Set priorities on orders

Priorities tell the OptimoRoute routing algorithm whether specific orders have urgency or importance. In this article, we will explain how this works and how to set priorities on your orders. 

Who can use this feature
	All plans
	All users
	All regions

What are priorities?

Priorities are a soft constraint used in planning to determine whether an order should be first, early in the route, or whether it can be left out. This tells OptimoRoute how important an order is and where in the route to prioritize the order.

Higher-priority orders are generally scheduled earlier in the route, but this is not guaranteed, as other factors, such as time windows, capacity, and overall route efficiency, also play a role.

There are 4 priorities:

• Critical: Considered the most important and the most urgent. The system will attempt to schedule these as early as possible placing the order at the beginning of the route to be done first.
• High: Considered very important and very urgent. The system will attempt to schedule these as early as possible following any Critical orders.
• Medium: The default priority on all orders. Considered not urgent, but important. The system will distribute these along the route generally attempting to place them after any High priority orders.
• Low: Considered not urgent and not important. If not all orders can fit in a route, typically Low priority orders will be left out.

Setting priorities on an order

To add priorities to an order, you can do this either through:

• Editing the order
• Importing the information with the orders
• Using the API

It's best to be conservative when assigning Critical and High priorities, as too many of these can cause big inefficiencies in routing results.

Editing order priority

By default, all orders will be set to have a “Medium” priority if no other is set.

To change the order priority:

1. Go to "Plan & Optimize"
2. Select the order or orders you want to change the priority for
3. Click "Edit order"
4. In the "Priority" input, choose the priority you want for these orders
5. Click “Save”

Importing order priorities

To import priorities on orders:

1. Add a column to your spreadsheet that denotes priority
2. Make sure the input includes the correct codes for priority and that orders only have one priority input
3. Go to "Plan & Optimize"
4. Click "Import Orders"
5. Drop in your spreadsheet
6. Map that column to the "Priority" field in OptimoRoute
7. Continue through the import process

Priority codes or priority name are both supported for import

• C or Critical
• H or High
• M or Medium
• L or Low