Route Optimization
Route Optimization
Route optimization automatically assigns jobs to techs and orders each tech's stops to minimize total drive time, saving fuel and fitting more jobs into each day.
The draft → publish workflow
Route schedules follow a two-step workflow so you can review before anything goes live.
- Generate — from the weekly route schedule view, click Generate for a day. The system creates a draft that assigns jobs to available techs and orders stops for efficiency.
- Review — on the day view you can drag stops between techs, reorder them, and use the tools below to fine-tune.
- Publish — when you're satisfied, click Publish Route. This applies the draft to your live schedule: each job gets its tech assignment and ETA window, and staff are notified.
Until you publish, nothing changes on your live schedule or your techs' mobile devices.
Day view actions
Publish Route
Applies the current draft to your live schedule. Jobs are updated with tech assignments and ETA windows, and staff receive route notifications. This is the only action that affects live data — everything else operates on the draft.
When publishing, the system respects each job's scheduling mode:
- Flexible jobs get their times updated to match the optimized ETA, and customers receive a "schedule confirmed" notification with their arrival window.
- Preferred jobs are also updated, but a warning is logged if the ETA falls outside the customer's requested window.
- Fixed jobs keep their promised times — the optimizer routes around them. If the route ETA drifts significantly from the fixed time, a warning appears in the publish confirmation.
The publish confirmation dialog will call out any fixed appointments on the route so you can review before going live.
Regenerate
Rebuilds the entire draft from scratch using route optimization. Use this after making large schedule changes (adding or removing many jobs) where tweaking the existing draft would take longer than starting over. Any manual changes you've made to the current draft (drag-and-drop reordering, stop moves between techs) will be lost.
Rebalance
Moves stops from overloaded techs to underloaded ones, then re-optimizes the affected routes. Unlike regenerate, rebalance preserves your manual tweaks to stop ordering within each tech — it only moves stops between techs to even out workload. Use this when one tech has too many hours and another has slack.
Optimize (per-tech)
Re-orders a single tech's stops for the shortest driving sequence and recalculates their ETAs. This does not move stops to or from other techs — it only optimizes the order within the selected tech's route.
Form Crew
Temporarily pairs two or more solo techs into a crew for that day only. The crew appears as a single assignee in the route optimizer, useful for jobs that need multiple people (heavy equipment, two-person tasks). The crew exists only for the day — it doesn't affect permanent crew assignments. You can dissolve an ad-hoc crew when you no longer need it for that day; jobs already assigned stay on the draft until you publish or adjust them.
Discard Draft
Removes the draft entirely without affecting your live schedule. Jobs stay exactly as they were before the draft was generated. Use this if you want to start over or if you decide not to publish.
How optimization works
- The system considers each job's location, time windows, service duration, and any scheduling preferences (flexible, preferred, or fixed).
- Available techs and their shift schedules, including time off and meetings, are factored in.
- If you use service categories and qualifications, jobs are only assigned to techs and crews who are qualified for the services on that job — otherwise the stop may be skipped with a scheduling warning. See Service Categories & Qualifications.
- Jobs are assigned to techs and ordered into the most efficient driving sequence. Under the hood the solver may label routes Optimized (full optimization pass) or Basic Ordering (fallback ordering when the primary solver can't run).
- Your crew sees the optimized order on their mobile device with turn-by-turn navigation links.
Reading the results
On the day view, each tech card shows:
- Stop count and total scheduled hours for the day.
- Utilization percentage — how full the tech's shift is (green = good, yellow = light, red = over capacity).
- Estimated drive time and drive segments between stops — distances and times come from the optimization engine's transitions (not placeholder zeros).
- Each stop with its address, time window, and service duration.
- Placement — each stop may show a small label if it was placed by best-effort assignment (for example when capacity or geography makes ideal placement difficult). Best-effort stops are merged back into each crew's route and re-optimized so ETAs stay coherent.
Scheduling warnings
The route planner surfaces issues that prevented a job from being placed on an optimized route:
- Severe issues (missing coordinates, no qualified tech, unassignable window, etc.) appear in the main warnings panel and explain why the job was skipped.
- Minor issues (light geography or timing notes) may appear as inline indicators on the affected stop instead of filling the panel — only serious problems clutter the warning list.
- When a warning includes a Reschedule action, you can move the job to the next available weekday with capacity in one click; the job is removed from the current draft and the warning clears after reload.
Pre-assigned jobs on unit crews are handled so work stays distributed across crews instead of piling onto one vehicle when multiple crews share the day.
Requirements
- Route optimization requires at least 2 jobs for the same day across your team.
- Jobs need valid property addresses for accurate distance calculations.
- This feature is available on the Pro and Business plans.
Troubleshooting
"Not enough jobs to optimize" message. Route optimization requires at least 2 jobs for the same day. Add more jobs to the day or verify they have valid addresses.
The optimized route doesn't look right. Make sure all job properties have accurate addresses. Missing or incorrect addresses lead to bad distance calculations. Edit the property address and re-optimize.
Optimization is taking a long time. For days with many stops (20+), optimization may take a few extra seconds. If it fails to complete, try splitting the work across two crews.
A tech is overloaded while another has free time. Use Rebalance from the Actions menu to automatically redistribute stops.
"Your route will be optimized when you start your day" on the field tech app. This means no route has been published for today from the office. The tech's jobs are still visible and they can start normally — when they tap Start My Day, the system runs on-the-fly route optimization. To avoid this message, publish a route before your techs begin their day, or enable auto-publish in scheduling settings.
Tips
- Group jobs in the same neighborhood on the same day when possible — optimization works best with geographic clusters.
- Set realistic time windows on jobs so the optimizer can find the best sequence without conflicts.
- Use Optimize on individual techs after manually moving a stop, rather than regenerating the whole day.
- Review the draft before publishing — drag-and-drop any stops that need adjustment, then publish once.
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