Fixed Size Territories – Enterprise Architect

Route4Me’s Enterprise Architect is designed for geocoding and optimizing millions of points and producing the most efficient routes and addresses territories with hundreds of thousands of addresses in a smooth and quick manner. When planning routes, besides the most efficient sequence of stops, you also need to figure out the most optimal way to delegate the right tasks to the right team members. Instead of planning over-sized routes and making your workers travel back and forth across the city, you can break your service area up into optimally sized territories and assign each field employee to the most suitable territory. Moreover, if your business provides multiple services that require your employees to use different equipment or have different skills, you can create a separate territory for each service you provide and then assign the right employees to the right territories accordingly. With the Enterprise Architect, you can upload hundreds of thousands of addresses and then define any preferred fixed number of territories you want to generate from all imported addresses.

To generate address territories, first, import the addresses that you want to use into the Enterprise Architect and then geocode them. To geocode addresses, first, go to the “Addresses” tab and then import the addresses that you want to geocode by clicking on the “Import” button and then uploading the spreadsheet with addresses (in CSV format) from your device.

For the spreadsheet to be successfully processed, it must contain a header row and data rows. The header row defines the type of information you are importing, while the corresponding data rows contain the actual data that is being imported into the app. In addition to the obligatory “Address” column, you can also include other data columns with Route4Me’s reserved attributes (i.e., Revenue, Weight, etc.) and custom data. To learn more about Route4Me spreadsheet requirements, visit this page.

Once the spreadsheet is imported, all columns with their corresponding data are automatically uploaded to the “Addresses” tab. To geocode the imported addresses, click on the “Geocode” button respectively.

After that, select the column that contains the addresses that you want to geocode and then transfer it from the left-side list to the right-side list by clicking on the corresponding button. If you want to automatically upload all geocoded addresses to your Route4Me Synchronized Address Book, check the corresponding box and then click on the “Start” button to initiate geocoding.

Once the addresses are geocoded, the app assigns unique latitude and longitude coordinates to each geocoded address, as well as automatically corrects and completes all geocoded address (“fixed_address” column). Next, to use the geocoded addresses for generating territories, click on the “Territories” button.

After that, to generate a fixed number of territories, first, select the “Fixed Size” option by checking the corresponding box.

Next, in the “Number of Territories” field, define the preferred number of territories you want to generate from all imported addresses and then click on the “Calculate” button accordingly.

Once the territories are generated, they are opened on the map where each territory is displayed with its corresponding borders and highlighted in its distinct color for better visualization.

In the “Addresses” tab, each address is assigned a Group number that indicates the territory which the given address belongs to. NOTE: Territory numbers start with “0.”

Once the Group number is assigned to each address, you can use the generated territories for planning routes. To do so, click on the “Optimize” button and then specify the preferred optimization settings accordingly.

When planning routes with territories, you can plan a single route from each territory (learn more) or plan multiple routes from the addresses within each territory.

After generating territories and assigning a unique Group ID to each address, you can export the generated address territories by clicking on the “Export” button in the “Addresses” tab.