How to optimise/create rounds automatically? – URBANTZ | SUPPORT

Once tasks have been uploaded to Urbantz you can launch an optimisation to create rounds

There are several ways to create rounds using Urbantz, from fully automatic to fully manual. In this article, we will explore the automatic ways to create rounds. For manual round creation or adaptation please refer to Round Creation - or how to create rounds in a few clicks only & How to use the Round Editor? & On-fly or how to move tasks into an ongoing round

ℹ️ Make sure to correct geocoding and validation errors before optimizing, otherwise, the optimisation won't start. See this article for more information How to correct errors

Overview:

Launching an optimisation manually
Launching an optimisation automatically
Partial optimisation

1. Launching an optimisation manually

Open the Announcement page to view the groups of tasks that have been created with all tasks that have been announced. The groups are based on Hub, date and Shift if you work with Shifts. The total amount of tasks per group is displayed per line.
At the end of each line, you can check the optimisation's status and launch an optimisation. According to the configuration of your platform, you can have 3 optimisation possibilities:

Optimize tasks
Re-optimise all
Re-optimize preserving rounds

Optimize tasks lets you optimise all tasks that have not yet been optimised. Existing rounds won't be affected.
Re-optimize all will optimize all tasks, even if some have already been optimised before. Existing rounds will be deleted and new ones will be created.
Re-optimize preserving rounds If this option is chosen, the optimisation will first try to insert all newly announced tasks into existing rounds. If not possible, additional rounds will be created.

ℹ️. If you have multiple hubs that need to be optimised at once, click on 'Bulk optimisation' in the top bar of the Announcement page to save some time.

ℹ️ Note that preset rounds can be imported. Make sure that you activated this option when configuring the optimisation and that the setup is correct. More on preset rounds here: How to integrate pre-established rounds into Urbantz

2. Launching an optimization automatically

If you prefer optimisations to be launched automatically, without any human intervention, you can configure this in the Optimization (Administration > Optimization, in advanced mode & tab Optimisation).

You can set up as many schedules as needed by clicking on the plus sign in the bottom right corner. You will be asked to define:

A number of days in advance compared to the delivery date: 0-7, single select
When: the time of the day (useful if you work with cut-offs)
Hub: one or many
Shift: one or many (if you don't work with shifts, this option is not relevant and will not be shown)

Once your choices are made you can click on SAVE in the top right corner of the page.

To search for schedules that you set up on your platform, you can filter by shift (if applicable to your platform), by Hub or by day. All matching results will be displayed.

3. Partial optimisation

Once an optimisation is finished, you will see that the button on the right turns green, indicating that rounds were created successfully.

In some cases, the optimisation can’t create rounds with all tasks that have been announced and a partial solution is generated. The button on the right turns orange.

In that case, all rounds that could be created have been created but some tasks are leftover. These tasks are called orphans. You can see their number inside the orange button.

The reason(s) why some tasks could not be integrated into a round can be displayed by clicking on 'view error(s)' right below the orange button. Click on 'There is an invalid task and the optimisation cannot run' to see the details.

In most cases, the error messages indicate that there are not enough vehicles available to deliver/pick up all tasks or that they are out of reach. By clicking on the eye on the left side, you can right away have a look at the task that is concerned.

To integrate orphans in rounds, you can either adapt the optimisation parameters (e.g. the fleet) and optimize again, manually create additional rounds in the Round Editor or use the On-fly (see articles mentioned at the top).