

  • “Notices” shows the official notices for your categories and countries from the sources VeraAlert checks, for the period you choose (default 30 days, at most 90). A notice published more than once appears once. Marked notices come first, unique details on top, then the newest.
  • The tabs “All”, “Marked” and “Without a record” and the filters “Country”, “Category”, “Source” and “Period” (7, 30 or 90 days) narrow the list. The search covers the title and the authority of the notices.
  • Each notice shows the title exactly as the authority published it, the authority, the date and “Open the official notice”. A marked notice also shows which details of which product were found in the text.
  • If the authority has withdrawn a notice or the official link no longer responds, VeraAlert notes this on the notice.
  • VeraAlert shows the notice without a summary, translation or images from the source. You read the full text on the authority's page.

Step 4: Recording an action

  • Open the marked notice and choose under “Record an action”: “Seen”, “Not ours” or “Removed from use or sale”.
  • If the notice concerns several of your products, choose the ones concerned under “For which products?”. With “No choice (note only)” you save only a note.
  • Optionally add a “Note” and, with “Attach a file”, a PDF, JPG or PNG file of up to 10 MB. Then tap “Save record”.
  • Every record stays as it was written; the system sets the time. “Correct” creates a new record and the original stays unchanged.
  • The tab “Without a record” shows the marked notices for which no action has been recorded yet.

Action log and change history

  • The “Action log” shows all records of your business, newest first, with filters by record type and period.
  • The “Change history” on each product page keeps every creation, change, archiving, restoration and deletion of the product and its lots, with the time and the user account; when fields change, also with the state before and after the change. When a mark disappears or drops a level, the cause is written there. The page shows the latest 200 entries.
  • The action log, the change history and the check archive stay unchanged during the term; a correction is a new record.

The daily report

  • Every day, at the time you set, VeraAlert writes a report, also on days without a mark, and sends it to the account owner's email address. If you have no active products, the report is stored but not sent. Depending on the language of the email, the subject starts, for example, with “Daily check” (English), “Tägliche Prüfung” (German) or “Ημερήσιος έλεγχος” (Greek) and gives the date and the number of marks.
  • The report gives the number of products checked and of new notices compared, the sources read, the sources not read with the reason, new marks and marks raised to “Unique detail”, changed marks with their cause and the number of changes to products.
  • A source that was not read is not the same as “no notice”.
  • If the report does not fit into one email, “Open the page” leads to the report in the Business account, which is the one that counts. A report lists up to 100 new or raised marks and up to 100 marks that disappeared or dropped a level; you see all marks under “Notices”, tab “Marked”.
  • Time (default 7:00), time zone and email language are set in “Settings” under “Daily email”. The email is available in 32 languages (German, English and Greek are guaranteed by contract); there you also see when the next report comes.

Check archive

The “Check archive” keeps every daily report with the date, the time and the sending status of the email. Reports are not changed or deleted during the term. After the end of the contract they are deleted with the rest of the account's data (clause 7 of the Additional Terms).

Exports

  • In “Monitored products”: “Export products (CSV)”, one row per product and lot.
  • In “Notices”, tab “Marked”: “Export marked (CSV)”, with the details found and the level. One file holds up to 5,000 notices; for more, choose a shorter period or narrower filters.
  • In the “Check archive”: “Export CSV”.
  • The files are UTF-8, separated by semicolons. Use them to keep your own backups of your data.

Archiving and product places

  • “Archive” on the product page: VeraAlert no longer checks the product; its marked notices and records stay. “Restore” brings it back into the checks.
  • In “Monitored products” you see how many active products your account holds and how many it can hold. An archived product frees its product place; you order further product places by email to info@veraterms.com. Once the limit is reached, you cannot add or import further products.
  • If the check of a product was not completed, its page shows “Check again”.

Settings

  • “Business”: business name and countries. To change them, write to info@veraterms.com. “Account”: email and role of the account owner.
  • “Categories you follow” decides which notices appear in “Notices”. Each monitored product is always checked in its own category. If you choose none, VeraAlert uses the categories of your products.
  • “Daily email”: time, time zone and language of the report.
  • “Contract documents”: the documents you confirmed, with their version.

End of the term

  • The term is 365 days from activation and ends by itself. At the latest six weeks before it ends, Veraterms sends you an offer for another 365 days; if you pay it before the end, the new term follows straight on.
  • After the end of the contract you can read and export your data for another 30 days; checks and reports end with the contract. After that, Veraterms deletes the data of the Business account as set out in clause 7 of the Additional Terms.
  • During a suspension you can still read and export your data; checks and reports are paused.

Help

Veraterms answers questions by email at info@veraterms.com.

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