What is an order
An order is an activity performed by a vehicle, either delivering a package to a destination or picking a package up.
Core parameters of an order include:
Orders are managed at a depot level.
Usually orders contain one activity. However, delivery allows multiple drop-offs and/or pick-ups going to different locations. This is most often used to ensure that all activities within an order are scheduled in the same trip.
In most instances, orders are created via Delivery API and then appear in the Control Room. You can also create orders individually manually or as a bulk upload from a CSV spreadsheet.
Each order activity is placed under a trip within the schedule. The delivery optimisation algorithm automatically defines the most precise and optimal trip at the time of order placement.
To create an order, the following information is mandatory: activity type (drop-off or pick-up), delivery date, delivery slot, delivery location, and service time.
Through time slots, you can set the required time range for an order to be delivered to the customer. If the time slot is already full and there are no available vehicles, no further options will be available.
Service time defines the time required to perform the delivery, excluding the drive time to the destination. In most instances, this covers parking time, walking from the vehicle to the property, and processing the customer payment (if applicable).
There are other optional order creation parameters, including flags, priority, and constraints.
Flags is a helpful feature that enables you to map specific orders to specific trips. If order A needs to be assigned to trip A and must not be moved to trip B for example, order A and trip A must have the same flag. If not, the optimisation may move the order. Discover more about the flags feature (link here).
The priority feature defines the order value and ensures high priority orders (for example B2B over B2C) are correctly scheduled. The default priority value for orders is 1. Higher priority orders will be prioritised when scheduling.
Constraints are originally set in the Depot page and then assigned to vehicles. They define vehicle fleet limitations which can include the height of a vehicle to make sure large items can be placed or the overall weight that can be placed into a vehicle. Once you add constraints to an order, it ensures orders do not exceed vehicle capacity.
Orders may have different statuses that differ based on their specific phase. Delivery supports two different phases: planning and execution.
Planning phase statuses include scheduled, unscheduled or cancelled. These statuses may be seen via the Control Room orders list menu.
Execution phase statuses are either complete or skipped. Execution phase statuses are different from planning phase statuses in that execution statuses are unknown for delivery until the actual execution is complete by the vehicles/drivers. To track actual execution statuses in delivery, we recommend delivery system users send us execution statuses using integration through the create event endpoint.
While we have reviewed the core concepts of an order in this article, we recommend the following articles and guides on how orders are created, how they can be managed if order details changed and how orders can be tracked once they are scheduled into trips.