Plan orders over multiple days or weeks

Weekly planning helps you schedule orders that can be completed within a flexible date range up to 5 weeks. For example, use it to optimize routes for orders that must be completed during a specific week or month. This article explains how to use weekly planning.

Who can use this feature
	Pro and Custom plans
	All users
	All regions

What is weekly planning?

Weekly planning helps you schedule orders across a flexible planning period of up to five weeks. Instead of assigning each order to a fixed date, you can set the days, dates, and times when the order can be scheduled. OptimoRoute then chooses a day from the specified range when creating routes.

Weekly planning supports limits such as:

• Allowed days of the week
• An earliest and latest scheduling date
• Blackout dates or date ranges
• Allowed date and time windows

Weekly planning can help you plan routes and workloads several weeks in advance and balance work across drivers, vehicles, and available days.

This feature is available upon request for all Pro plans and higher. Contact customer support to activate weekly planning or to upgrade your account.

Planning routes with weekly planning

Once you have weekly planning enabled for your account, you can plan up to 5 weeks at a time. 

To plan routes: 

1. Go to the "Plan and Optimize" tab
2. Choose a date that will define the start week
3. Select the period you want to plan across
4. Add orders if you haven't already
5. Click "Plan Routes"

Your orders will now be planned onto routes across the selected time period. 

Setting weekly planning days 

Before planning, make sure your planning configuration is set up how you want it. You can choose which days OptimoRoute can use for weekly planning. You can also choose which day starts the planning week.

"Planning days" control which days are available for scheduling. For example, clear Saturday and Sunday to exclude weekends from planning.

"Weekly planning start day" controls when each planning week begins. For example, select Sunday if your planning week runs from Sunday through Saturday.

To change these settings:

1. Go to "Administration→Settings"
2. Then from the left menu, choose Route & Planning→Weekly Planning
3. Adjust the planning days and start date
4. Click "Save"

Choosing a date

When you select a date, OptimoRoute uses the full week that contains that date.

For example, selecting March 26 in the calendar selects the week from Monday, March 25, through Sunday, March 31.

When you select a planning range longer than one week, the range starts with the week that contains the selected date and continues for the chosen number of weeks.

Tip: You can adjust which day of the week is your start date in your account settings.

Adjusting the map view

To change the view:

1. Open the Day/Week dropdown next to the date picker.
2. Select the planning range you want to view.

In a multiweek view:

• Each driver is shown with a different color.
• The letter on each map pin shows the day of the week.
• The "Orders" and "Routes" tabs show information for the selected planning period.

Once you have planned your routes, you can view them, you still have the flexibility of viewing routes and orders per day:

or per week/s:

Adding weekly constraints

Weekly planning has additional constraints that are not available during normal planning. You can add these order and driver constraints to your schedules. The routes and schedules that OptimoRoute plans will take all of these into account.

These constraints include: 

• Allowing an order to be scheduled only on certain days
• Restricting the scheduling date for an order
• Blackout dates to restrict scheduling days
• Advanced driver constraints like scheduling driver availability for certain days

Allow order only on certain days

This constraint tells the system that an order can only be serviced on certain days of the week, for example "Saturdays and Sundays". There are two ways to add this constraint: 

• Editing an individual order by going to the "Basic info" section of the order window
• Adding the information on import using the "Allowed Days" column and inputting the allowed day or days of the week (e.g. M, T, Th or Mon, Tue, Thu)

Restrict scheduling date

This constraint tells the system that an order can only be serviced on a specific day or date range, for example "May 14-May 18". 

There are two ways to add this constraint: 

• Editing an individual order by going to the "Basic info" section of the order window
• Adding the information on import using the following columns:
  • "Earliest date"
  • "Latest date"
  • "Only on date"  

Blackout dates

Blackout dates mark dates or date ranges when customers are unavailable for deliveries, inspections, maintenance, or other services.

Use blackout dates for:

• Holidays
• Customer closures
• Busy periods
• Any date when drivers cannot complete the order

There are two ways to add this constraint: 

• Editing an individual order by going to the "Basic info" section of the order window
• Adding the information on import using the "Blackout dates" columns

Importing blackout dates

Blackout dates help OptimoRoute avoid scheduling orders when the customer is unavailable. This information can be imported. To do this:

1. Add a "Blackout Date" column to your spreadsheet.
2. Enter the unavailable date or dates (separated by a comma)
3. Import the file.
4. Map the column as usual.

Examples of date formats that are supported during import are:

• 03/26/2024,
• 03/26/2024-03/27/2024,
• 03/26/2024, 03/27/2024-03/28/2024,
• 03/26/2024-03/31/2024, 04/08/2024-04/12/2024,
• 2024-03-26 – 2024-03-29,
• 2024-03-26-2024-03-31, 2024-04-26-2024-04-30
   

Advanced planning settings and driver constraints

Planning settings with weekly planning has additional configurations. Weekly planning includes an "Advanced view" for updating driver limits across the selected planning period.

When you click "Plan Routes", the "Planning Settings" window opens. It includes two views:

• Basic view: Update driver limits for one date at a time.
• Advanced view: Update driver limits across multiple dates in the planning period.

In "Advanced view", drivers are listed in rows on the left. Dates in the selected planning period are shown in columns across the top. Use the grid to review and update each driver’s settings for specific dates.

Selecting drivers and dates

If no selection is made, then the planner will use all drivers and dates shown in the window. 

To plan with specific driver and date combinations:

• Select one cell: Click a driver and date cell. Selected cells appear gray. Click the cell again to clear the selection.
• Select all dates for one driver: Click the checkbox next to the driver’s name. Click it again to clear the selection.
• Select all drivers for one date: Click the checkbox above the date. Click it again to clear the selection.

After selecting the cells, you can also update these settings:

• Work time: Set the driver’s start and finish times.
• Vehicle: Assign a vehicle.
• Disable: Make the driver unavailable on the selected dates.
• Enable: Make the driver available on the selected dates.
• Lock: Prevent changes to the planned route for the selected driver and date.
• Reset: Remove the selected overrides and restore the driver’s default settings.

Example:

Below you will see an example of an advanced view with multiple driver constraints applied.

This feature is available upon request for all Pro plans and higher. Contact customer support to activate weekly planning or to upgrade your account.