Smart Dispatch

Overview

Smart Dispatch powers optimization in the Route Planner. It assigns jobs in your daily plan to suitable routes and orders the stops using travel estimates, technician skills, service duration, arrival windows, breaks, and route shifts. Review the result before dispatching; some jobs may remain unassigned when they cannot fit.

Before You Begin

• Enable the Route Planner module and make sure your role can view and manage the planner.

• Create routes with the correct members, valid start and end locations, shift times, and breaks.

• Check each job's service address, required skills, service duration, schedule date, and weekday restrictions.

• Add the jobs you want to include to the plan. Pending candidates are not automatically included just because they are visible in the Jobs tab.

You can add jobs from search, the pending-jobs list, the bulk add action, or a map area selection. Added jobs enter the plan's unassigned pool until they are placed on a route.

Choose Optimization Settings

On an editable daily planner, open More options → Edit.

• Balanced balances the routing objectives.

• Minimize Distance prioritizes reducing travel distance.

• Minimize Time prioritizes reducing travel time.

• Car and Truck use different road and vehicle profiles. Truck restrictions can change the feasible routes and leave more jobs unassigned.

Save and reoptimize after changing these settings. Optimization is not limited to Balanced.

Run Optimization

1. Choose the correct day and review the jobs already added to its plan.

2. Lock any routes whose assignments and order you want to preserve.

3. Click Optimize or Reoptimize in the header.

4. Wait for processing to finish, then review the summary, map, timeline, and unassigned jobs.

Full optimization considers the jobs in the plan and the available unlocked routes. It can distribute work unevenly when travel, skills, timing, or capacity make that the better fit.

Optimize one route

Open the route's details and use its optimize control. The route must be unlocked and already contain jobs. This optimizes the selected route's jobs without changing the other routes. To bring a new job into a single-route solve, assign it to that route first; simply leaving it in the unassigned pool does not add it to that route.

Skills Matching

A route has the combined skills of its assigned members. A job can only be assigned to a route that provides all of its required skills. This rule also applies to manual assignments and moves.

Use Route Planner settings → User Skills to review technician capabilities. If a skills warning appears, add an appropriately qualified member to a route or correct an inaccurate job requirement. Keep requirements that the work actually needs.

Time Windows, Shifts, and Breaks

• Job time windows specify when service may start. An 8:00 AM–12:00 PM window is a service-start window, not a requirement that all work finish by noon.

• Service duration is the time needed at the stop. Allow enough route capacity for this work and the travel between stops.

• Route shifts run from the route's start time to its end time. The job must finish within the shift, and the route must return to its end location by shift end.

• Breaks use time within the route's schedule.

• Schedule dates and weekday restrictions still apply. A future-dated job or a job unavailable on the selected weekday cannot be assigned to that day.

Forz uses the account's time zone for planning and calendar events. Check the actual job window and route schedule when investigating an unexpected time.

Processing and Errors

Optimization runs in the background. While the planner is processing, changes and dispatch are blocked. You may return to the planner later to see the result. Run time depends on the size and constraints of the plan; there is no fixed completion time.

If an error appears, review its message, correct the affected job or route, and retry when the planner is editable. Refresh to see the latest state if another dispatcher has changed the plan. If processing remains stuck or repeated attempts fail, contact support with the planner date and the visible error.

Locked Routes

Full optimization preserves a locked route's assignments, order, and planned times. Unlock at least one route to run full optimization. The per-route optimize control is unavailable on locked routes.

A lock protects the route from the optimizer; it does not prevent permitted manual edits on an otherwise editable planner.

Reviewing Results

• Check assigned job count, distance, service time, travel time, and any warning indicators.

• Inspect the timeline for service-start window conflicts, overloaded shifts, breaks, and return travel.

• Review the Unassigned Jobs pool and any displayed reason. Common causes include skills, time windows, service duration, shift capacity, and road restrictions.

• Review routes that received no jobs. Equal job counts are not guaranteed.

Manual edits and reoptimization

Assigning, moving, reordering, or removing stops recalculates the affected route ETAs. A valid manual edit does not automatically require a new optimization. Review the resulting times and any error before dispatching.

Changing route or planner settings makes the previous calculation stale and requires reoptimization. Adding a job to the unassigned pool does not schedule it: assign it or run optimization if it should be included in the dispatched work.

Dispatching the Result

Dispatch creates calendar events only for assigned jobs, using their planned start times and service durations. Dispatch validates the plan again, including skills, valid addresses, service-start windows, and route shift limits.

Jobs still in the unassigned pool are not scheduled. They are released from that day's plan when you dispatch so they can be considered for another day.

After dispatch, planning controls are unavailable. Cancel Routes cancels the entire planner's dispatch, removes its created calendar events, and returns the affected jobs to Unscheduled status. It is not a way to cancel just one route. Review work already underway before using it.

Arrival Windows for Online Booking

Customer-selected arrival windows are covered in Service Requests & Online Booking. The Booking technician group setting in Customer Portal settings controls the team available for that booking workflow.

Common Scenarios

Plan tomorrow's work

Filter tomorrow's candidates, add the jobs you want to serve, confirm the routes and skills, then optimize. Review unassigned jobs and capacity before dispatching.

Add a rush job before dispatch

Add the rush job to the plan. To let the optimizer choose a route, run full optimization with the appropriate routes unlocked. To keep it on a specific route, assign it there, inspect the recalculated ETAs, and optionally optimize that route alone.

Troubleshooting

• No jobs are optimized: verify that jobs were added to the plan and at least one suitable route is unlocked.

• All jobs remain unassigned: check coordinates, skills, windows, service durations, shifts, breaks, and transport mode.

• A single-route solve misses a new job: assign that job to the selected route first, or use full optimization.

• Dispatch says the route returns late: reduce the workload, change the route schedule, or reoptimize and review the return time.

• Dispatch requests reoptimization: route or planner settings changed after the last calculation. Reoptimize first.

See Route Planner for the complete daily workflow.