Zones allow creating separate areas in your delivery Zones and assigning them to your Teams, which consequently allows you to configure specific drivers to deliver to specific areas. You can also assign Zones to Teams and Drivers.
Zones can help you with:
Segmenting your delivery area into parts that are covered by certain Drivers or Teams, or just to limit your delivery area.
Flagging deliveries based on their geographical position for your business purposes.
Determining the best depot from which a Task should originate or be delivered to.
This feature can be found in Configuration ⇒ Zones.
You can create a Zone by selecting Add and drawing on the map. To start the shape, click on the appropriate location on the map and add subsequent shape points by moving your cursor and clicking.
To complete the shape, click back on its first point, or double-click where the last point should be, and select Finish Drawing.
This will prompt a pop-up window where you can further specify the Teams and other requirements the Drivers need to fulfill to service this area.
After you finish drawing your Zone, a pop-up will appear with the following options:
You can assign specific skills and capabilities for Tasks that fall under the specific Zone, as well as assign default Pickup and Delivery depots. It's worth mentioning that all of these are completely optional; the only mandatory field is the Zone's name.
Users also have the option to:
Match outside of Zone - If enabled, the Task will be matched to the Zone if either the pickup or delivery location falls within it. It will also take into account all requirements that fall outside of the Zone. For instance, if the pickup location is inside the Zone but the delivery location is outside, the Task will still apply all delivery-related requirements.
Ignore depot location -If you want to exclude depot location requirements from the Task, you can do so by enabling this option. This is particularly useful when Zones account for both Pickup and Delivery locations, so if the Depot falls outside the Driver’s assigned Zone, activating this option ensures that routing remains unaffected.
Click Save once the information has been added. You will now be able to see the Zone listed:
💡Pro tip - Prevent Drivers from operating outside of the Zone area
There is a way to prevent the driver from operating outside the Zone area by using the reverse logic with the Match outside of Zone option by adding a skill to a Task, such as Outside of Zone, for example, when a task's Pickup or Delivery is outside the Zone area.
And since the Driver does not have this skill, the Task will not be assigned to them. Alternatively, you can call the Zone "Outside Zone," for example, and since the Driver is not allowed to work in that Zone, the Task will not be assigned to them.
Currently, eLogii does not have the option to match only Pickup or Delivery locations against the Zone area, but this approach helps achieve the same result. 😊
Tasks are automatically assigned to the appropriate Zone during import, based on geocoded address data. eLogii uses the defined Zone boundaries to determine the correct Zone and applies the corresponding properties. For example, if different skills are assigned depending on whether a Task belongs to Zone A or Zone B, the relevant properties will be applied to the Task once its Zone is identified.
💡Pro tip - Prevent Drivers from being assigned to Tasks where the Pickup is in the Zone, but the Delivery is outside of the Zone
To prevent Drivers from being assigned to Tasks where the Pickup is in the Zone, but the Delivery is outside of the Zone, we suggest the following:
Create a copy of the current Zone, covering the same area
In the configuration for the copy, toggle "Match outside of Zone."
The name of the copy can be something descriptive like "Out of service area." This way, the Task where Pickup is in the Zone, but Delivery is not, will be assigned two Zones
The first one is based on the pickup, but also "Out of service area" for the delivery. Since no Drivers would be assigned to the "Out of service area" Zone, those Tasks would not be assigned by optimization.
There are quick selection/deselection and activate/deactivate buttons for your Zones at the top of the Zone menu.
Next to each of your Zones, you get the following options:
Edit points - You can adjust the dimensions and the shape of your Zones by clicking on the points on the Zone border and dragging them in the direction you want. You can expand the points on the edges of the Zone, or you can create new ones by clicking on the area between two points and clicking it again to confirm the point you'd like to drag.
Edit details - This will prompt the same pop-up that you get after you create a new Zone. You can make any adjustments in terms of skills and capabilities related to the Zone, default Depots, etc.
Activate/ Deactivate Zone - Activate or deactivate one Zone at a time.
Delete - Deletes the Zone and all the information relating to it. If you delete a Zone, the Tasks associated with it will not be deleted from eLogii
Additional features you can use in your Zone configuration are:
Only match the single topmost Zone - if there is a Zone located within another Zone, only the attributes associated with the topmost zone will be applied to the Task. In the example below, this would be Zone 2.
