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Creating Routes

Plantrunner offers two ways to create routes: automatic generation based on your customer scheduling data, or manual creation for full control.

Automatic route generation​

If you've assigned service days and week patterns to your customer locations, Plantrunner can automatically generate optimized routes for you.

  1. Navigate to Routes in the sidebar
  2. Click Suggest Routes
  3. Configure the generation options:

Select days and weeks​

Choose which days of the week and which weeks in your cycle to generate routes for. Plantrunner will find all locations that match your selection.

Filter options​

  • Only include locations not already in a route -- Skip locations that are already assigned to existing routes
  • Include locations with no day assigned -- Include locations that don't have a service day set
  • Include locations with no week assigned -- Include locations that don't have a week pattern set

Start location​

Choose whether routes should start from your company office (and return there at the end) or from the first customer location.

If starting from the first customer location, the generated route must have at least two stops.

Generate and review​

Click Generate Routes to create optimized route suggestions. Plantrunner will:

  • Group locations by day
  • Optimize the driving order for each group
  • Split large groups into multiple routes (max 25 stops per route)
  • Calculate driving distances and times

For each suggested route, you can:

  • Rename the route
  • Preview the route on a map
  • Drag and drop to reorder stops
  • Re-optimize the order if you've made changes
  • Assign employees
  • Adjust week patterns

Create routes individually or click Create All Routes to save them all at once.

tip

This is why assigning service days and week patterns to your customer locations is so important -- it enables the route builder to automatically group the right locations together.

Manual route creation​

To create a route manually with full control:

  1. Navigate to Routes in the sidebar
  2. Click Add Route
  3. Fill in the route details

Route name​

Give the route a descriptive name. A common convention is to include the day and area, such as "Monday - Downtown" or "Wed/Fri - North County".

Start location​

Choose where the route begins:

  • Company office -- Starts from your company's address (set in Company Settings)
  • Customer location -- Starts from a specific customer location (useful if a technician lives near a client)
note

If you choose a customer location as the start point, the route must have at least two waypoints.

Adding waypoints​

Select customer locations to include in the route. Each waypoint represents a stop where the technician will perform service.

For each waypoint, the route uses:

  • The location's geocoded coordinates for driving calculations
  • The location's estimated service duration for total time calculations
tip

Add locations in rough geographical order. Even though you can optimize later, starting with a reasonable order helps you visualize the route.

Assigning an employee​

Select one or more employees to assign to this route. The route will appear on their dashboard.

Setting the schedule​

Configure when this route runs:

  • Days of week -- Select one or more days (e.g., Monday and Wednesday)
  • Week pattern -- If your company uses multi-week cycles, choose which weeks in the cycle this route is active

See Scheduling for more details on week patterns.

After creating a route​

Once saved, you can:

  • Optimize the route to calculate the best waypoint order
  • View the route on a map to verify the path makes sense
  • Drag and drop waypoints to manually reorder them
  • Activate or deactivate the route

Editing a route​

Open a route from the Routes table to edit it. You can modify all fields, add or remove waypoints, and re-optimize.

Deleting a route​

Click Delete on the route edit view. A confirmation dialog will appear. Existing service visit records for this route are preserved.