This article explains how to get started with MotionTools. Got a question? Feel free to write us directly via chat when being logged into your dashboard or send us an email to support@motiontools.com. If you don't have access to MotionTools yet, please signup at www.motiontools.com. If you only want to understand what MotionTools is all about, we recommend to read our Introduction first or browse through our website.
Overview
MotionTools helps logistics services like delivery companies to run their business more efficiently. Customers create and manage their bookings in a self-serving way. Dispatcher can see incoming bookings, build optimize tours and assign them to the right drivers. Drivers get a powerful app that helps them to organize and execute their tours efficiently. Owners can customize the behaviour of MotionTools to reflect the needs of their business.
Core Concepts
Please understand the following key terminology and core concepts as they play an essential role across the whole system:
- Service: The service is what the operator is offering their customer (e.g. a delivery)
- Booking: A booking is a request from a customer to execute a service for them. A booking can be created through various ways including through a web booker as well as via API.
- Stop: A stop represents a location where the service is being performed.
- Tour: A tour is a set of stops that was usually route-optimized and is prepared to be handed over to a driver. It can consist of stops from one or multiple customer bookings.
- Package: A package is a individually trackable item that has a size, weight and can be added onto a stop e.g. to be picked up or dropped off.
Getting started
We recommend to get started with MotionTools by first configuring your business. You can find some useful information about this in the article "Configure your business".
It is absolutely essential, that you onboard the different people in your business including your customers and partners. Learn more about how you can configure user accounts in this article.
In order to help them get started, it is recommended that you understand yourself how these different roles actually work. We have compiled a list of getting started articles that focus on onboarding the different types of users:
Onboard a customer: Before a driver can execute a booking, a booking needs to be created. However, you need to create at least one customer in MotionTools before you can create a booking, as each booking belongs to a customer. Read more about creating a customer here.
Onboard a driver: To run any type of logistics services, you typically need a workforce to actually do the job. We call this person a driver. It is crucial that you onboard that drivers to MotionTools. Drivers are organized into Organizations. Read more about how to Getting started as a driver.
Once you have understand the roles "customer" and "driver", you are ready to run some tests. The typical workflow starts with a new booking, tour creation, driver assigning and finally the execution of that tour in the driver app.
Create bookings: A booking is a request from a Customer to go to one or multiple Stops and complete Tasks. It can have a price attached to it and be for a certain service. A service is what an operator offers to their customers. For example, "same-hour delivery" could be a service. MotionTools has various preconfigured services that operators can use to reflect their business model. Read more about booking creation here.
Create tours: While bookings represent what a customer wants you to do for them, it can be quite important to optimize these tasks before handing them over to your workforce. A typical way of optimizing is to merge multiple bookings into route optimized Tours. But if you want to do each booking independently, you can also convert them to Tours "as is" and assign them to drivers directly. All of this is done with the help of our Dispatching tools.
Execute tours: Once a tour has been created, a driver has been onboarded, the next step is for the driver to execute the tour. Not all drivers have access to all tours by default, as MotionTools has sophisticated and highly configurable matching rules that can help you to manage your operations in a smarter way. Read all about how to execute a tour in this article.
