How to create a new Route Plan?

How to Create a new Route Plan?

When you are on the "Route Plans" tab, you will see a button in the top right corner, "+ Create Route Plan."

Click the button and follow the steps in the video tutorial below.

Detailed Overview of how you can add stops, set stop priority, import, Time Window, and more:

• You have three options, "+Add Stops," "+Add Stop (Detailed), and "Import Stops."

  Under Add Stops, you can enter stops without details about the address.

  Under Add Stops (Detailed), you can add stops with much more details.

  • Details like Notes, Company name, Contact Name, Contact Email and Contact Phone number.
  • You can also change other settings for that individual stop, such as the Priority of the stop, "Average Time Per stop" time, and the pin color to distinguish the stop type if necessary. Watch a video to learn more about these settings.

Import Stops

• With Import Stops, you can import up to 500 stops with all the details you want to add for each stop. (Fastest method)

How to Add stops? Manually and Import - Stops and Imports

There are several ways you can add stops, but the three main ways are:

• Add Stops manually (Video Time Stamp 0:30)
• Add Stops (With Details) manually (Video Time Stamp 01:04)
• Import Stops (Video Time Stamp 02:18)

Explore how to do that now in the above video links at each time stamp.

Will the imported stops be automatically saved in the system with all their details?

No, the information and the addresses will not be saved in the system to be used in a different route plan. Use the "Contacts" section to keep your frequent stops for other route plans.

How to see more information about the stops that you imported?

When importing the Excel or CSV file, you import the addresses as stops, and you can also import other details about the stops. For example, Customer Name, Company Name, Notes, Custom Fields, Service Time, and more.

When you import these details, you can always see what and how the data has been imported. When you are on the "Add Stops" page, click on the "Table View" icon, as shown in the image below.

On this menu, you can select and re-arrange the columns you want to see throughout the Upper Route Planner web software. Once selected, close the pop-up, which will save the table view.

Upon the saved view, click on the arrow symbol between the table and the map view. This will give you an expanded (or collapsed) view of the table and the information about the stops.

How to Create a new Route Plan using Contacts?

You can create a Route Plan by adding stops manually with details or using the import function. But there is one more way to simplify your task if you have recurring deliveries to the same address with the exact details.

Example: You deliver meals to the same customers every Tuesday and Thursday. So each address has the exact customer details. In this use case, you can add or import all your addresses as Contacts. This will allow you to use these contacts to create new Route Plans quicker.

Let's see how to create a Route Plan using Contacts.

How to Assign Drivers and Edit Driver information for a specific route plan?

After you have added the stops to your route plan, it's time to assign the drivers. You must assign at least one driver from the list of drivers available in your account. Let's take a look at a quick video tutorial on how to "Assign a Driver."

In this video, you can also see that you can edit each parameter for every driver individually.

Note: This change, however, is only applicable to the current route, and this change will not affect any other route or setting through the Upper Route Planner.

How to Optimize the Route Plan?

Optimize your routes & assign them to your drivers in a single click. After you have selected the drivers for your delivery routes, optimize and assign routes to them with a single click.

Once you have selected your drivers, click on "Optimize & Assign Route" from the bottom right of the screen on the "Assign Drivers" page.

Tip: You can select multiple drivers so the system will optimize and divide the route between the assigned drivers.

⚠️ You cannot skip optimization. But you can manually change the optimized route on the next screen.

How to use the Timeline view?

The timeline view in Upper Route Planner allows users (Admins and Dispatch Managers) to visualize the entire route plan post-optimization. After optimization, the timeline view gives an in-depth idea of which driver gets what route plan, see the mapped routes, manually make last-minute adjustments, swap drivers, re-assign routes to a different driver and more.

Below is an example of what the timeline view is.

The Timeline view on Upper Route Planner allows the Admins and Dispatch Managers to see the routes assigned to each driver. It also allows the users to manually change the routes like adding a stop, reversing a route for a driver, dragging and dropping stops between drivers, dragging and dropping stops on the same timeline for a driver, changing the position of the stops and more.

Tip: Click the links below to watch the exact explainer part

Let's see how to use the timeline view. Jump on the timestamp below

• Drag and Drop stops
• Lock Route
• Reverse Route and Add Stop

Or watch the full video here

How to manually re-arrange the stops after optimization?

Yes! You can always come back and edit the route plans after optimization. You can manually re-arrange the order of the stops or assign the stop to a different driver.

How to swap or re-assign a route to a different driver from the list?

After optimization, the Upper Route Planner has many functions to support most of your business requirements. One is swapping or re-assigning an optimized and dispatched route to a different driver from the list.

Case scenario: You have assigned two drivers to a route plan, created two routes, and dispatched them to the driver's phones. One driver, Max, is out sick on the day of deliveries, and you want to re-assign his route to Rose so she can take over and do the deliveries. Upper Route Planner does this for you in 5 seconds. See how to do that in the video.

Note: Note: This is only possible if the drivers have not yet started the route on their phones.

Using the polygon function, how to re-assign multiple stops to a different driver on the route plan all at once?

After optimization, you are on the timeline view, where you can see which driver gets what stops. After observation, you want to re-assign multiple stops under one driver to the other. You can achieve this using the polygon tool.

Let's watch a quick video on how to use the polygon tool.

What are the advanced settings for a Route Plan?

Advanced Settings are available for each Route Plan. These settings can be changed in the route plan window by clicking on the settings icon in the top right corner.

Let's explore what settings we can change for each route plan.

Questions answered in this video:

• How to change the type of optimization?
  • Optimize by time vs Optimize by distance
• How to adjust the average service time for all the stops?
• How to change Pickup settings?