Begin Course

Hello! Welcome to CRO University.

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In today's course, we're going to cover optimizing and dispatching routes.

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Please click, "Begin Course" to get started.

Let’s edit this Route that we made, last course.

Last time, we covered how to create a route and how to add customers to them. This time around, we're going to go over how to optimize and dispatch your routes. Before we begin, however, I want to point out the two different ways to make adjustments to Routes. The first way is with this Edit button, and each route has one!

Click here to head back to our Routes list.

There you go. As you can see, this is where we can change all the details and options for these routes. The name of it, which truck is assigned and even which days you expect this route to be auto dispatched. These can be changed at any time, but they look pretty good for now. Let's head back.

Let’s open up this route.

The other way you can alter your routes are by looking at the route stops, themselves. You do that by clicking on the name of the route, itself.

This plot point will show you which customer this is.

Would you look at that! We have each stop, here on the map. This is a very similar display to what we saw in the "How to build a route" course, but this time around we can actually do a lot more.

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First, let's select one of these plot points, on the right.

Selecting the customer, here, will open their route stop in the Customer Center.

See that? This will reveal the customer that's at that location, along with the estimated time the Driver will get there and leave. Let's select this same customer, here, on the left.

We’ll come back to the Customer Center, later.

Yup! It brings this full customer up on the Customer Center, as well as selecting the exact route stop you're looking at. Do they have multiple assets? Heck, are they on multiple routes? Clicking on their name, here, jumps right to the route stop you're looking for. Let's close this window out, for now, though.

Time to optimize!

Next, let's dive into the different Optimization options! Care to guess how to access those?

We’ll start with the Fastest Round Trip optimization.

Good guess. Now, our options, here, are Fastest Round Trip, Manual and Reverse Current Order. We'll start with Fastest Round Trip.

Time get this optimization started!

This optimization method is aptly named. It will attempt to calculate the quickest way to visit each of your stops and return back to the starting point in as short a time as possible. That said, we can see here, on the right, the amount of time this route should take (along with the mileage) in its current state. Let's hit "Start" and get the ball rolling!

Click Continue to have CRO try to optimize this route, further.

Sure enough, this gets the system to make thousands and thousands of calculations in an attempt to optimize this route! If we let it sit for a few seconds... there we go. Now, it's reduced our route from this... to this! That's definitely a savings in time and mileage. Just for fun, let's click, "Continue" and see what happens.

Let’s save this new optimization.

Yup. Just in case the first optimization doesn't cut it, you can always have CRO take another crack at it. We also have the option to Stop the optimization mid-stream as well as Save or Cancel our optimization. Does everything look good? Then we can hit "Save" and lock it into place.

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Time to move onto the next optimization method.

Done. Next, let's give Manual optimization a try! First, we have to open our Optimization Method options...

This time around, we’ll try the Manual Route optimization.

Then, select Manual.

Click on this plot point to set the first route stop on this route.

Just like it says, this option will let you click on each stop, here, to schedule it. Let's click each one of these in the order we want them done... starting with the first stop.

Easy, huh? Let's keep it going.

That's two.

Three.

All done! Let’s hit Complete to save our new order.

... and Four! That's the last one. We've, now, manually optimized this entire route, based on location. Notice that Complete button? It wasn't available until we went through and sorted each and every stop. Speaking of which, let's click it.

Just one more optimization method to check out.

... and there's our route! Yeesh. I think we kind of messed up our order. See how important Optimizations are? Now, we have one more option in there, so let's dive right back in.

Select Reverse Current Order to flip your route stops on their head!

Reverse Current Order. Just like it says, this option will take whatever order you come up with can be completely flipped on its head. Let's give it a try.

Let’s click OK to confirm.

Ah, see that? It's double checking that we didn't click on that option accidentally! We didn't, so let's click OK.

Any time you want to refresh the map and save your order, click here.

It wasn't kidding! This option makes it easy for when you need to get to a certain part of town later in the day, or if you simply need to have your Driver leave the opposite side of your lot, first. While we're at it, you can also drag and drop these customers, over here, to set your order. Once everything looks great, you can hit this button to redraw the map and save our route's stop priorities.

This arrow will take us back to the Routes page.

Not too bad, huh? Let's head back to our Routes page, again.

If we move onto the Daily Truck List, we can start dispatching this new route!

All good on optimizations? Excellent! Let's move onto manually dispatching routes. First, let's head over to the Daily Truck List. You get there by hovering over Dispatching and selecting Daily Truck List.

Click here to manually dispatch our new route.

Ahhhh... here we are! Here's another button we saved for later, and... guess what? It's later! Let's go ahead and click on it, this time.

Please select the CRO University Route to dispatch.

And there's our routes. Now, I want to take a moment to emphasize that Routes are generally auto-dispatched. The only time you should need to come into this section, if your routes are set to Auto Recur, is if you're dispatching a route on a day it doesn't normally go out. This might even be the night before, in case you want to move the stops around after they're dispatched.

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But we're getting ahead of ourselves! Let's select the CRO University route.

Let’s dispatch it!

Perfect! Now, here below, we can also set the day that this route is dispatched on. Like I mentioned earlier, this could be the day before the route is meant to be completed by the Driver. We'll leave it set to today, for now, so let's click Dispatch.

We can close this window, for now.

And it's done! See that green check mark? That means the route was successfully dispatched. Not to mention, you'll notice it, over here, in the background already assigned to the CRO Mobile! Speaking of which, let's close this window.

Click this pencil to open the route stops for this dispatched route.

Here's our route, fully dispatched and safe and sound. Now that it's an active route, let's click this pencil to open some more options.

Click here to select stop #1.

