RouteOp If you are just getting started please note that the features are not enabled until your first call. You will receive a welcome email to get the ball rolling and will be hearing from your implementation rep. After your implementation period you will have 15 business days of initial support where you can contact support by using the Support link in the top right corner of your software or by calling 1-800-762-0301. Step 1: Make sure requirements are met. What Version Do you Have? o If you are using our hosted solution, you re always on the latest version. o If you host the data on your own server You must be on software version 1.42.4 or higher prior to implementation. If you are not on this version the only step you can complete in this process is having your account geocoded. Contact support if you need to schedule your update. Net3.5 or higher must be on your database server. Got Licenses? If you haven t done so already, contact our Sales team to get the RouteOp licenses you need. You will then be hearing directly from your RouteOp Implementation Specialist when it is time to get you up and running. Please be sure to provide sales with the main contact name and email address for this project. Latitudes and Longitudes: o When you sign your agreement you ll be giving approval to populate the latitude and longitude on your locations based on location address (AKA: geocoding ). If you do NOT want your accounts geocoded or if you ONLY want certain accounts done please inform us during the sales process. o Any accounts that are unable to geocode will be provided to you in a list to manually adjust prior to scheduling your calls. See further instruction below. Prep your staff! The module will be turned on during your first call but CANNOT be utilized until you are fully implemented. Be sure to include key people in these calls and advise users to NOT use Dynamic Planner or Best Fit until complete. They CAN however use the eligibility fields when setting up new setups and orders. Looking for something specific in this document? You can search for keywords in this document by using this trick: o From a PC: Use Control key + F key and type what you re looking for. o From a Mac: Use Command key + F key and type what you re looking for. 1 P age
Topics Covered: Implementation Process Overview Setup and Data Review: o Company Setup and Profile o Address Requirements o Duration Requirements o Time Blocks o Lookup Tables o RouteOp Constraints Usage: o Real Time / Tech Optimization o Best Fit o New Orders o Dynamic Planner *If you have purchased this additional functionality Step 2: Watch the videos before diving into the details. 3 MIN. VID: Address Formatting Requirements https://vimeo.com/105988671 3 MIN. VID: RouteOp Work Day Calendars https://vimeo.com/105651285 2 MIN. VID: RouteOp Employee Lookup Table https://vimeo.com/105986218 2 MIN. VID: Days to Float vs Keep Within https://vimeo.com/123422771 4 MIN. VID: RouteOp Real Time Usage https://vimeo.com/105988672 4 MIN. VID: RouteOp Dynamic Planner Additional Lookups (if purchased) https://vimeo.com/105988675 2 MIN. VID: RouteOp Dynamic Planner View and Commit (if purchased) https://vimeo.com/105988674 2 P age
Step 3: Implementation Process Overview What to Expect o Sales will work with you to process your agreement. Once this has been done a case will be open to have a RouteOp Implementation Specialist geocode your account and then send you your welcome email. o Review the contents of your welcome email and fix your un-geocoded locations and other homework items listed. o Inform your Implementation Specialist via email when you are ready to schedule Call 1. On this call we will enable the module for you and go through the recommended settings based on your company s processes. o At the end of Call 1 you will be equipped with a homework list of additional items to have completed before we can proceed with performing the mass data update. o Inform your Implementation Specialist via email once your homework is completed and we can mass update your data and prep it for our final call. o After the data update is implemented we are ready for Call 2 where we will do training in your data to review the features and usage of the module. o After completion of Call 2 you will have 15 business days of initial support where you can contact the support team directly for any additional questions or assistance you may need. Step 4: Setup and Data Review Company Setup and Profile These options will not appear until the module has been enabled for you. Best Fit Scheduling Options: The most popular setting is defaulted for you. You can come back here to adjust once you start using Best Fit and decide which settings you d like to use. Days to search should be set for however many days forward you would like Best Fit to look when you are scheduling a new job, a call back, or rescheduling an order. Most companies use 5 days. Respect Tech licenses: o Check this option if you want RouteOp to check and confirm that ALL techs (both RouteOp and non-routeop techs) have a valid tech license populated. If this option is checked and there are any missing or invalid tech licenses then you will receive an error when trying to route. Leave blank if not using. The Best Fit feature will be on by default in each user Profile once the module is turned on. o After fully implemented you will need to disable the Quick Scheduler by going to Tools > Profile > User Preferences > Appointments and unchecking the box for Use Quick Scheduler and Save. Leave this on during the setup process. 3 P age
