How to Use Route Optimization

Documentation Index

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This page walks you through getting the most out of MileApp’s Route Optimization. You will learn how to connect your task data to the routing engine through Route As Mapping in the Flow Configuration, and how to model common operational scenarios — zone-based planning, prioritizing your visits, using routing for pickup and delivery, and incremental re-routing — without disturbing routes that are already on the road. If you are new to the feature, start with the Introduction to Route Optimization first.

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Configuring Route As Mapping in Flow Configuration

When a task is created through a Flow (whether on web, mobile, import, or API), the routing engine does not automatically know which form field corresponds to “address”, “open time”, or “weight”. Route As Mapping is the bridge: it tells MileApp which component on your Flow’s initial page should populate which visit field used by the routing engine. Once mapped, every new task created through that Flow will automatically appear in the Visit menu with the routing fields filled in. You do not need to re-enter the visit data manually before each optimization run. To configure Route As Mapping:

1. Go to Flow and select the Flow you want to use for routing.
2. Click the Configuration tab, then open the Route section.
3. For each routing field on the right, choose the matching Flow component on the left. Only components from the initial page of the Flow are eligible.
4. Click Save to apply the mapping.

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Mappable Fields

The fields below can be mapped under Flow → Configuration → Route. Once mapped, the values entered through the Flow will automatically populate the corresponding fields in the Routing → Visit menu.

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Use Case Examples

The four examples below show how to combine the fields above to model real operational requirements. Each one explains the setup in MileApp and the result you can expect from the routing engine.

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1. Planning by Zone Using Visit and Vehicle Tagging

When you want certain vehicles to only serve certain areas — for example, a fleet split into “North” and “South” zones — you combine three building blocks:

• Geotagging — draw a polygon on the map for each zone. Visits inside the polygon automatically receive the corresponding tag. See Geotagging for the full setup.
• Visit (Task) Tag — the tag that lives on the visit, either applied manually or auto-assigned by Geotagging.
• Vehicle Tag — the tag set on each vehicle to declare which zones it can serve.

How matching works:

• A visit with a tag will only be served by a vehicle that has the same tag.
• A visit with no tag can be served by any vehicle, with or without a tag.

Setup in MileApp:

1. In Routing → Configuration → Geotagging, draw the polygon for each zone and give it a unique tag name (for example, Selatan).
2. Click the pinpoint icon to draw the polygon area on the map.
3. In Routing → Vehicle, add the same tag to every vehicle assigned to that zone.
4. Optimize. The engine will consider matching tag pairs when assigning visits to vehicles.

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2. Prioritizing Your Visits

Not every visit is equal. Some need to be served first — a higher-priority visit, a stop with a narrow operating window, or a job that must happen before another. MileApp gives you two ways to express this: Way 1 — Time Window (when the visit can be served) If a visit can only be served inside a specific time range — for example, 06:00–08:00 AM for a customer with limited operating hours — set the visit’s Open Time and Close Time accordingly. The routing engine treats time window as a hard constraint: it will not schedule the visit outside that range. Way 2 — Priority (which visit comes first when ranking matters) A time window only sets when a visit can be served — it does not decide which visit comes first. If you need true ordering — for example, “serve this visit before any other visit in the same group” — use the Priority field on the visit:

• Priority is an integer from 1 to 100.
• A lower number means higher priority. Use 1 for the highest priority you want to express.
• If you leave Priority empty, the visit is treated as having no priority preference — visits with an explicit value in the same group go first.

Setup in MileApp:

1. On the visit, set Open Time and Close Time if the visit must fall within a specific window (e.g. 06:00 to 08:00).
2. Set Priority to a low integer (e.g. 1) for visits you want served first.
3. (Optional) Put the visit in a Visit Group with related stops so the priority ranking applies inside that group. See Visit Group for details.

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3. Using Routing for Pickup and Delivery

When a single order requires both picking goods up from one location and dropping them at another, both stops should be handled by the same vehicle, in the correct order. MileApp handles this with a combination of Visit Group, Priority, and directional Capacity values. The pattern: Setup in MileApp:

1. Group both visits by setting the same Visit Group value (e.g. clothing-order-42).
2. Set Priority = 1 on the pickup, 2 on the delivery. The engine will schedule pickup first because lower number means higher priority.
3. Set the Weight (or any active Capacity Constraint) to a positive value on the pickup and the negative of that value on the delivery. This way the on-board load goes up at the pickup and back down at the delivery.

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Case Study — Pickup & Delivery Logistics

To make the setup above more concrete, here is how it plays out in a typical mixed operation. A 3PL company runs a single vehicle that leaves the warehouse with 5 hub-loaded parcels for morning deliveries. Mid-route, the dispatcher receives 2 pickup orders from a vendor that need to be returned to the warehouse the same day. Without modeling pickup and delivery together, the dispatcher would have to:

• Manually decide which driver collects the vendor pickups.
• Estimate whether the vehicle still has space after the morning deliveries.
• Hope the driver visits the pickup before attempting any related delivery.

With the pattern from section 3 applied — Visit Group pairing, Priority 1/2, and +/- Weight — the routing engine handles all three decisions automatically: The dispatcher only models the data once. The engine produces a single mixed-flow route that respects sequence, capacity, and vehicle assignment — without any manual matching of pickups to deliveries.

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4. Updating the Plan by Adding a Task Without Affecting Existing Routes

After you optimize and dispatch a routing result, every assigned visit appears with a truck icon in the Visit menu. The icon indicates that the visit is already part of a committed route and is being executed by a driver. When a new task needs to be added later in the day, you do not need to scrap and re-plan everything from scratch. The routing engine recognizes dispatched visits as locked — they keep their assigned vehicle and order — and only the new, non-dispatched visits are placed into the plan. Setup in MileApp:

1. Add the new task to the Visit menu, making sure its data is complete (Name, Address, Coordinate, Time Window, Tag if needed).
2. Confirm the status of all relevant visits — visits with the truck icon are locked; the new visit should not have one yet.
3. Click Optimize again. The engine will preserve dispatched visits as-is and slot the new visit into the most efficient remaining position.
4. Review the result and dispatch when you are satisfied.

This way you can continuously add ad-hoc tasks throughout the day without disturbing routes that are already on the road.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to map every field in the Route section of Flow Configuration? No. Map only the fields you want auto-populated from the Flow. Unmapped fields can be filled manually on the Visit panel before optimizing. What happens if a visit has a tag but no vehicle has that tag? The visit will not be assigned to any vehicle and will appear in the dropped-visit list. See Dropped Visit for details. Can two visits in the same Visit Group be served by different vehicles? No. Visit Group is a hard constraint — all visits in the same group are guaranteed to be assigned to the same vehicle. If I set Priority on a visit but it has no Visit Group, does priority still apply? Priority ranking is most meaningful within a group. Without a group, the visit competes against all other visits according to time windows and overall route cost. For strict ordering, use Visit Group together with Priority. Will re-optimizing after dispatch change the routes of drivers already on the road? No. Dispatched visits (those with the truck icon) are locked. Re-optimization only places newly-added, non-dispatched visits.

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Related Documentation

• Introduction to Route Optimization
• Filtering and Editing Visit
• Geotagging
• Visit Group
• Capacity Constraint
• Dispatch
• Dropped Visit
• Flow Builder