The auto-plan log is your receipt. Every time you run auto-plan it tells you exactly which jobs moved and what the day looks like now compared to before. This is the tab to read before you press Save, because it is the only place that answers "what did that actually change" in one screen.
The log covers the run you just made and nothing else. It is a review step, not a history. Reload the page and it starts empty again, so read it before you leave the screen.
The list of changes
The top half lists one line per job that moved. Each line gives you the planned date and time slot, the name of the job as a link straight to the task, and a plain sentence saying what happened to it, for example moved from Anne to Peter or moved from 12 Mar to 14 Mar.
Only real changes appear. A job the algorithm considered and decided to leave exactly where it was does not clutter the list.
There are five kinds of change, and you can filter the list by any of them:
|
Kind |
What happened |
|---|---|
|
Assigned |
The job had no planning at all and has now been scheduled for somebody. |
|
User reassigned |
The job changed hands from one person to another. |
|
New date |
Same person, different day. |
|
New timeslot |
Same person, same day, moved earlier or later. |
|
Unplanned |
The job was planned before and the algorithm could not fit it, so it has gone back to unplanned. |
There is also a search box, which is the fastest way to answer "what happened to the job for Hansen" without scrolling.
View change on any line jumps you to that route, so you can see the move in context rather than as one line of text.
Filter to Unplanned first. Those are the jobs that came out worse than they went in, and they are the ones a planner needs to make a decision about. Everything else is the algorithm doing its job.
The dashboard
The bottom half is eight numbers describing the whole selection. Where a number changed, the card shows the new value large with the previous value beside it as from …. Where nothing changed, you get a single number.
|
Number |
What it counts |
|---|---|
|
Total task and drive time |
Everything the selected people spend on this work, the jobs plus the driving between them. |
|
Plannings made |
How many individual pieces of work are planned across the whole selection. |
|
Locked plannings |
How many of those the algorithm was not allowed to touch. Counts each individually locked planning, plus everything on a day whose whole workday is locked. |
|
Users planned for |
How many of the people you selected ended up with work. |
|
Dates planned on |
How many person-days have at least one job on them. |
|
Task hours planned |
Time on the jobs themselves, without driving. |
|
Drive time |
Time between jobs. Measured as the span from the first stop starting to the last stop ending, minus the time spent on the jobs. |
|
Idle days |
Every combination of a selected person and a selected day where nothing at all is planned. |
Reading the result
A run that went well usually looks like this:
-
Drive time down, and down by more than task hours went up. That is the whole point of optimising.
-
Idle days down, or unchanged if there were none to start with.
-
Plannings made the same or higher, and nothing in the Unplanned filter that you cannot live with.
Some patterns are worth acting on rather than accepting:
-
Total time went up and nothing else improved. The cost settings are pulling in a direction you did not intend. Check cost per hour against cost per km on Settings and priority groups.
-
Several jobs went to Unplanned. Either the week genuinely has more work than people, or the planning cost limit is set low enough that the algorithm is refusing work it could actually do. Raise the limit and run again to tell the two apart.
-
Locked plannings is high and drive time barely moved. The algorithm had almost no freedom. Locking is doing what you asked, but you are not getting much optimisation out of the run.
-
Idle days did not fall while jobs went unplanned. Somebody available is being skipped. Check their working hours, their home address and their workday registrations.
How to use it
-
Run auto-plan.
-
Open the log and read the eight numbers first. They tell you whether the run was worth keeping at all.
-
Filter the list to Unplanned and decide what to do about each one.
-
Filter to User reassigned if your people are not interchangeable, and check the moves make sense for who is actually qualified.
-
Save, or change a setting and run again. Nothing is committed until you save.
Checking that it is working
-
Before your first run the tab tells you the log will appear after you plan automatically. That is correct, not a fault.
-
Run auto-plan on a selection where you know one job has to move. That job appears in the list, with the right kind of change on it.
-
Click View change. You land on the route the job now sits in.
-
The dashboard totals match what the routes show. Add up a couple of days by hand if you want to be sure.
-
Lock a day and run again. Locked plannings rises by the number of jobs on that day.
Next: 4. Optimising a tour