Profile Under Tools > Profile > User Preferences > Appointments > Appointment Scheduler Preferences, check the option Unscheduled Appts & Stats for all users of RouteOp. This will allow the appointment scheduler related optimization features to show on the Appointment Scheduler screen. This setting can also be maintained for each individual user from the Employees Lookup Table. Address Requirements for Proper Geocoding- Are you properly entering in new locations? To ensure proper routing and geocoding for existing accounts make sure your addresses are properly entered. o Address 1 line needs to contain the main building/house number and street name such as 123 Main St. No additional info should be in that field. o Address 2 line would then be for apartment, unit or C/O information. o Incorrect Address Example: o Correct Address Example: o Use the postal service recommended formatting EX: St instead of Street o Use the zipcode plus 4. *Note: If you are hosting on your own server, go to Company > Company Setup > Additional Features > Geocode Using. Make sure that Google Directions is selected and save. Online hosted clients do not need to worry about this setting.* Correcting Un-Geocoded Locations Need help with cleanup? Review and update location addresses per the instructions listed above. If you are still unable to geocode, try using a geocode service such as http://geocoder.us to look it up manually or check out the address in google maps. Sometimes it s just a matter of a mistyped address, street or zipcode. If you need to manually adjust the latitude and longitude go to the Edit Location screen for the account and manually populate the info and check the box that says Do Not Re-Geocode by doing these steps: o Pull up the Location in question. o Click on the location number to bring up the Edit Location Screen. o Fill in the latitude and longitude you want to use (if you got it from geocoder.us or google maps) for this account. 4 P age
Duration Requirements Are your service durations accurate? Durations are important for knowing how much time to block off on the schedule for an order, lead or time block. Durations should only be for the actual amount of time needed to perform the service and should NOT include any drive time. RouteOp will calculate the drive time for you in real-time. o Under Company > Lookup Tables > Services you can click into each service to update the duration field default for new service setups and orders if they are not currently accurate. Inform your implementer if you would like to have all of your existing setups and orders updated with this new duration. o Optional: Under Reports > All Reports > Data Lists > Service Setup List you can check durations on existing setups if you need that as a guide. After entering any limiting search criteria, be sure to check the Show Column called Duration to see it displayed on the report. You also have the ability to search specifically for 0 durations by entering 0 in the Starting Duration and Ending Duration fields. Report can also be sorted or grouped by duration. o Optional: Under Reports > All Reports > Data Lists > Service Order List you can check durations on existing service orders. After entering any limiting search criteria, be sure to check the Show Column called Duration to see it displayed on the report. You also have the ability to search specifically for 0 durations by entering 0 in the Starting Duration and Ending Duration fields. Report can also be sorted or grouped by duration. o Options are available if you need to have your durations populated: For setups, you can check out the Service Setup Duration Utility. Tools > Data Update Tools > Update Service Setup Duration. This can be done by either average duration from services performed off of those setups or by average work times. This updates existing setups for new future generated orders. If you need service orders updated or want to use different rules for updating your setups that the Service Setup Duration Utility can t do please discuss with your implementer. Time Blocks Do you have meetings or appointments that require a routing address? Timeblocks from the appointment scheduler are beneficial for meetings, days off, vacation or special appointments that don t have a service order or lead for them. Delete any timeblocks currently being used for lunches, the work day calendar will take care of that for you. Go through existing Timeblocks that require the following to be populated: o Destination: Name of what the place is for the time block. o Address: Following the rules for Address Line 1 and Address line 2 as stated previously. As well as the City, State and Zip. o If routing information is left blank in the time block then it will be left where you have it on the calendar but will not calculate drive time. It will optimize from the appointments before and after it. 5 P age