First off, we can see each of our route stops here. Each one can be clicked on to open it, like how it worked on the Routes page, as well as select these checkboxes. In fact, let's click a couple of these route stops, now.

Let’s select this route stop, too.

... and let's select this one, too.

We can do a lot with these stops, but let’s Transfer them.

There we go. Now that we've selected those, we can decide what we want to do with them! Going from left-to-right, we can Transfer these stops to another truck, email -or- print these route stops, as well as Complete/Fail or Delete them. All at once! How cool is that? Let's go through something you're likely to encounter: transfering these, particular stops to a different truck.

Now we just need to choose a new truck to transfer to.

Now, let's select a different truck, here. Incidentally, if we don't select a truck, it'll make these route stops "Unassigned".

This truck will work.

This other truck will work. We can also move these jobs to a different day, if necessary! Let's transfer these stops.

One more click will transfer those stops over to this other truck.

One more click to submit the transfer.

Click here to simulate the drag-and-drop procedure on this non-route job.

Boom! Instantly, they're on the other truck and ready to be completed. This is exactly how you can split a single route between multiple trucks. But what about this NON-route job on this truck? Well, believe it or not, you can drag-and-drop this job right onto the route to merge it into it! Let's simulate that, now...

Select the Customer Center to look at a non-dispatched route stop.

Woop! Up it goes. Now, I know that was just a click, but trust me on the drag-and-drop. It's pretty amazing. See that blue number, there? That signifies the number of "non-route" jobs that have been merged into this route, for today. It's not a permanent merge, mind you, but just a temporary merge for today's run. While we're at it, these other colors here specify how many of these route stops have been completed.... failed.... and pending. Nice quick-reference, eh?

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While we're on the topic, let's open up the Customer Center and bring up a NON-dispatched route stop. I have something to show you!

First, we’ll need to bring up a customer who has route stops.

Now, let's load up a customer with a route stop.

Now, click here to select this route stop that’s not currently dispatched.

Nice. Next, let's select this NON-dispatched route stop. It's still a perfectly good route stop, it's just not currently active.

This Pickup job will apply directly to this route stop!

Alright, so we already covered how to schedule an additional Service, and the Swap works pretty much the same way... only, this Pickup job is a little more interesting. Let's click it.

Let’s select the date we want this asset picked up on.

Ah! A new screen! See, right now, we have two options of when to pickup this asset on the route: Either we schedule a date that's after the next time it's meant to get serviced, or we can even have the Driver pick it up the next time he's on this route, anyhow. Let's start with the first option by picking a date.

The following Monday is a pretty common pickup date.

This should be a very familiar site, by now... the calendar! If you'll recall, we put this asset onto a FRIDAY route. Therefore, we'll need to pick a date AFTER Friday for this Pickup to be scheduled. Let's go for Monday.

Now we can move onto the other option for picking up route stops.

Perfect! See, the Driver is going to hit this asset one more time. As soon as they finish Servicing the asset... guess what's going happen? That's right! The Pickup for Monday will be automatically scheduled. Let's try our second option, though: "Pickup with Route."

Click here to choose the next route dispatch you want this pickup to occur on.

Did you see how things changed around here? CRO detected that there's one or more routes this asset is assigned to, so let's pick the next route dispatch we'll want this asset picked up on.

This route isn’t for two more weeks, so it will work well!

See that? We show not only the NEXT time this route stop will be serviced, anyhow, but we'll also see the future routes. Does this customer want two more weeks of service before they cancel? There's no need for a post-it note or a reminder: you can tell the Driver to go ahead and pick it up while they're out there! Let's do just that.

Now we just need to save thes Pickup options.

That'll do it. Now let's Save.

Let’s go RIGHT back into that Pickup we scheduled.

Ah, did you notice that little, pink letter P on here? That's letting you know that there's a future Pickup scheduled for this asset. If we click on it ...

Click “Save.”

... we can make any changes necessary or even delete the scheduled Pickup all together! Easily done. Let's click save to close this window.

Click here to close the Customer Center, we’re done with it, for now.

Now, finally, let's close the Customer Center. I have one more section to show you.

On to the Reports page.

Spoiler alert! We're going to look at a couple of reports.

The Pickup Report is the one we’re looking for.

Whoa! That's a lot of Reports. Don't fret, though, I'll show you the first one we're looking for. Pickup Report.

Click here to return to the main Reports page.

Now, I know it's been several seconds, but do you remember that Pickup we scheduled? This is where you can go to get a full report of EVERY scheduled Pickup you have. And... HEY! There's the one we just scheduled! Great stuff. Let's head back and look at our final report.

Just one more report to look at: the Route Stops report.

This time around: Route Stops.

Let’s open this route we made.

Would you look at that? Every single route in your system is listed here, and it doesn't stop there. Before we dive in, I want to point out a few key features. First, we have the ability to map... print... or export any of your routes as a spreadsheet. We also give you a heads-up display of each route stop, each job request and each asset that's involved with this route. Finally, just to the left of that we get each day of the week this route dispatches, its interval and the next time it's scheduled to dispatch. Getting this information on the fly is very, very helpful. All that said, let's open up one of these routes.

BOOM. Whether this Route is dispatched or not... there it is. We get a bunch of info here about each stop, and we can select any of these stops to bring it right up on the customer center. Furthermore, we can select ANY of these stops and remove them from the route with one click. Which click? This button, over here. Finally, we also have a "Copy Emails" option in case you need to change a route's day with the Manual Dispatch. Want to give them a heads up that they won't get service on their usual day? ONE CLICK!

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And... yeah! That's about all there is to know about optimizing and dispatching routes. You should be a ROUTE MASTER by now!

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This concludes the Optimizing and Dispatching Routes course. Please click the "X" button at the top right to complete this course.