Once your deliveries have been added (manually or via Excel import), you can launch the optimisation to automatically generate your routes.
Steps to follow:
- Go to the “Organise” module.
- Click on the “Map” tab.
- Select the desired date from the calendar.
- Click on the “Build Routes” button.
The system will automatically calculate the best routes based on your settings.
⚠️ Warning message during optimisation
If the following message appears:
“Warning! The settings of one or more deliveries have been modified. The optimization must be restarted.”
This means that certain elements have been changed, for example:
- Working hours
- Start or end locations
- Vehicle capacity
- Time slots
In this case, click on “Reoptimise Routes” to recalculate the routes.
Useful optimisation settings
1. Workload distribution
By default, the system aims to maximise route capacity in order to reduce the number of drivers required.
If you would like to distribute the workload more evenly across your teams, you can enable the route balancing option in the optimisation settings.
Please refer to our dedicated article for more details.
2. Optimisation duration
The higher the number of deliveries, the longer the calculation time should be.
For example:
- 500 deliveries per day → recommended duration: 15 minutes.
You can adjust this duration in the optimisation settings.
3. Take usual traffic into account
If you would like route planning to take typical traffic conditions into account, this option must be activated on your account.
➡️ Contact our team at contact@antsroute.com, specifying your account (or organisation) name.
As soon as we receive your request, we will activate the option.
Where can you find all optimisation settings?
To access all optimisation settings, go to:
“Settings” > “Settings” > “Optimisation”.
💡 Find all support articles about optimisation settings here.
Route calculation settings:
- Define a route calculation strategy (fastest or shortest)
- Take traffic into account when building routes and during real-time tracking
- Avoid tolls
Geocoding settings:
- Allow partial geocoding. For example, [32 unknown street, London, United-Kingdom] becomes [London, United-Kingdom]
Optimisation objectives:
- Enable route balancing. Learn more
- Minimise the number of vehicles used during optimisation
- Minimise waiting time between deliveries
- Maximise delivery grouping
- Delivery prioritisation criteria (due date or type of service)
- Minimise unassigned working time vs. the number of unassigned deliveries (beta feature)
Optimisation constraints:
- Set a maximum duration between loading and delivery (or collection and unloading). Learn more
- Ensure the end of a delivery is strictly contained within the defined time slot. For example, if this option is enabled, a delivery lasting 45 minutes with a time slot of 10:00–12:00 can be scheduled at the latest at 11:15.
- Schedule a delivery as early as possible within its time slot
- Assign deliveries with the same address to the same driver
Appointment booking settings:
- Maximum distance allowed to add a first delivery to a route. Learn more
- Maximum distance allowed to add deliveries. Learn more
- Maximum schedule fill rate when adding deliveries
- Validity period of a proposal when adding a delivery (in seconds). Learn more
- Automatically pre-select the best time slot. Learn more
Technical optimisation settings:
- Maximum optimisation duration (in minutes)
- Maximum re-optimisation duration for a route (in seconds)
- Enable dynamic clustering before optimisation (beta feature)
Real-time optimisation settings:
- Automatic re-optimisation of the remaining end of the route
Delay calculation:
- Criteria for calculating delays or early arrivals for ongoing deliveries
Conclusion
Building routes allows you to automatically plan your deliveries in just a few clicks.
To achieve the best results, make sure to:
- Check your settings
- Rerun the optimisation after any changes
- Adjust the calculation duration according to the number of deliveries
To go further, please refer to our dedicated articles on optimisation settings to tailor planning to your needs.
🙋♀️ Need help?
If you encounter any difficulties when building your routes, please do not hesitate to contact AntsRoute Support by email or via the chat available from the web interface.