Lookup Tables Work Day Calendar Lookup Table Can be populated prior to your calls o Required fields to populate: Start From is where you want the tech s schedule to start. You can select from Order Branch Office, Tech s Branch Office or Home. A different option can be selected per day of the week. End At is where you want the tech s schedule to end. You can select from Order Branch Office, Tech s Branch Office, Home or Last Appointment. A different option can be selected per day of the week. Leave Start No Earlier Than is for the earliest time you want the tech leaving their Start From point. Eligibility times on the order will still be respected unless there is a locked appointment that interferes. Arrive at End By is for entering the latest time that you want the tech to arrive at their End At point. Eligibility times on the order will still be respected unless there is a locked appointment that interferes. Max Service Duration is for entering the maximum number of service hours you want the tech to have in a given day. It uses the totals from the durations on service orders to calculate. Minimum duration is 30 minutes. o Additional fields to populate if relevant for your scheduling processes: Arrive at First Job No Earlier Than is for if you have a specific time that is the earliest you ever want the tech to arrive at their first appointment. Eligibility times on orders will still be respected. Lunch No Earlier Than would be populated if you want to specify the earliest time you want a lunch to be scheduled for the tech. It will use the amount of time entered in the Lunch Duration field. Leave this blank if you let your tech determine their own lunch times. Lunch No Later Than would be populated if you want to specify the latest time you want a lunch to be scheduled for the tech. It will use the amount of time entered in the Lunch Duration field. Leave this blank if you let your tech determine their own lunch times. Arrive at Last Job By is for if you have a specific time that is the latest you ever want the tech to arrive at their last appointment. Eligibility times on orders will still be respected. Lunch Duration would be populated with the number of minutes you want scheduled for a lunch. Leave this blank if you let your tech determine their own lunch times. Work Day Duration is the total maximum amount of minutes/hours you want in a tech s day. This includes service duration, drive time, lunch and idle time that may be created by locked orders. Max Drive Time is the maximum number of driving minutes/hours Max Production Value is if you want to cap your tech s day at a specific production value from services. Max Number of Jobs is if you want to limit the number of jobs in a day. 6 P age
Lookup Tables (continued) Employee Lookup Table to be populated after the module is enabled on call 1. o Select the Work Day Calendar o Populate the Tech License if using the option to respect Tech Licenses in the Company Setup section under Route Optimization Options. o Leave Driving Speed set to default. You can make adjustments later if needed. o Check the box for Use RouteOp for each employee you have a license for. o Populate the Home address if planning to start from or end at home Branches Lookup Table- can be populated prior to your calls. o By default RouteOp will use the Address info to generate the Routing Geocode. This will be used if you choose to have the tech start or end from the branch. If you would like to use a different address for routing then you can populate the Routing Address information to be used instead. EX: If you want the branch address to be a PO Box for mailing purposes, you can fill in the routing address below for the actual routing. Routing Clusters Lookup Table do you have areas where the tech has to park in a garage or designated parking area and walk between the locations? o EX: If you have an area that the tech needs to park at a garage, grab all of his materials and equipment and bring it along with him to walk to the accounts you can set up a routing cluster. o Enter the Code and Description and select the Cluster Type. o The cluster type is to specify whether the tech will park and then walk to each location, or if the tech will drive from location to location. o You must first add the parking location and the new Routing Cluster, then, you can go back in and assign Locations and Location Subdivisions to the cluster. o If using RouteOp Dynamic Planner it will include walking time next to the drive time column for any routing clusters on the optimized screen. 7 P age
Lookup Tables continued *This section only applies to RouteOp Dynamic Planner licensing* To be populated after call 1. Do you want service order eligibility dates to be based off of the generated work date? (Days to Float) Or, do you want service order eligibility dates to be based off of the date used the last time the service was performed? (Keep Within) OK now that you ve picked one of those o Do you want those rules to be based off of the specific Service Code OR do you want the rules to be based off of the Schedule Frequency? Services Lookup Table or Schedule Frequencies Lookup Table o In either your Services Lookup Table OR your Schedule Frequencies Lookup Table you would need to specify whether you are using the Days to Float or the Keep Within option for optimizing your orders. It s one or the other, not both. Decide which rule you will be using based on your scheduling practices. o Days to Float means that the system will allow the order to be moved around in an optimization within X number of days before or after the original scheduled date that it generated