Files from any tool
How do K-TAG files work on a file portal?
K-TAG reads come to your portal like any other: the ECU read from the file, one job, one queue. A master on Alientech decrypts locked files on their account.
In short
A K-TAG read uploads like any other file and lands on one job in your queue. If you are an Alientech master, a locked K-TAG file is decrypted on your own account and encrypted again for the customer's tool.
What is K-TAG, and how is it different from KESS3?
K-TAG is Alientech's tool for working on the ECU itself: on the bench and in boot mode, with BDM and JTAG on the units that need them. KESS3 is the one most shops reach for first, because it works through the car's OBD socket as well as on the bench.
For the person running the file service the difference shows up in what arrives. A bench or boot read often holds more of the ECU's memory than an OBD read does, so the same car can produce a bigger file from K-TAG than from an OBD tool.
What does the customer do?
Exactly what they do with any other tool. They sign in to your portal, upload the read, and pick the work and any extras on one page. The portal looks for the ECU and its numbers in the file, and the job sorts itself into your queue. There is nothing different to learn for a K-TAG file.
- 1Express and Urgent firstJobs paid for speed sit at the top with their turnaround target.
- 2Find any jobBy number plate, job number, VIN, name or email; filtered by status, payment and priority.
- 3The car, the ECU and the workEvery row carries what the portal read from the file and what was ordered.
- 4Where every job standsPending, processing, waiting for payment, done: counted as they move.
A sample shop; your portal carries your name.
Who can open a locked K-TAG file?
Its master. If you are a master on Alientech, you connect your own Alientech API account in your portal's settings: the Client Application GUID, the Secret Key and the Customer Code. Alientech must also allow your portal's server address, which your portal shows you. From then on a locked file opens on the job, on your own account.
If you are not an Alientech master, the portal keeps the file as it came and your tuner opens it in their own tool.
What is kept on the job?
Every job keeps the read as it came, the decrypted copy when there is one, the tuned file, and its encrypted copy when one was made. If the same software comes back later, your library offers what you did last time.
Questions
Do I need a separate portal for K-TAG customers?
No. K-TAG, KESS3 and files from any other tool all come to the same portal and the same queue.
Does a bench read tell the portal more about the car?
It can. The portal reads what the file says, and asks the customer for anything the file does not say.
Can I add K-TAG later?
There is nothing to add. A read from any tool is accepted from the first day.
Just need a file tuned? Our own engineers tune a read from any tool for £50 a file, every extra included. Our file service ›
Read next
-
OBD, bench, boot and BDM: what does each read mean?The four ways a car's file gets read, in plain words: what each one needs, what it gives you, and what a file service should ask the customer who sends it.
- Can a file portal still take KESS V2 files?Customers with an older KESS V2 still upload to the same portal as everyone else. How the files arrive, and what a master on Alientech can decrypt.
-
What is a slave file, and who can open it?A slave file is a read locked to one master. What it looks like when it reaches you, who can open it, and what a portal can and cannot do with it.
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