Understand route planning through the work you do

Flowtlas organizes locations, resources and work for route planning. Its engine models service visits, ordered pickup and delivery tasks, and tours with one or more dated working periods. Check current product access and enabled workflows when discussing a specific deployment.

Route planning describes the work, resources and rules that define a usable route. Optimization searches for assignments and visit sequences within those rules. Accurate inputs matter in both steps; a shorter journey is not useful if a required job cannot be completed.

Yes. Stops can have supplied time windows, and tours have dated work windows. Include service duration and travel requirements as well so the model reflects the time the work actually needs.

Yes. Service duration is supplied for each task stop. A short inspection and a longer repair can therefore consume different amounts of the available working period.

Yes. Tasks and places can restrict eligibility, and resources can carry supplied skills. The engine uses those requirements when determining eligible tours. It does not independently verify professional qualifications or equipment records.

The request supports breaks in tour work windows and unavailable periods for resources. These are explicit planning inputs. They should not be described as a complete legal working-time or employee-roster compliance system.

Yes. A task can contain ordered stops, keeping its pickup and delivery within one task on the same tour. Supply the locations, durations, visit windows and load changes for each stop.

Yes. Positive and negative stop changes describe load being added or removed. Supply the starting load and capacity consistently so every point along the route can be evaluated.

The engine supports named capacity dimensions, so a request can describe several quantities. Use consistent names, units and integer values across capacity and load fields. This is a capacity model, not a physical packing or automatic unit-conversion system.

An explicitly supplied task chain can include these stop actions. The caller must provide the locations, sequence, durations and load effects. The action name alone does not select a facility or enforce industry-specific operating rules.

Yes. A tour can have several dated work windows within the planning horizon. This can model multi-day service or inspection work with one vehicle and its assigned people.

Not automatically. A specified endpoint closes the overall tour; it does not create a nightly return after every work window. Daily return requirements need to be modeled and verified.

No automatic hotel selection or booking is established by the current implementation. Supply required stops explicitly and handle accommodation decisions in the operational workflow.

The planning engine plans supplied tasks. Generating future visits from a recurrence or service-frequency rule is a separate responsibility. Confirm the app or integration that creates those dated tasks before promising an automatic recurring-visit workflow.

Yes, the engine accepts an earlier plan and a commitment policy, as well as recorded vehicle position and load. The application must send accurate state and the correct previous-plan data; availability of a fully connected workflow must be verified.

Work may lack an eligible tour or fail to fit capacity, time or route constraints. When the request permits partial work, the result can report unassigned tasks and reason categories. Review those reasons together with the task and resource data.

No. It means the bounded search did not find a solution. Review the inputs, constraints and search budget. This differs from an infeasible result based on an established hard contradiction.

No. Complete describes coverage of active tasks in the returned result. It does not prove global optimality. Compare the result using your actual constraints and a reproducible baseline before making any efficiency claim.

Do not assume that. The engine can accept recorded vehicle positions and loads, but a data source must provide them. Current road estimates should not be presented as predictive traffic or proof that continuous GPS tracking is connected.

A configured planning agent can supply bounded advice at supported checkpoints, such as assignment preferences or a request to reconsider a limited set of work. The planning engine retains the hard constraints. The default setup does not establish an active external agent.

Field service, maintenance, inspections, prepared retail visit lists, deliveries and collections are useful starting points. The right fit depends on the required constraints; industry labels alone do not establish regulatory or specialist workflow support.

An explicit charging or service stop can be represented, but that is not a battery-consumption model or temperature-monitoring system. Specialist energy, temperature and regulatory rules need additional verified modeling and integrations.

Bring a representative list of locations and work, expected service durations, visit windows, available vehicles and people, capacity requirements and the rules that cannot be changed. Use synthetic or appropriately sanitized examples when sharing data for a demonstration.

That depends on the operation and the baseline. Use the same work, resources, constraints and travel assumptions to compare plans. A percentage saving or fixed solve-time guarantee needs measured evidence from a representative run.

No. It is optional and disabled by default. Enable it only for the supported service-visit request shape and confirm that your connected workflow exposes the required settings.

The current fairness phase accepts static single-stop visits without load changes, task rules or existing/live plans. The planning engine can route pickup-and-delivery work, but that request shape cannot use this optional balancing phase.

No. The percentage is an upper limit on additional distance, not a target to spend. The planning engine may improve balance without extra travel, or retain the baseline when no feasible improvement fits the allowance.

Yes. Tasks can require supplied skills, and tours combine the skills of their vehicle and assigned workers. Resource restrictions and availability also affect eligibility.

When both stops are one connected job, represent them as an ordered stop chain in one task. Use relations between separate tasks when the work needs explicit grouping, separation or timing rules.

No. Use an explicit same-tour rule when connected jobs must share a route. Timing relationships are applied to the relevant jobs on that tour; do not assume they provide cross-vehicle synchronization.