or was created for. EX: Service order is generated for 1/15 and the keep within rules say 3 days. The eligibility dates would be set to 1/12 to 1/18 to be taken into consideration when optimizing. It will not care what date the last service was done. All setup and data update requirements must be completed before proceeding to the Usage section. o Keep Within would be populated if you want to make sure that when the service order is optimized it doesn t get scheduled more than X number of days away from the day of the month that was the last service date. EX: The last service was completed on 12/27 and Keep within is set to 3 days. No matter what date generates on the order for January, the eligibility dates will be set to 12/24 to 12/30 because it s using the 27 th. NOTE: Keep Within would never be used for weekly services. o Once you decided which rule you are using, you will then go ahead and populate one of the lookup tables below. Each service or schedule frequency can be a different number. Services Lookup Table Schedule Frequencies (must also assign a frequency to each Schedule Type) Access Rights Lookup o Make sure to select the option to Use Route Optimization Feature for any users that will be using the RouteOp Dynamic Planner feature. This access right does not pertain to RouteOp Real Time. o Service Eligibility controls whether the user can see/edit the scheduling constraint fields on an order or setup. 8 P age
Step 4: Review usage for all users. This section covers RouteOp Real Time. If you have also purchased the RouteOp Dynamic Planner license you can continue to read after this section. Otherwise, you can skip to the Common Scenarios & FAQ next. Check out the videos for a refresher! Service Setup Detail has eligibility fields that you can adjust per account if needed, otherwise they will be defaulted based on your lookup table settings. These rules will carry over to all generated orders from the setup. The following fields are available: Eligible Days of the Week allows you to specify if an account can only be done certain days of the week. If the account can be any day of the week, leave the defaults as is and RouteOp will respect the days from the Work Day Calendar. Eligible Days of the Month allows you to specify if a service can only be done, for example, the first half of the month then you would enter 1 to 15. Otherwise, leave blank and it will respect your Days to Float or Keep Within settings. Keep Within and Days to Float will be populated for you based on your lookup table settings. You can manually override the fields in the service setup if you Days to Float is used to specify how many days before or after the original work date the service can be done. Whatever number is populated here will look at the date the service order is generated for. This will get populated for you based on the rules you set with your implementer if you choose to use these. If you use Days to Float you cannot use Keep Within. As explained above, days to float rules can be set based on service code or schedule frequency by default. Eligible Times would be used if the services for this particular location can only be performed between specific times of the day. Preferred Tech would allow you to select the Technician that you prefer to do the service and you can also Lock to Preferred Technician. When optimizing RouteOp would then attempt to keep that technician assigned. Exclude Tech would be filled in if you have a specific Technician who can never perform the service for this customer. Service Order Detail has defaulted constraints if the order was created from a setup. You have the ability to make additional changes as needed. Date Constraints for current work date, earliest work date, latest work date and the days of the week. Time Constraints for current work time, time range, earliest time and latest time the service can be done. Other Constraints for options to lock the order, mark it as unscheduled, set the duration and drive time. Tech Constraints used if you need to specify to lock a primary tech or exclude tech. Best Fit can be used from the following areas: Appointment Scheduler > Single click on appointment > Gold Best Fit Button Appointment Scheduler > Double click on appointment > Blue Best Fit Link Location Detail > From a Service Order > Calendar icon next to Current Work Date Appointment Scheduler > Gold New Order Button 9 P age
Step 5: Review additional usage for RouteOp Dynamic Planner. If you have not purchased RouteOp Dynamic Planner you can skip this section. RouteOp Dynamic Planner Tools > RouteOp Dynamic Planner o Select Orders to Optimize requires you to specify what starting and ending date ranges of service orders you are optimizing. You are additionally required to fill in Technician, a Tech Region or Branch in order to optimize. o Flexibility allows you to select whether you want to: Keep orders on their current work date if you want to prevent appointments from being moved to a different day. If this option is unchecked an additional section will appear for you to select what Start Date and End Date under During Optimization Schedule Orders Between. This will allow you to search for orders with one date range and schedule them between another. Keep orders on their current technician prevents orders from being reassigned to another technician during the