Specifying Job Time Windows

Some customers might want their jobs to be scheduled only for specific days, and particular times of day; for example if a business is closed on one or more week day, or if their inward goods bays are only open for a few hours on a given day. You can specify the days that a job is permitted to occur, and then specify up to two 'time windows' within these permitted days during which the job can be scheduled by the optimization engine to arrive at the customer site. Additionally, you can specify the duration of the customer visit when servicing this job. This ensures that the job's time on site is taken into account when scheduling other jobs earlier or later on the same route.

To specify a job's time windows:

1.Use the date control in the upper left corner of the Jobs List panel to select the date of a job. You can also change day using the left and right arrows to move ahead or back one day at a time:

 
•If the list of jobs is long, use the search control or the status filter to show only jobs of a particular type. Click the control beside Jobs:, and then choose a status from the menu.
2.Click the highlighted name of the job you want to edit in the list, or right-click and select Edit from the contextual menu. The Edit Job dialog box opens:

 
3.Click the Time Windows tab:

 
4.Specify the time on site required for this job under the Time on Site field. This is the length of time you expect the driver to spend at the job site when competing this job. This value defaults to minutes, but can be specified in hours, minutes and seconds using the hh:mm:ss format (or as minutes and seconds using XXmYY or XXmYYs or ZZs), and permits a minimum time on site duration of 30 seconds, and a maximum time on site duration of 23 hours and 59 minutes. The initial and default value is ten minutes.

At its simplest, the time on site is the time from when a vehicle arrives at the job site until the vehicle departs the job site. A vehicle is only on-site at one job at a time.

5.Specify the requested arrival date range of the driver at the customer site using the calendar picker tools under the 'Requested Arrival Date' section. This range specifies the days and the time of day when the driver can arrive at the customer site. The job will not be routed on any day before the first date of the range, or on any day after the last date of the range.
6.Specify the days of the week that this job can be serviced using the 'Days Allowed' buttons under the 'Time Window' section. Each of these circular buttons represents a single day of the week, beginning on Monday at the far left and ending on Sunday at the far right. Click every day of the week that the job is permitted so the button is highlighted in blue, and every day that the job is not permitted to be service so that it is highlighted in gray. To select or deselect all days at once, making either all days available or no days available, click the All Days link (note that if you do not select any day as available, the job can not be scheduled).

Only Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are Permitted Here
7.Choose an arrival time window from the time drop-down boxes (to the right of the 'Between' text). These represent the earliest and latest times that the job can be completed, and should be selected taking your drivers' shifts and any requests into account. If required, you can select a second time window below this. The second time window is off by default, and should only be used if the first time interval is already set.

 

If the end of a time window (second value) is earlier than the start of the time window (first value), the time window spans midnight. If the second time window starts at an earlier time than the first time window, it is assumed to occur after midnight (on the following day).
8.Click the Save button. The job is saved and now uses your configured time window details. If this job has already been assigned to a future route, this route should be re-sequenced or optimized to ensure that the optimization engine takes your time window settings into account.