Set Up a Saved Route

A saved route is a standing plan: which sites, in what order, who runs it, and which days it goes out. Set one up once and every week's booking comes from it — by a click on the calendar, or automatically. This article is about getting the days right, including the common case where one round mixes customers on different frequencies.

A route's days and a customer's days are two different things

A route has Service days — the days the van goes out. A customer has an agreement that says how often they are served: every 7 days, twice a week on Monday and Thursday, two visits a week. The route's days are the union of what its stops need; on any given day, only the stops that are due that day are booked.

Which days a stop is due is worked out per stop, in this order:

1. The agreement's named weekdays, on the days the route runs. If the customer's contract says Monday and Thursday, no route setting and no pin can move the stop off those days. A named day the route does not run is simply not served by this route; if the route runs on none of the named days, the stop is not dropped — it falls through to the rules below and is served on the route's day anyway. That is a mismatch to fix on one side or the other, and OpsVara says so: the apply result lists the stop in amber, and route health counts it as served on days their agreement doesn't name (see After the route exists).
2. The stop's own Visit days pin. Set on the route, for stops whose agreement leaves the day open. Pin one day, or every day the route runs — a pin of both days serves the stop on both, even when its agreement says once a week.
3. The agreement's frequency or interval, spread over the route's days. Once a week, or every 5 to 7 days, takes the route's first service day. Twice a week, or every 3 or 4 days, takes the first two. Never more days than the route runs. A count per month is treated as once a week: a site sold as three visits a month is due on the route's first day every week the route runs.
4. Every route day, when nothing else says otherwise — an agreement with no interval, weekdays, or visits per period. A site with no active agreement at all is due every day but never gets a new job: applying the route skips it as having no active agreement. A job already on the day for it is still added to the run.

Before any of that, the agreement's dates are checked. A site whose active agreement for the work does not include the day — it starts later, or it ended and has not been marked expired yet — is not due that day at all, and applying lists it as outside agreement dates and creates nothing. As with a site with no agreement, a job the office already put on that day is still added to the run. An agreement with no start or end date is open on that side, as it always was.

So a Monday-and-Wednesday route holding five twice-a-week customers and two once-a-week customers books seven stops on Monday and five on Wednesday, with nobody choosing per stop.

Three ways to make a route

The first two start on Dispatch → Saved Routes; the third starts on the Assign Work or Route Planner tab.

By hand — New Route

1. 1

   Open New Route

   On the Routes view, press New Route. The New Saved Route dialog opens.

2. 2

   Name it and say who runs it

   Fill in Name. Pick a Default worker — the person the route is applied to — and, if you like, a Backup worker for days they are out.

3. 3

   Set the schedule

   Under Schedule, set How often and the Service days. The fields are described in the next section. You can leave it on Manual — apply by hand and come back later.

4. 4

   Add the sites

   Under Add Site to route, type two or more letters of a site or city name, choose the work type, and click a site to add it. Sites already on the route for that work type say so. Drag stops into driving order, or press the Driving order button — it names the miles it would save, and reads In driving order when there is nothing to gain.

5. 5

   Set Visit days if you need to

   Once the route has two or more service days, each stop shows Visit days chips — Auto plus one chip per service day. Leave Auto for the agreement to decide, or click one day — or more — to pin them. Clicking a pinned day again unpins it; unpin every day, or click Auto, to hand the stop back to the agreement.

6. 6

   Create Route

   The route appears in the table with its days in the Cadence column.

With the Route Builder — Build Routes

Build Routes proposes a whole set of routes from a map of sites and packs them to the capacity you set. Five steps: Scope, Capacity, Review, Sequence, Commit.