optimization. If unchecked additional options will appear where you can now search by Route or Location Type, as well as have the ability to specify which preferred Technicians the orders can be re-assigned to (if not locked) during optimization under During Optimization Schedule Orders Between. o Minutes to leave open on each tech s day can be populated if you wanted to specify a specific amount of minutes to leave open on a tech s day when optimized in addition to any time already specified for lunch. This may be useful if you want to leave wiggle room for call-backs or new services. o Work Day Calendar Overrides exist as follows and override the Work Day Calendar: Max Jobs Per Day can be set to increase/decrease the number of jobs you want to limit per day for each tech. Max Service Duration Per Day can be set to increase/decrease the maximum amount of service duration per service per tech each day. Max Working Duration Per Day can be set to increase/decrease the overall duration spent per tech and day for service, drive time, idle and lunch durations. Max Production Value Per Day can be set to increase/decrease the total dollar amount for orders per tech per day. Arrive at First Job No Earlier Than can be entered for the earliest time you want tech s to arrive at their first scheduled job. Arrive at Last Job By can be entered for the latest time you want tech s to arrive at their last scheduled job. 10 P age
RouteOp Dynamic Planner Preview After specifying your search criteria you can now click on Preview in the top right corner. A message will appear telling you that the optimization will run in the background so that you can do other work while it s running. When you are ready, you can come back to this screen and click on Show History to view the completed optimization(s). If you stay on this screen to wait for the optimization to complete, you must refresh the page to see update status. Show History: o This screen will list the 10 most recent optimizations for your company. o Click View next to your optimization after the Status says Complete. o This will now show you the original criteria you searched for at the top of the screen and the results at the bottom broken down per tech and day as well as show you the Original order information and the now Optimized info. o Clicking on the blue Date will expand the orders for that day. o Clicking on the blue Map will launch google maps so that you can visually see the optimization results. o If any errors or messages appear at the bottom of the screen you can check out the Common Scenarios & FAQs section of this document for additional information. o Commit the changes once you have made any necessary changes. o NOTE: if you commit changes when unreachable appointments are present, any unlocked unreachable orders will have the time removed from them on commit. 11 P age
Step 6: Familiarize yourself with Common Scenarios and FAQs. Best Fit FAQs We are still working on setting up our RouteOp rules, how do we get around using Best Fit since we aren t supposed to use it until we are finished with the set up? When you get the prompt asking if you want to use Best Fit, say no. It will bring you to the Quick Scheduler instead. Where do you default the Best Fit date range search days? There is a setting in Company Setup > Route Optimization > Days to Search. If there is already a date on the order it will count out starting from the day after. What if I have a day I need to schedule an appointment for but that day has already been optimized? You can go into the service order and use the Schedule button to bring you to the appointment scheduler, then put it on the day you want. Then you can highlight the tech and choose set optimized before committing. This will ensure the order gets on the day you need and moves other appointments to accommodate it, taking any constraints and locked appointments into consideration. When I click on the calendar next to the work date on a service order it s bringing me to the Quick Scheduler and not Best Fit, why? You need to turn on the setting under Tools > Profile > Appointment Preferences > General Preferences for Use Best Fit Scheduler. Why are other appointments moving around when I choose a result on Best Fit? This is because while best fit is looking for other appointments closest to the one you are scheduling it will also optimize the data as it is returning results. It will still respect any constraints or locked orders when it s re-optimizing. Can Best Fit be used on a tech region rather than on just one or all techs? No, but the results being returned are based on the tech with other appointments close to the one you are trying to schedule, so tech region shouldn t be necessary. The only time this may not be true is if your tech regions do not represent geographical areas. 12 P age
