Compare Salesforce Maps Route and Schedule

This guide will explain the differences between Routes and Schedule, and help you decide which tool is a better fit for your needs. There are three fundamental areas where Routes and Schedule differ:

• Schedule creates Salesforce Events and syncs with the Salesforce Calendar, and Routes does not.
• Schedule requires all appointments to have a start and end time, and Routes does not.
• Schedule allows users to optimize up to a week of appointments at a time, while Routes allows users to optimize up to a day of appointments at a time.

When deciding which tool to use, think about your customer meetings and how you use Salesforce today, and answer the three questions below:

• Do you currently create Salesforce Events for customer meetings, or use the Salesforce Calendar to plan upcoming days in the field?
• Do all of your meetings have scheduled start and end times, or do times vary significantly from meeting to meeting?
• Do you plan all of your meetings one day at a time, or do you prefer to think about all of the customers you need to visit in a week?

Do you have your answers? Check out the grid below to see which situation applies to you, and which planning tool Salesforce Maps recommends for you:

About Routes

Salesforce Maps Routes allow users to plan up to one day of stops at a time. Users can add markers from marker layers or data layers, plus POI search results to a new Route, and optimize the Route to determine what stop order allows them to complete all of their stops with as little travel as possible.

Salesforce Map Routes does not create any Salesforce activity records, like Events, for stops. Because it does not rely on activities, Route stops may or may not have scheduled start and end times. This flexibility makes Routes an ideal solution for users whose meetings have fluid meeting times, or users who perform unscheduled drop-in visits throughout the day.

Note: You can import events to routes, but routes aren't designed to be used with the schedule feature. Adding route waypoints from a marker layer to the schedule will disappear.

About Schedules

Salesforce Map Schedule allows users to plan up to a week of stops at a time. Users can add markers from marker layers, or from POI search results, to their Schedule queue, and optimize up to a week of stops at once with a single action. Schedule can also reference prioritization fields from Salesforce. Prioritization helps representatives visit their most important records first, while minimizing their travel time between all other appointments.

Unlike Routes, Salesforce Map Schedule does create Salesforce Events for stops. Because every Salesforce Event has a scheduled start and end time, all stops in Salesforce Map Schedule must also have start and end times. Schedule also relates these Events to Salesforce records that users add to their Schedule, and syncs to and from the Salesforce Calendar. Therefore, Schedule is an ideal solution for representatives who must create Events for all customer meetings, or users who plan their days using the Salesforce Calendar.

Check out the following video to learn how to navigate the Maps Schedule tab.