The timeline tab allows you to see your drivers, orders, and routes by their assigned start times and durations. In this tab you can also edit routes by dragging and dropping orders into new positions. In this article, we will provide an introduction to how to read and use the timeline.
| Who can use this feature | |
| Available for all plans | |
| All users | |
| All regions | |
Reading the timeline
The timeline shows your drivers on the left side and the routes and orders for those drivers on the right.
You'll be able to see:
- Routes shown in chronological sequence.
- An unscheduled orders area
- Each route with a color that corresponds to the driver's assigned color.
- The number in the order is the stop number for that order on that particular route.
- Time is shown across the top horizontally in 15 minute, 30 minute, and 1 hour intervals depending on your zoom settings.
The order width corresponds to the duration of the order. Orders under 5 minutes may appear very narrow or simply as lines depending on zoom.
When you hover over a particular order, you will see some of the order details in the space above the timeline to the right. You can see order type, location name, start time, and the driver assigned to the order.
The space between orders with a gray line is the driving time between each location. If the line has blue slanted lines, this is time spent “waiting” at a location. These wait times mean that the driver can arrive earlier to the location than the start time.
Additionally, behind the order tiles, you will see different background indicating different availabilities for the drivers.
- The gray background space shows when the driver is working.
- The white background space shows what’s left of the drivers' workday which is unused. This shows when a driver is available to work more that day.
- And the striped background space in the background shows when the driver is technically not supposed to be working, as this corresponds to their off-work hours.
Configuring the timeline
You can customize the information shown on the timeline and how that information is displayed. At the top of the timeline tab, you will see a few options including: Zoom, Print, Options, and Edit.
Zoom
Zoom will show you smaller or larger time intervals on the timeline.
Moving the bar to the right will “zoom in” on your timeline to show you more detail between time periods
Moving the bar to the left will “zoom out” and show you more orders and less detail between time periods
The print option will allow you to save the timeline as a PDF for printing or digital sharing. When you click the “Print” button, you will see the option to print the whole timeline or just the view you have in your browser.
When you click “Print”, you will be taken to a preview of your timeline in the browser to verify what you are printing. From here, clicking “Print” will take you to your computer’s printing options, where you can then save as a PDF or print to a printer in your network.
Options
The options button will give you more options for how to visualize your orders and routes on the timeline. These include the order display, driver display, timeline display, and capacity display.
Order display
Order display options let you set what information you will see in the order tile on the timeline. The order tile is the little colored box on the timeline that corresponds to your order. By default, we show the stop number, but you can change this to something else.
You can display up to 3 pieces of information on your order tile.
This information can either be shown on a single line. Or with each piece of information having its own line (as shown below). For this option, tick the box that says “Display info on individual lines”
Driver display
Drivers are always displayed alphabetically on the timeline. However, there is an option to show only drivers with routes at the top of the timeline. By ticking the option “Sort drivers with routes at the top”, all drivers without routes will be moved to the bottom of the timeline.
Capacity display
If you use load capacities, you can visualize them in the timeline in order to track the loads in your vehicles over the course of your day and/or routes.
Vehicle capacities can be shown as:
- A total - Example: 1000kg
- A percentage of the maximum load - Example: 50%
- A total in reference to the maximum load - Example: 1000kg/2000kg
You can also choose to show route loads, which will show you how the loads fluctuate over the course of a route. Below you can see the blue bars indicating the load capacity and a red line that indicates the maximum load allotted to that vehicle.
Edit timeline
By clicking "Edit timeline", you will be taken to an editing mode where you can start to manually change and update your routes using drag and drop. You can also get into editing mode simply by dragging and dropping an order from the map or timeline.
The editing mode will allow you to:
- Rearrange orders on routes in the timeline and also on the map
- Add orders to routes from the unscheduled orders panel
- Remove orders from routes
- Drag and drop to and from the timeline and map
Unscheduled orders
The unscheduled orders area allow you to both add orders that are unscheduled to the timeline, and also unschedule orders that are already on routes.
The unscheduled orders panel allows you to:
- Drag orders from it to add to the timeline or map
- Drag orders to it to unschedule them
- Add new orders
- Search for orders in the panel
- Adjust the information shown on the panel
- Minimize the panel