During its life cycle, a round goes through different statuses. Some transitions are triggered automatically, for example, when drivers start their rounds. Other transitions can, if desired, be triggered manually.
For an overview of all the statuses and their meanings, you can consult: What does the status of a round mean?
Overview
- Advantages
- Configuration
- In practice
1. Advantages
We recommend manually changing rounds to the 'Validated' and 'Published' statuses.
Created > Validated: As long as a round is in the 'Created' status, it is not yet finalized and ready to be prepared in the warehouse. We recommend manually transitioning to 'Validated' to signify that the planning for this round is completed. The goods can then be prepared on the loading docks and will no longer have to be transported from one platform to another because of changes.
There is also a notification based on the status change towards 'Validated' (Notify consumer when the optimizer has finished generating the rounds). If you use this notification trigger, remember to validate rounds only if you are certain that there will be no major change anymore. Otherwise, the notification content might become incorrect or you might trigger multiple notifications if you change the round multiple times to 'Validated'.
Validated > Published: When a round is published, it becomes accessible for drivers in the mobile application. From that moment on, drivers can prepare the goods and load them into their vehicles.
ℹ️ Note that it is always possible to invalidate a round. The invalidation of a round results in the transition to the status 'Created'. The validation and/or publication cycle can start again from there.
ℹ️ It is technically possible to modify rounds that are 'Validated' or 'Published' using the Round Editor, but we recommend invalidating the rounds before applying changes to avoid unnecessary preparations in the warehouse.
2. Configuration
In order to activate the manual validation and publication go to the Optimization tab and then to the Optimisation detail, activating the Advanced Mode. Two toggles allow you to set up manual transitions:
ℹ️ If you enable validation and publication, you will need to validate the rounds before you can publish them.
3. In practice
You can trigger the validation and/or publication of rounds in three different ways:
- On the Announcements page, you will see the validation option appear as soon as the optimisation is complete. The publication option is available as soon as the rounds are validated.
- From the Rounds page, you can validate and/or publish several rounds at the same time by clicking on the corresponding button at the top right and then selecting the desired rounds.
- In the Round view, you can also validate and/or publish each round individually by clicking on the corresponding button at the top-right corner. The buttons are the same as those on the Rounds page.
Invalidating rounds is done in the same way in the same places using the button provided for this purpose. It appears as soon as at least one round has been validated.