Assigned Teams are not a requirement - the teams associated with the Zone are not set as a requirement when optimizing Tasks
Enable Zone calculation - This means that any rules set within a Zone, such as skills, capabilities, or default Pickup locations, will automatically apply to Tasks with pickup or delivery points inside that Zone. However, if this feature is turned off, Tasks created within Zones will no longer inherit these specific rules.
Assigning skills and capabilities to Zones
If you want to assign specific Driver skillsets or vehicle capabilities to particular Zones, you can do so by clicking the edit icon next to the relevant Zone. This allows you to configure which skills or capabilities are required for operating within that Zone.
You'll be able to do this in the pop-up that appears after you create a Zone or click on the edit icon next to the Zone you wish to assign skills/capabilities to, and the same pop-up will appear. Under the Task automation section, you can make the necessary adjustments relating to Driver skills and Vehicle capabilities.
A skill defined in a Zone will be applied to the Tasks located inside the Zone.
Click Save to apply changes.
It’s important to understand that Zones are designed to restrict Drivers to specific geographic areas. This means the feature doesn’t currently support scenarios like allowing Drivers to pick up from any location while limiting only the drop-off areas.
Assigning Default Depots to Zones
Whether for pickup or delivery, the Zones feature lets users assign a default depot to each zone. This rule is applied only when a pickup or delivery location isn’t specified during Task import, depending on your configuration. If there are already defined values on both the pickup/delivery segments, the rule will not override it.
What happens when the Task Location is changed?
If a Task's location is changed to one that falls within a different zone, the rules from the original zone will be replaced by the rules of the new zone. This means that new skills, capabilities, and default depots will be overridden to match the rule setup of the new zone, and the old attributes will be removed.
For example, if the old zone had Skill A, Skill B, and Depot A as the default rules, if you update the Task location to a new one that falls under a different zone that has Skill C, and Depot B as default, that Task will now have only Skill C and Depot B assigned to it.
How Zone Logic Works
If a Task's Pickup or Delivery location falls within a Zone, that Zone will be assigned to the Task.
If a Task spans multiple Zones, due to overlapping boundaries or having Pickup and Delivery in different Zones, it will be assigned all applicable Zones.
For a Driver to be auto-assigned such a Task, they must be assigned to all Zones the Task belongs to. So, if a Task is linked to two Zones, the Driver must cover both.
When Pickup and Delivery are set to custom locations (not a depot), the system uses the coordinates of either point to determine the appropriate Zones and assigns them accordingly.
If you wish to allow only some Drivers to complete tasks whose Pickup or Delivery is in the other Zone, they would need to be assigned both Zones.
To illustrate this:
Driver 1 - Operates in Zone 1 and Zone 2
Driver 2 - Operates in Zone 1
Task 1 - The Pickup is in Zone 1, and the Delivery is in Zone 2
Task 2 - Both the Pickup and Delivery are in Zone 1
Task 1 can only be assigned to Driver 1
Task 2 can be assigned to both Driver 1 and Driver 2
Once Tasks are imported or created, the assigned Zone cannot be manually changed. Allowing manual changes could lead to inconsistencies—for example, having a delivery location in one Zone but assigning it to another. Instead, if you update the location itself, the system will automatically reassign the Task to the correct Zone based on the new coordinates.
Assigning Zones to Teams
Assigning Teams to Zones is simple, and it can be done by going to Teams ⇒ Team Profile ⇒ Zones and checking the boxes next to the Zones we want the Team to be assigned to. The Zones and Zone rules will be applied to all the members of a selected Team.
Assigning Zones to Drivers
You can assign Drivers to Zones by going to Drivers ⇒ Driver Profile ⇒ Zones
Select the Zones you want to associate with a particular Driver and move them from the left box to the right box, like in the example video:
Please keep in mind that Drivers who do not have an assigned Zone are eligible to serve all Zones. In case you wish to restrict a Driver who belongs to a Zone from doing a Task that belongs to that particular Zone, then some skill should be attributed to the Zone that will be applied to the Tasks that belong to it. Also, we want to add the same skill to the Driver who services that Zone so that the system can associate them.
There are no mandatory features or prerequisites for Zones. This means that, even though other features synergize nicely with Zones such as Teams, you can still have fully functional Zones without needing to configure anything else. Think of Zones as a way of automatically applying different properties, such as skills, capabilities, Teams, and tags, for all Tasks falling into a specific Zone, so you don't have to specify those things in your import file.