Scheduled Times
Scheduled times define the planned dates and hours for executing the given milestone. This will also determine whether an order will be early, on-time, or late. Without scheduled timings, your order can never be considered late.
Setting up Scheduled Times for Activities
In the scheduled times section we will always specify an activity window, meaning a FROM and a TO time between which the activity should happen. Scheduled times can be specified while creating a Material Order:
Or by clicking on a milestone in the MO or TO grid:
You can either use the date selector to specify a date and time or you can use the "Now" button to have the system enter the current time and date.
It is also possible to simply type the current day and then use the TAB button to move to the next field, the date will then be auto-applied.
For example: if today is 03/03/2022, you can type "3" and then TAB, the system will enter that date.
Changing schedules
Changing scheduled times can be done in a multiple ways. The first two are the same as described above, when inserting the Scheduled Times:
Open the order form and adjust the scheduled times on the MO
Open an MO or TO Milestone and adjust the scheduled time
You can also adjust scheduled times on multiple MO's at once:
Scheduled Times for Arrive/Depart milestones
Arrive milestone:
This time is always calculated by the system.
1. For the first stop
If there are no scheduled times on the activity milestones of the first stop, then time of creation of the order + Initial delay (if set up in Stop Type settings).
If there are scheduled times on the activity milestones, then it's the earliest Schedule From or earliest Schedule To of all activity milestones, depending on the setting in the MO settings.
2. For all the following stops
The Arrive time is equal to the Scheduled Depart time at the previous stop + drivetime as calculated based on the settings in the Routing Settings. If the arrival time is earlier than the target scheduled collection/delivery time, the scheduled arrival time is matched to that time to prevent the driver from arriving too early.
Depart milestone:
All stops are calculated in the same way:
Scheduled Arrive + Handling Time as set in the Stop Type Settings.
Schedule calculation for the arrive and depart milestones
In Stop Type Settings (Admin > Settings > Stop Type Settings) you can define how should the Arrive and Depart milestones schedules be calculated.
Initial Delay - This value will be used if no Scheduled From/To times have been inserted for the arrive milestone on the first TO stop. Normally the Schedule would be then calculated to Time of Order Creation + Initial Delay (if any, otherwise it's just Time of Order Creation). So in the example above, if we would create an order at 13:45, the Arrive schedule of the first Collection stop would be 13:55. It is important to note that later on, when the order is in transit, it will take that scheduled time based on the calculated route.
Handling Time - This refers to the amount of time that is predicted to load/unload cargo, handle documents etc., essentially, how long is the driver expected to spend at a given Stop. This value is used to calculate the Depart milestone scheduled time, Scheduled To + Handling Time.
Automatic Scheduled Times
Scheduled times can be automated by using the Material Order Settings table. In this settings table you will find the "Auto-Complete scheduled times" section. As mentioned above, one of the ways to automate Scheduled Times is to use Initial Delay and Handling Time. The third option is to use the Transit Time - for details, refer to this article.
Each time a Material order is saved, the system will try to auto-complete one of the missing scheduled times using these settings.
