How to confirm a work order – Help center

Why confirm a work order?

Confirming a work order is a useful feature, especially if you send notifications to your customers. It allows you to:

Identify the jobs for which you received a confirmation of availability from your customers.
Prioritize certain orders over others during optimization.
Announce a more precise time window to your customers (if the dedicated option is enabled in the settings; see below).

⚠️ The first two uses do not require any specific configuration. However, to automatically refine time slots when a work order is confirmed, you must first enable the corresponding option in the settings.

Configuring the announcement of a more precise time slot

To use the Confirmed status to announce a more precise time slot, you must enable the following setting: Automatically adjust time slots when confirming work orders.

In practice, confirming a job automatically restricts its time slot to the smallest time slot defined in your settings, while ensuring that the scheduled time of the job is included within that window.

Steps to follow

Go to the “Settings” module.
Click on “General” settings.
Enable the option “Automatically adjust time slots when putting on hold or confirming”.
Select the time slots to be adjusted when orders are confirmed.
Click the “Save” button.

💡 Good to know: You can choose which time slots the automatic adjustment will apply to when confirming work orders. By default, all time slots are selected.

Example of how it works

For example, if a work order is scheduled within a large time window (such as 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.), confirming it allows the system to narrow it down to the shortest compatible time window defined in your Settings > Time slots (e.g., 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.).

⚠️ If several time slots (with the shortest duration) are compatible, AntsRoute always selects the last compatible slot in the list.
For example, if your settings display in this order 09:00–18:00 then 08:00–17:00, and you define a wide slot 08:00–18:00, AntsRoute will select 08:00–17:00, since it is the last matching slot in the list.

⚠️ In case of overlap between two slots, AntsRoute always chooses the later one.
For example, if your settings contain the slots 13:00–15:00 and 14:00–16:00, and you schedule a job with a slot 13:00–16:00 and an expected arrival at 14:20, AntsRoute will select the slot 14:00–16:00.

Impact of confirming work orders on job priority

Priority rules during optimization:

Confirmed work orders are given the highest priority.
On-hold work orders come next.
Planned work orders have the lowest priority.

So, if certain work orders cannot be included in a route (due to, for instance, agent working hours), planned work orders will be the first to be excluded, followed by on-hold work orders, and lastly confirmed work orders.

How to confirm a work order?

You can confirm a work order from any of the four tabs in the “Organize” module. Here's how to do it from the “List of work orders” tab:

Go to the “Organize” module.
Click the “List of work orders” tab.
Use the date selector to choose the day the work order is scheduled.
Find the work order, click “…”, then select “Confirm”.

💡 Work orders that are confirmed appear in green in the schedule.

☝️ Good to know: You can confirm all work orders in a route with a single action from the “List of work orders” tab. Here’s how:

Go to the “Organize” module.
Click on the “List of work orders” tab.
Select a date using the date picker.
Click on the “Filter” button, then choose “Driver”.
Select the relevant driver, then click “Apply”.
Tick the checkbox in the table header to select all listed work orders.
Click the “Actions” button and select “Confirm”.

💡 If needed, you can increase the number of tasks visible per page.

☝️ Good to know: you can also confirm a work order in a route that has already started.

How to cancel the confirmed status of a work order?

To cancel the confirmation of a work order, you can also use any of the tabs in the “Organize” module. Here’s how from the “List of work orders” tab:

Go to the “Organize” module.
Click the “List of work orders” tab.
Use the date selector to choose the work order’s scheduled day.
Find the work order in the list, click “…”, then select “Unconfirm”.