Recurring routes represent routes that have fixed execution intervals, times and numbers of jobs contained within them. An example of a recurring route would be a weekly milk run, or a weekly facility maintenance run.
To have this feature available, it is important to have Multiday Routes disabled. After disabling multiday routes, make sure to enable Route Templates in Configuration ⇒ Dashboard settings ⇒ General settings ⇒ Route Plans.
Adding a recurring route can be done from the Planning screen by selecting one or multiple routes and selecting the option Recurring routes from the Action options..
A pop up will appear asking you to give a name to the recurring route you would like to save and store in eLogii.
Viewing and editing the route can be done in the Recurring section. There are multiple options within the Route Template section.
The Details tab shows basic route information such as UID and date of creation. The name of the route template can be changed here by selecting any of the route templates you have save and clicking the edit button..
The Task templates tab shows the route and all the Tasks related to that route. Tasks can be viewed by clicking the + button next to the route name. You can choose to activate or deactivate some Tasks which will remove them from the route whenever you schedule the route for the future.
These changes will not be applied to current and past Tasks. Changes will be applied to the Tasks within the Route template which is scheduled after these changes were made.
Keep in mind that deactivating Tasks will not change the look of the route because no reoptimization would be triggered, Please refer to the Route Template update section to learn how to update your templates.
Under Schedule Pattern customization is available on how the recurring route will be created and behave, such as the frequency and the interval of the recurrence, as well as the days or dates the route will be created for. It is possible to set up the template frequency on a weekly or a monthly basis.
To view all the schedule tasks within the route, navigate to Scheduled Tasks. Here, you will be able to see a list of dates when the template has been scheduled and open the Tasks included in the route to quickly view their statuses and any piece of historical data you wish to check.
It is also possible to manually add additional dates when the Tasks are to be created under Schedule dates. Clicking "Open tasks" will navigate you to the Task page where you can view the tasks and make adjustments to them which will be applied only for that specific date and Route. For example, if you wish to change the location or the status of the Task, that change will only be applied to that specific Task, not the entire template it originated from.
Temporarily pausing the route can be done by selecting Deactivate.
To delete a template entirely select Actions ⇒ Delete.
It's also possible to manually schedule a Template for any desired date immediately by selecting the Schedule for period option, and then defining the date range for when you want to immediately schedule the route. You can also choose to apply the Schedule pattern by switching the toggle on, or to ignore it by switching it off.
By selecting the Remove for period option, eLogii will remove all the scheduled templates during a specified time period. If you or your planners scheduled a template for a specific period by mistake, this would be the quickest way to undo that action.
Creating templates on a per-Task basis is also possible, and to learn more about this please refer to this article.
Updating existing Route templates
In case you need to make direct changed to your templates either by removing Tasks, or by changing the location of a specific Task, route templates need to be updated with this information.
The changes you make to a route after scheduling the template will not affect the template itself, which can be good in case there has been a temporary change to the route for a specific day, which shouldn't affect the route template as a whole, however this becomes a problem if you want to apply these changes permanently to an existing template.
To update an existing template, we recommend scheduling it to any future date and then editing it from the planning screen by adding Tasks to it, removing them, changing Task location and other details, reoptimizing it, rearranging the Task execution order, and so on. if you need to permanently re-assign the route to another Driver, you can do that in this stage of the update. Once you're happy with how the new route looks, navigate to the Actions menu and select Recurring routes, Now, instead of create new, select the Override option, where you would be able to choose which Route you wish to override with this one, as well as how eLogii should treat already scheduled Routes using the template you wish to override. eLogii can either do nothing with those Routes, and just override the template, it can remove the scheduled Routes, or it can remove the old routes and reschedule the new ones in their place.
Route Template behavior
Once a route template is applied to date or within a date range, all the Tasks and Task information will be copied.
Routes from route templates behave the same way as regular routes - It is possible to change the order of pickups and/or deliveries within the applied template, and it is possible to reassign the route to another Driver. Rearranging the order of the Task will cause the route to lock itself, which is a regular route action and applies to templates as well It is also possible to add new Tasks to the route manually by selecting the route and selecting the Reassign to another Driver.
The applied Route Template will be included into the optimization and new Tasks will be assigned to it, provided that they could be fit in the Driver's schedule and that the Vehicle will not be over-capacitated. To prevent the addition of new Tasks to the applied Route template, and to prevent it from being reoptimized it needs to be locked beforehand.
If a driver has particular skills set up to match skill requirements of Tasks, and if you want to reassign their Route to a Driver that does not have the same skills configured, the system will allow this action.