• Scope: pick a work type, optionally a territory, or draw an area on the map. Only sites not already on a route is on by default. A site needs an active agreement for that work type that has started and not ended, a map location, no service hold, and an active customer; the step says how many qualify and how many were skipped for a hold or a missing map location. Save these as one route here skips the planner and saves exactly these sites as a single route straight away, with no schedule.
• Capacity: Stops per day and Minutes per day are prefilled from your work types. Under Build for specific people, tick the people who will drive: each gets their own routes, starting from their own start location and holding only work they are qualified for. Each name shows Home, Start location, or Main office — what you set on that person under SettingsTeam → Start location (Company dispatch address (default), a yard, or Their own address). Leave Routes each blank (Auto) and the caps decide how many routes each person needs — a week of stops becomes a week of routes; type a number to pin it.
• Review: rename routes and move stops. Expand a route with Show N stops. Each stop has Move to… — pick another proposed route to move it there. On the map, square dark pins are origins, not stops: Main office (shop glyph) or Home (house glyph). Hover reads Route starts and ends here (or N routes start and end here when several share a yard). One pin per distinct place. Clicking a stop pin moves it onto the route you have selected, as long as exactly one destination is lit; otherwise the click selects that stop's own route.
• Sequence: drag stops into driving order. Pins on this step do not move a stop to another route — a re-solve would throw the order away.
• Commit: fill in Route book name (the button stays greyed until you do), choose Ongoing or For one season, confirm Assigned to on each route, and open Set a schedule on each route to give it service days. Then press Create N routes.

The Scope map already pins Main office with the tooltip Routes start and end here, until a proposal brings its own origins.

The builder does not set per-stop Visit days. Open the route from the Routes view after committing to pin any. Routes committed with Save as a draft are listed with a Draft badge and can still be applied by hand, but they do not auto-apply and do not count in route health until the book is activated under Route Books.

From a planned day — Save As Route Template

On Dispatch → Route Planner, the day you have planned for the focused person can be saved as a route with Save As Route Template, with that person as the Default worker. On Assign Work, the ⋮ menu's Save current route saves every job on the board for that single day — all crew, one stop per site, no Default worker. Both open the Save As Route Template dialog. Routes made this way start on Manual with no days: open them from the Routes view and set a schedule, or wait until the run has gone well and use Repeat weekly on the calendar — see Put a Route on the Calendar.

The Schedule block, field by field

The same block appears in New Saved Route, in a route's Edit dialog, and under Set a schedule on the builder's Commit step.

Sites at different frequencies on one route

The worked example: one technician, seven sites on Monday, five of the same sites again on Wednesday, because five customers are on twice a week and two are on once a week.

1. 1

   One route, two service days

   New Route → How often = Every week → Service days = Mon and Wed → Default worker → add all seven sites → Create Route.

2. 2

   Let the agreements decide

   Leave every stop on Auto. The five twice-a-week customers are due both days; the two once-a-week customers are due Monday. Wednesday books five.

3. 3

   Move a once-a-week stop to Wednesday, if you want

   Open the route, find the stop, click Wed under Visit days. The pin outranks the agreement's frequency, but never the agreement's named weekdays.

This only works when the five agreements actually say twice a week — Service days Mon and Wed, Visits per period 2 Per week, or a visit interval of 3 or 4 days. An agreement that says every 7 days is served once, on the route's first day, however many days the route runs — unless you pin that stop to both days.

The alternative: two routes

If the agreements say every 7 days and you would rather not change them, build two routes for the same person: a Monday route with all seven sites and a Wednesday route with the five. Each must have a schedule — Every week, or Every few weeks — with its own service days. A site on two routes that run on different days is not reported as a conflict; a route left on Manual conflicts with every other route holding the site, because a route with no days might run on any day, and it draws no Plan cell and never auto-applies.

Where each rhythm lives

After the route exists

Book it. On Schedule → Saved Routes, each route is a row and each service day shows a dashed Plan cell. Click one to open Apply Saved Route, check the Preview, and press Apply Route. Or press Apply on the route's row under Dispatch → Saved Routes and pick the Target date yourself; Crew member starts on the route's Default worker (and is fixed when you have only one field worker). The Preview lists every stop on the route, not just the ones due that day.

The result says how many stops were applied and names the ones skipped. A stop that was not due on that weekday is listed as not due on this service day; it means the stop is served on its other day, not that something failed. A stop listed as outside agreement dates has an agreement that does not cover the day — check its start and end dates.

