Recurring Routes Guide – Create Master Routes And Recurring Schedules

Efficient route planning is essential for enterprise businesses managing recurring deliveries, pickups, and service visits. Route4Me’s Recurring Routes feature streamlines planning with Master Route Templates. You can create routes that inherit the same destinations, customer details, timing, and other parameters as the Master. By automating scheduling, you’ll reduce repetitive planning, simplify operations, and minimize missed or delayed visits. Learn more in this guide.

Recurring Routing Overview With Master Routes And Schedules

To streamline the complexity of multi-frequency recurring route planning, the process follows these steps:

1. Plan a route: plan and optimize a route you want to use with Recurring Schedules. You can also use any of your existing routes.
2. Create a Master Route: select a route for Recurring Routing to create a Master Route which the system will use as a template for creating Recurring Routes according to your schedule settings. Editting a Master Route will affect its associated Recurring Routes.
3. Create a Recurring Schedule: add schedule rules and exceptions to define when Recurring Routes will be scheduled to start.

Keep reading to learn more about each step in detail and how to manage your Recurring Schedules and routes.

Create And Manage Recurring Schedules Based On Master Routes

To create a Recurring Schedule, you need a Master Route to use as a template. You can plan a new route or use an existing one as a Master Route. To set up an existing route as a Master Route, you can use the Routes List or Route Editor.

For the Routes List, go to “Dynamic Routing” > “Routes” from the Navigation Menu. Then, click the Down Arrow next to a route and select “Create Recurring Route” to use it as a Master Route.

Open Your Routes List

Create A Recurring Route Schedule

Next, use the Recurring Routes Schedule Editor to configure a Recurring Schedule. Complete all fields in the Editor Panel, then click the “Create Schedule” button to finalize. For help completing each field, see the table below.

NOTE: Use the Schedule Preview to see all dates on which Recurring Routes are scheduled, planned, and blacklisted.

• Dark-Blue dates are used in already created Recurring Routes.
• Light-Blue dates are dates on which Recurring Routes will be scheduled.
• Red dates are blacklisted and won’t be used in Recurring Route Schedules to plan Recurring Routes.

When you are creating Schedule rules, you can define how frequently a rule should be repeated.

For example, you can specify that a Schedule should be repeated every 3 months on certain dates. This Schedule will commence from the Start Date that you specify. Use the Toggle Button next to schedule rules and exceptions to enable or disable them.

Manage Recurring Route Schedules

You can view all of your Recurring Schedules on the Recurring Routes page.

Route4Me’s in-depth filters and grouping options enable you to customize which Recurring Route Schedules are shown on the Recurring Routes Page. You can also use the “Created At” calendar to filter Recurring Schedules by their creation date.

Open Your Recurring Routes

You can also customize the data columns shown on your Recurring Routes page. To do so, click the Display Columns button and check the boxes next to the columns you want to enable.

On the right, you can drag column names to arrange them and customize your Recurring Routes page data table. When finished, click “Apply” to save your changes.

From this page, you can also make edits to Recurring Schedules. Click the corresponding “Edit Schedule” button to open the Recurring Routes Schedule Editor described above.

To change an assigned User, Vehicle, or Facility, hover over the field, and click the Pencil Icon to make your modification.

Manage Master Routes From Recurring Route Schedules Page

To manage a Master Route, click the Down Arrow next to it to open the Action Menu. From here, you can open Master Routes in the Route Editor, change assignment settings, export routes, insert addresses, and remove Master Routes from your account.

Any changes you’ve made to a Master Route will be automatically reflected in it associated Recurring Routes.

To manage multiple Master Routes at the same time, check the boxes next to them and click “Bulk Actions“.

Manage Recurring Routes – Make Modifications From Your Routes List

From your Routes List, you can view all Recurring Routes. To find a specific Recurring Route, search for it by its Master Route name.

If you have a large number of Recurring Routes, you can expedite your search for a specific Route by using the search field or by adjusting your “Filters“, “Group By“, and/or “Created Date” options.

To edit a Recurring Route, click the Down Arrow button and select “Edit Route“. NOTE: When you edit an individual Recurring Route, no changes are made to its associated Master Route or to other Recurring Routes.

The following table outlines which data fields are transferred from the Master Route to the Recurring Route during route creation.

Strategic Routes – Create Schedules For Imported Strategic Optimization Routes

When you use Route4Me’s automated strategic cycle planning to optimize strategic scenario routes, you can import them as Master Routes for Recurring Routing.

You’ll find your imported Strategic Routes on your Recurring Routes page. If they were imported without corresponding Recurring Schedules, simply click “Create Schedule” and follow the steps described above to create a new Recurring Schedule.