Address Scheduling – Add Schedules to Customer Addresses
Table of Contents
Route4Me’s Recurring Routing allows you to create custom schedules for repetitive visitation of recurring addresses or contacts on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even annual basis. You can schedule deliveries and automate route planning for those customers that opt for subscription-based services and frequent and constant service. Properly scheduled routing enables you to automate visitation patterns as well as correctly structurize and organize your route optimization activities. With Recurring Routing, you can build an entire system of scheduled events and ensure that all your clients with repetitive schedules are duly visited and serviced. Route4Me provides flexible routing and scheduling options that allow you to set up Recurring Routing in virtually any possible repetitive pattern. To create or edit a visitation schedule and schedule deliveries for a particular contact or address, first, go to Address Book List from the navigation menu.
Then, right-click on the contact/address for which you want to create a new schedule and select Edit. Alternatively, you can open the Add Address window when creating a new entry in the Address Book List.
In the Edit Address window, open the Schedule tab and click on the Add New Schedule button.
Schedule Editor allows repeating a scheduled event on a Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Annual basis respectively.
To schedule the address/contact to be visited on a Daily basis, first, click on the corresponding radio button. In the Repeat every day field, type in the number of days that corresponds with the interval at which you want the address to be visited. In the example below the event is set to be repeated every third day.
Then select the date from which the schedule should start working, make sure that the Enabled button is switched on, and click OK to finish.
Based on the settings above, the selected address is set to be visited every third day starting from the 15th of October.
To schedule deliveries and certain addresses/contacts to be visited on a Weekly basis, first, click on the corresponding radio button. In the Repeat every week next days field, select the days on which you want the address to be visited. In the example below the event is set to be repeated every Monday and Tuesday of every second following week.
Then select the date from which the schedule should start working, make sure that the Enabled button is switched on, and click OK to finish.
Based on the settings above, the selected address is set to be visited every Monday and Tuesday of every second following week starting from the 15th of October.
To schedule the address/contact to be visited on a Monthly basis, first, click on the corresponding radio button. In the Repeat every month field, type in the number of months that corresponds with the interval at which you want the address to be visited (1 – every month, 2 – every second month, 3 – every third month, etc.). Then click on the on days radio button and select the dates on which you want the address to be visited. In the example below the event is set to be repeated every first, eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-ninth day of each following month.
Then select the date from which the schedule should start working, make sure that the Enabled button is switched on, and click OK to finish.
Based on the settings above, the selected address is set to be visited every first, eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-ninth day of each following month starting from the 15th of October.
You can also use the on days option to select more specific days of the month on which the address should be visited (e.g. every second Friday of the month or every first day of the month, etc.). Then select the date from which the schedule should start working in the Starting From field, make sure that the Enabled button is switched on and click OK to finish.
Based on the settings above, the selected address is set to be visited every first day of each following month starting from the 15th of October.
To schedule deliveries and certain addresses/contacts to be visited on an Annual basis, first, click on the corresponding radio button. In the Repeat every year on months field, type in the annual interval (1 – every year, 2 – every second year, 3 – every third year, etc.) and select the month(s) during which you want the address to be visited. Then select the date from which the schedule should start working in the Starting From field, make sure that the Enabled button is switched on, and click OK to finish.
Based on the settings above, the selected address is set to be visited every day of every October of each following year starting from the 15th of October.
You can also use the on days option to select more specific days of the year on which the address should be visited (e.g. every first Monday of every October of each following year etc.). Then select the date from which the schedule starts working in the Starting From field, make sure that the Enabled button is switched on and click OK to finish.
Previewing and Editing Schedules
Once the schedule is created, it appears in the Schedule tab of the Edit Address window. To edit or remove the created schedule, use the corresponding buttons next to it.
To view the schedule in a calendar, click on the Schedule Preview button.
Schedule Preview displays the corresponding schedule in the calendar so that it is easier to visualize the schedule and make needed adjustments respectively.
Using the Blacklist
You can also exclude certain days from the schedule using the Edit Blacklist option.
In the Edit Blacklist window, first, click on the green plus icon to add a new blacklist and then select the dates that you want to exclude from the corresponding schedule. Click OK to save the blacklist.
Based on the settings above, the selected address is set to be visited every Monday and Tuesday of each following week starting from the 15th of October. The added blacklist excludes the selected date (the 22-nd of October) from the schedule as displayed in the example below.
To schedule deliveries and add a new schedule, click on the corresponding button in the Edit Address window. Once finished, click Save for the created schedule(s) to take effect.
Uploading Weekly Schedules for Multiple Addresses
You can create custom schedules for addresses you need to visit on the weekly basis by uploading spreadsheet files. The file needs to contain the following columns:
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Address (containing street name and number, city, state and ZIP code);
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Lat (latitude coordinates of the address);
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Lng (longitude coordinates of the address);
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A column for each day of the week, Monday to Sunday (scheduled days are marked with 1, other days are marked with 0).
To upload a list of scheduled addresses, in the Address Book List, click File → Upload Schedules.
Drag and drop the file with the scheduled addresses into the Browse File to Upload area or left-click on the corresponding area and select the file from your device.
NOTE: To add a weekly schedule to a set of existing contacts, first, you need to remove the corresponding contacts from the Address Book, then re-upload the file with the contacts and schedule columns to avoid creating duplicated entries.
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