Overview
This article explains how the Merge with preview feature works and how to use it to build tours manually.
MotionTools offer multiple ways to optimize incoming bookings into tours for drivers. More details are covered in the article: Tour builder. The Merge with preview feature would work best for bundling various bookings structures (e.g. 1-stop bookings, 2-stop bookings) into a tour, as well as for merging some stops of a booking into a tour.
The Merger displays a preview of the tour route in a map, shows ETA and delays as well as tour statistics to help dispatchers plan more complex tours.
This feature currently allows dispatchers to optimize tours by distance or rearrange stops manually, and we’re working on bringing in more sorting algorithms and timeslot management in the future iterations.
Basic steps to build a tour with the Merger
Identify the relevant bookings and make sure that the bookings are in the right status
Use the filters to identify relevant bookings. If bookings are in instant
, pickable
or scheduled
state, please make sure to put them in the ‘On Hold’ state. MotionTools currently only supports merging bookings into tours for bookings that are in the status ‘On Hold’.
This is to protect the dispatcher from running into an issue when a booking that is already visible to a driver will be started while the tour is being planned. For a summary of the different booking statuses, please read Booking statuses.
Select bookings and select launch the Merger
- Select relevant bookings.
- Adjust the Split button if it doesn’t show Merge bookings yet.
- Click on Merge bookings to launch the merger.
Build the tour and preview it
- Make necessary adjustments to route.
- Select a start time: Now (Instant), Match start time of earliest booking or Schedule pickup (Scheduled)
- Select the Capability and add additional tour information
- Notice that the tour stats change based on which route optimization algorithm was selected. Learn more about tour statistics here.
- Hit Create tour.
Route optimization algorithms
When optimizing multi-stop bookings and tours, some operations might require stops to be visited in a certain order. Here are the optimization rules we support for the most common cases:
-
Optimized for time
This option will sort all given stops by the shortest time regardless of a pickup or drop-off stop.
-
All pickups before all drop-offs
This option sorts stops by shortest distance with the condition that all pickup stops are done before starting with all drop-off stops.
-
Pickups before drop-offs in sequence
This option sorts stops by shortest distance and respects the relationship between pickup and drop-off stops of a booking. The pickup stop of Booking A needs to be done before the drop-off stop of the same booking, however not necessarily in sequence for drop-off stops.