Under that, an amber box headed 1 stop was served on a day its agreement doesn’t name (or N stops were served on days their agreement doesn’t name) lists stops that were booked, but on a day the customer's agreement does not name, one line each — for example Kona Palms — agreement names Fri; this route runs Mon, Thu — served Mon anyway. The agreement names only days this route never runs, so the stop fell through to the route's own day. The job is still created or linked exactly as before; the box is there so the mismatch is seen. Change the agreement's days, or move the stop to a route that runs them. A due stop that ends up skipped — for example with Create Jobs for stops that do not have one yet on this date unticked and no job to link — is listed under skipped only, not in the box.

Or let it book itself. Turn on Put this route on the calendar automatically in the Schedule block. The daily sweep creates the jobs Lead time days ahead, and skips a service day on which nothing is due — or on which none of the stops due has an agreement covering that day and none of them already has a job there, since applying would book nothing. A skipped day is not claimed, so a later sweep still books it once an agreement covers it. A day whose only work is jobs the office already put there is still booked: the sweep adds them to the run. It books off-agreement stops the same way a manual apply does and does not show them to anyone; route health is where they appear.

Route health. Dispatch → Saved Routes → Health (when the Big Board is on for your account) flags routes with No assignee, routes that are Over capacity, and stops that are also on another route. Two chips compare each stop's agreement, as it reads today (including its Seasonal Frequency window), with the days apply actually books:

• N stops need more visits than their routes give — the agreement names a day that no active route holding the site runs, or asks for more visits a week (or a shorter interval, or a tighter every-few-weeks cycle) than those routes give together. Every route holding the site counts, so a Monday route plus a Thursday route for a twice-a-week customer is fine, and so is a twice-a-week customer on a route that runs both days.
• N stops served on days their agreement doesn't name — this route serves the stop on a day the agreement does not name, because the route runs none of the agreement's days. These are the same stops the apply result lists in amber.

Under the card, Show N stops to check against the agreement lists each one as site · customer — what is wrong. A route whose season has ended, a route outside its own Season starts / Season ends dates today, a route with no service days (a Manual route usually has none), and a stop with no active agreement report neither. A route outside its season dates also does not count as serving anyone: a summer-only Friday route leaves a Friday customer uncovered in October, and Health says so.

Dispatch. While Saved routes in dispatch on SettingsDispatch is set to Ignore saved routes — which is how it ships — the SOLIVEN assign engines do not look at a route's Default worker at all; the worker only matters when the route is applied, by hand or automatically. Prefer the route owner makes the engines favour the owner, and Only the route owner restricts route work to the owner or backup; each work type can override the company setting under Saved routes on SettingsWork Types.

Look at a whole route book

Dispatch → Saved Routes → Route Books lists every book — active first, then drafts, then archived, ten to a page — and the search box on the right finds a book by name. Each tab of Saved Routes has its own search box in the same place, and what you type on one tab stays on that tab.

Click a book to open it. The popup is for looking, not editing; change routes on the Routes tab. Archived books open too, read-only, so last season's routes stay readable.

• List shows the book's routes with the Routes tab's columns. Click a route to show its stops in driving order.
• Map puts every stop of every route on one map, one pin per stop in the route's colour. Click a route in the list beside the map, or a pin, to pick that route out and dim the rest; Show all brings them back.
• Route, worker, or site… narrows both views to the routes that match.
• A stop whose site has no map location is not drawn. The line under the map says how many: 3 stops have no map location and are not shown. Set the site's address or pin to put it on the map.

A route's colour is picked from the route palette when the route is made. The app accepts only a hex colour such as #0F8F85; any other value sent to it is refused, and one stored before that check is shown in a palette colour instead.

Verify it worked

• Dispatch → Saved Routes lists the route with the right Cadence and Assigned person.
• Schedule → Saved Routes shows the route's row with a dashed Plan cell on each service day in the coming week.
• Open the route: on a route with two or more service days, each stop shows Visit days with Auto or the days you pinned.
• Apply the first service day: the result says Applied 7 stops with no skipped list, the day's run shows on Schedule → Saved Routes, and the crew sees the day on their phone.

When something looks wrong