Building Routes Automatically

This option is not available in all accounts. To add this feature, contact your sales representative.

You can use the Create Route dialog to define a new route and then manually assign it jobs. This process requires a territory, driver, start location and end location to be manually selected, together with driver shift and break details. To instead create a new route automatically, allowing the routing engine to calculate the optimal assignment of drivers and vehicles for a selected single day or for a build period of up to three months:

1.Use the date control in the upper left corner of the Jobs List panel to select the date of the new route, or the first day of the build period if creating routes for a number of consecutive days. You can also change day using the left and right arrows to move ahead or back one day at a time:

 
2.Press the Builder Routes button () in the top-right corner of the screen (above the map). The Route Builder dialog opens above the map:
3.Use the Build period boxes in the Route Builder interface to select the date range that will be included in the build period, up to a maximum of three months of consecutive days. Routes within this build date range will be created to accommodate jobs' requested arrival times and dates. However, it is important to note that the route builder may not choose to build routes on every day of the build period (for example, a six day build period may only result in routes being built for three of the six available days).

It is important to understand how the build tool interacts with the default shifts for a territory (configured here), and your shift day start time. The interaction between these times will determine whether a route is built on a given day within your selected window, or the following day. The build tool will only create routes for the next complete shift window, which must include a default start time within the build period. It will not build a route for a specified day if the default shift begins before the day start time. For example, imagine you have specified a single day in the route builder: January 1st. If your default day start time is set to 8am, but the default shift start time for the territory is set to 7am, the route will not be built for January 1st, but instead January 2nd, as this is the next day that includes a start time permitted by your territory settings.

4.Click the Build Mode checkbox that matches your build requirements. These are:
 
Create new routes - the routing engine will create new routes for all unassigned jobs within the specified build period, and assign these routes to use any vehicles or drivers that are both available (routes occurring within their assigned shifts and availability windows, and shift defaults that include a permitted route start time) and not already assigned to other routes.
Rebuild existing routes - the routing engine will unassign all jobs from any existing routes that occur wholly or partially within the specified build time window, then rebuild these routes using their previously-assigned vehicles and drivers. Any routes that intersect the build window at any point (that is, have start and/or end times that occur within the build window, as determined by your default day start time) will be included in this rebuild process, even if the actual jobs on these routes occur outside the build window (if, for example, the end of a route crosses into the beginning of the build period, but the jobs at the start of the route do not)
5.Click the Start Building button to build the new route(s), or rebuild your existing routes. Once the route build process has completed, a summary will be shown listing the number of routes created, the details of any violations generated, the number of jobs assigned to these routes, the number of selected jobs not yet assigned to a route, and the route build time. A tabular summary of the routes built for each day will display number of routes on each day, number of jobs, and the estimated route cost. The new or rebuilt routes will be visible on the Daily Routes grid. Click Build More Routes to continue building or rebuilding additional routes.

Changes to violations, cost, distance, driving time, route start time, and route end time might be recorded in the route history if these settings were modified outside of Verizon Connect® Dispatch™.