Tourplanning+ plans your employees automatically using an advanced algorithm. If five employees need to visit fifty places next week, the module works out who drives where, and in which order, so the least possible time is spent in the car.
You select the employees and the period. Tourplanning+ shows the work already planned as driving routes on a map, and can calculate a better order. You can add tasks that are not planned yet, and adjust the result by hand.
Nothing is saved while you experiment. The routes you see after optimising exist only on your screen until you press Save.
The words we use
Five terms come up constantly:
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Stop: one thing to be visited, a planning or a task.
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Leg: all the stops for one employee on one date. One employee's Tuesday is one leg.
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Route: the driving between the stops in a leg, drawn on the map.
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Tour: a collection of legs.
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Unplanned leg: the holding area. It holds tasks you want included in the optimisation, and any plannings the algorithm could not fit into anybody's day.
Finding it
Tourplanning+ sits under Tourplanning → Plan. Contact Microbizz if you cannot see it.
There are currently two versions of the planning screen, and which one you get depends on your installation. This documentation describes the newer one. If your screen shows a large map with a calendar you open from the top-right corner, you are on the older version. The concepts are the same, but some buttons sit elsewhere. Ask us if you would like to move to the new one.
What needs to be in place first
Optimisation is only as good as the data it is given. Check these three before concluding that the algorithm is behaving oddly.
Addresses that can be found on a map
Every task and planning you want optimised needs a real, locatable address, and so does every employee, because that is where their day starts. A stop without a location cannot be placed in a route.
An estimate on every task
The algorithm needs to know how long a job takes before it can decide what else fits in the same day. A task with no estimate cannot be optimised.
Work weeks on your employees
Give your employees a static work week.
Holidays, sick days and other absence recorded in the planning module are respected. The algorithm will not plan work on a day an employee is away. If you change somebody's absence, run the planning again so the change is taken into account.
Two ways people use it
Tidying up a week that is already planned
Select the employees and the period. Look at what the map shows. Run the auto-plan, review the suggestion, and save it if it is better than what you had. This is the weekly routine for most planners.
Finding a good slot for a new task
Select the team and the period in which the task could reasonably be done. Add the task to the unplanned leg and run the auto-plan. The algorithm picks the employee and the day where the task costs the least extra driving. Save if you agree.
Next: 2. The planning screen