Work Day Calendar FAQs In the Work Day Calendar there is a field called Max Service Duration. Does that number count both the drive time and the order duration? No, the max service duration is only referring to the actual service duration and does not account for drive time. How can I get 8 hours of work to fit into a Work Day Calendar? Make sure the total time between Leave Start No Earlier Than and Arrive at End By accounts for the following: o Drive time to and from Starting/Ending points o Lunch Break o Drive Time between stops The Max Service Duration will make sure that the tech does not get more than a certain duration of actual work. RouteOp Dynamic Planner FAQs How does Keep Within come into play for determining eligibility dates? Keep within uses the last service date from the last posted order that was generated from the setup. It does not look at the last service date of any orders created from the blue order link of a setup. Why are certain appointments unreachable? Is the geocode filled in and accurate for the physical location of the account? Is there enough time on their work day calendar to fit the appointment? Are there durations on the orders? Are there other appointments that are locked or have other constraints, like a small time range window, that might cause that appointment to get bumped? Are there skills tied to the appointment that the tech doesn t have? Are the eligibility dates and time outside of the criteria you are searching for in the optimization? Is it a work day(s) that the tech you are scheduling for is not working that day? Are there timeblocks? Is there a lunch interfering? 13 P age
Why is the RouteOp Dynamic Planner giving me an error on my locked appointment? Is there enough drive time to get from the starting point to the locked appointment? Are there too many locked appointments scheduled near each other that don t allow for enough drive time between them? o If so, this will cause that day to error and not route anything else for that day. Some things to try: Review your locked appointments and make sure you are allowing enough drive time between your orders. Make sure locked appointments aren t during lunch. Go back and adjust the related service setups to make sure future orders are generated properly. Will my tech skills be respected when optimizing? Yes! Why am I receiving Unreachable appointments when using Best Fit? If your days that you are searching to Best Fit on are already filled, you will not be able to put additional appointments on them. However, if you check the option on the search screen for Best Fit that says show routes with unreachable appointments it will show you I clicked on an appointment on the calendar and it s not bringing up the Best Fit button at the top of the screen, but when I double click on it I see the blue Best Fit link why? If the order is locked the gold Best Fit button won t show on the appointment scheduler because the order isn t supposed to be moved Although the blue Best Fit link still shows when you double click on a locked order, if you try to use it you will get no records found What should I keep an eye out for with my geocodes to make sure they are correct? Make sure they are 5 or more decimals Latitude should be a + number Longitude should be a number If unsure of the geocode or location you can always plug the address into google maps to check it out 14 P age
What do I do if I have 2 techs on an order and want to make sure that I optimize the day for the 2 nd tech? Is there a way to do that? Start with routing the orders for Tech 1, then lock the orders Once the orders are locked create timeblocks on the schedule for Tech 2 to make sure those times stay free of other appointments You can then proceed to optimize for Tech 2 since the timeblocks are now placeholders for the Tech 1 optimized times When using the RouteOp Dynamic Planner I am getting this error, what does it mean? Error: The server returned Bad Request with the status code BadRequest (400). Key waypoints limit exceeded. Limit is (1500) This means that you are trying to optimize too many orders. Only 1500 can be done at a time. Please contact support if this limitation needs further discussion based on your processes. When using RouteOp Dynamic Planner I am getting this error, what does it mean? Error: Invalid Time Window. Please verify that the start and end times for this technician s work day calendar are valid. This error means that there is an AM/PM mix up in either the Work Day Calendar or on a Service Order. Review your work day calendars and if those look ok then try running a service order list to review the order times. Fix and re-optimize as needed. When using RouteOp Dynamic Planner I am getting this error, what does it mean? Error: The server returned Bad Request with the status code BadRequest (400) ). {"errorcode":- 400,"errorDescription":"Locations are too spread out. The maximum distance among them is [2722]Km, exceeding the limit of [1000]Km"} There is a bad address, a bad latitude and/or a bad longitude if you are receiving this error. Run a service order list showing the address fields and the lat/long fields. Make sure that the address 1 line is the physical street number and name and any other information, such as apt number or c/o, is in address line 2 If the latitude or longitude is less than 5 decimals it is incorrect 15 P age
When using RouteOp Dynamic Planner I am getting this error, what does it mean? Error: Order XYZ is only allowed to be done on certain days of the week, but the eligible date range is xx/xx/xx xx/xx/xx does not fall on a valid day of the week. What does this mean? The order only has certain days checked as eligible, none of which fall within the date range you are working with. Go into the order and check the additional days needed or if the order can only be done on those specific days, change your search criteria. 16 P age