How scheduling works

Scheduling is a tool with which you can easily build, for example, a week’s schedule for the selected Location and workers, or redistribute tasks across several workers (e.g. in connection with an absence).

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Note: Only one person can be scheduling a given task or worker at a time. For others they behave as locked.

Note: Scheduling runs only when you start it. Allocator does not optimize or rearrange days in the background on its own.

What scheduling optimizes

The purpose of scheduling is to build a whole where the total cost of the work stays as low as possible. If there is not enough work for everyone, this can lead to uneven workdays, because it is usually cheaper for a worker already in the field to handle a task — unless another worker’s starting address is closer to the task’s address.

total cost, cheapest, uneven days, purpose

The cost model

The cost consists of two factors:

• Driving distance — distance driven, priced per unit of distance.
• Driving time — working time spent driving, priced per minute.

Both prices, the distance unit (kilometers or miles) and the currency symbol are set for your organization in General settings → Statistics.

The algorithm compares different schedule alternatives based on these prices and picks the cheapest one that also respects the given constraints.

kilometers, driving time, price, euro per km

The constraints

Whatever the cheapest alternative is, it must respect:

• working times and overtime
• task requirements and possible workers
• time windows and repeat rules
• locked tasks, which keep their exact time and assignee

working times, overtime, requirements, time windows, repeat rules

Vehicle capacity

When tasks involve transporting goods, the optimizer also ensures that vehicle capacity is not exceeded at any point of the day: each task’s Load is tracked across the route, so a schedule that would overload the vehicle is never proposed.

vehicle capacity, load, cargo, overload, goods

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Vehicle capacity

Transport onlyThe vehicle's load is kept within capacity at every point of the day.View as Transport

Worker priority

A worker’s priority steers who the work accumulates to: the bigger the priority difference, the more expensive the algorithm considers using the lower-priority worker.

priority, favor workers, expensive, steering

Two practical consequences

1. Minimal driving and an even division of work are often in conflict. A more even division requires separate steering — see the FAQ.
2. The more constraints you add to individual tasks, the less room the algorithm has to optimize.

even division, conflict, constraints reduce room

optimizer, optimization, cost, algorithm, driving, scheduling logic