Overview:

For the Auto Scheduler, we added several optional fields in the Company Master page.

Section 1: Time Window Factor

This rates the importance of honoring time windows without causing violations. A time window violation occurs when a route arrives at an order, depot, or break after a time window has closed. The parameter is specified using one of the following values:

Low: Places more importance on minimizing drive times and less on arriving at stops on time. You may want to use this value if you have a growing backlog of service requests. For the purpose of servicing more orders in a day and reducing the backlog, you can choose Low even though customers might be inconvenienced with your late arrivals.
Medium: Balances the importance of minimizing drive times and arriving within time windows.
High: Places more importance on arriving at stops on time than on minimizing drive times. Organizations that make time-critical deliveries or that are very concerned with customer service would choose a value of High.

Section 2: Excess Transit Factor
This rates the importance of reducing excess transit time of order pairs. Excess transit time is the amount of time exceeding the time required to travel directly between the paired orders. Excess time can be caused by driver breaks or travel to intermediate orders and depots.

Low: The service tries to find a solution that minimizes overall solution cost, regardless of excess transit time. This value is commonly used with courier services. Since couriers transport packages as opposed to people, they don't need to worry about ride time. Using Low allows couriers to service paired orders in the proper sequence and minimize the overall solution cost.
Medium: The service looks for a balance between reducing excess transit time and reducing the overall solution cost.
High: The service tries to find a solution with the least excess transit time between paired orders at the expense of increasing the overall travel costs. It makes sense to use this value if you are transporting people between paired orders and you want to shorten their ride time. This is characteristic of taxi services.

Section 3: Route Zone Miles

This specifies areas that delineate work territories for given routes. A route zone is used to constrain routes to servicing only those orders that fall within or near the specified area. Here are some examples of when route zones may be useful:

Some of your employees don't have the required permits to perform work in certain states or communities. You can create a hard route zone so they only visit orders in areas where they meet the requirements.
One of your vehicles breaks down frequently so you want to minimize response time by having it only visit orders that are close to your maintenance garage. You can create a soft or hard route zone to keep the vehicle nearby.

Section 4: Cost Per Mile

The monetary cost incurred per unit of distance traveled for the route length (total travel distance). Can contain null values; a null value indicates zero cost. The unit for this attribute value is specified by the distance_units parameter. We recommend putting .75 as a starting point.

Section 5: Cost Per Hour

The monetary cost incurred per unit of work time for the total route duration, including travel times as well as service times and wait times at orders, depots, and breaks. Can't contain a null value and has a default value of 1.0. The unit for this attribute value is specified by the time_units parameter. We recommend starting with a value of 2.