Overview
This article explains how to create package tours and dispatch them to your drivers.
- Create a pickup tour
- Dispatch tour to a driver
- Create a drop-off tour
- Editing an existing package tour
- Recover failed packages
Create a pickup tour
The pickup tour is meant for collecting the package at the customer and dropping it off at one of your hubs.
If your package starts at your hub without needing to pickup from the customer you can skip the pickup tour and create packages in the ‘At hub’ status directly, by mentioning an admin Saved place instead of a customer Saved place as origin. See here for more information regarding Saved places.
- Make sure to have at least one package created. Learn how to create packages here.
- Go to Packages.
- Click on Dispatch packages.
- Select a date range and select For pickup tour from the drop-down list.
- You can also filter for packages by Customer name, Service area or origin city.
- Select all packages you want to merge into a pickup tour.
- Hit the Create new tour button or select an existing tour from the drop-down list and click on Move if you want to add packages to an existing tour.
- Preview the tour you’re about to create or update on the right side of the dashboard.
- If you have packages from multiple origins you can choose a ‘Route start’ and hit the Optimize route button to optimize the pickup stops by shortest time.
- Choose one of your hubs for the drop-off location.
- Optional: Give a tour name if you have many tours built at once and need to identify the tour for editing or dispatching purposes.
- Choose the capabilities that are required by the driver that performs the tour e.g. if a ‘Large Van’ is required.
- Choose a start time for this tour.
- Add additional information for the driver if necessary.
- Hit the Create tour button to save changes and/ or create the tour.
Dispatch tour to a driver
- Go to Bookings.
- Filter for the right date and time and filter for ‘Driver tours’ to find the tour(s) you have just created.
- The tours will be in either the ‘On hold’, ‘Pickable’ or ‘Scheduled’ status. More information regarding booking statuses can be found here.
- Select a preferred driver or let drivers pick their own tours from the pickable or scheduled bookings list.
- Dispatch the tour if it’s in ‘On hold’ status.
Create a drop-off tour
The drop-off tour is meant for delivering packages from your hub to the package recipient.
- Complete a pickup tour first or have at least one package in status ‘At hub’.
- Click on Dispatch packages.
- Select a date range and select For drop-off tour from the drop-down list.
- You can also filter for packages by Customer name, Service area or origin city.
- Select all packages you want to merge into a drop-off tour. You can only select packages from the same ‘Current package location’.
- Hit the Create new tour button or select an existing tour from the drop-down and click on Move if you want to add packages to an existing tour.
- Preview the driver tour you’re about to create or update on the right side of the dashboard.
- Hit the Optimize route button to optimize the drop-off stops by shortest time.
- Optional: Give a tour name if you have many tours built at once and need to identify the tour for editing or dispatching purposes.
- Optional: Enable “A driver should return to a hub after visiting all stops“ to add a return to hub stop at the end of the tour. This is to cover the case when drivers must return vehicles back to a hub after each drop-off tour.
- Choose the capabilities that are required by the driver that performs the tour e.g. if a ‘Large Van’ is required.
- Choose a start time for this tour.
- Add additional information for the driver if necessary.
- Hit the Create tour button to save changes and/ or create the tour.
- Continue with dispatching the tour to a driver to complete the delivery.
Editing an existing package tour
- Go to Packages.
- Click on Dispatch packages.
- Select ‘For pickup tour’ or ‘For drop-off tour’. from the drop-down list.
- You’ll find the existing Pickup or Drop-off tours that are in ‘On hold’ status on the right side of the dashboard.
We allow editing the following for tours that are in ‘On hold’ status:
- Remove packages to merge them into a different tour.
- Change hub stop for pickup tours.
- Rearrange origin stops for pickup tours.
- Rearrange destination stops for drop-off tours.
- Change the start time, name, additional information or capabilities of the tour.
Recover failed packages
Packages that got marked as failed on a stop are visible with the ‘failed’ status. You can recover them in the following steps:
- Go to Packages.
- Filter for the ‘Failed’ package status to find failed packages.
- Open the Package Details page.
- Click on Mark as At Hub to change the package status from ‘Failed’ to ‘At hub’.
- Create another drop-off tour including the recovered package(s).
