Considerations for Salesforce Maps Routes & Schedule Optimization

This article explains why Salesforce Maps route and schedule optimization can sometimes generate routes that seem inefficient or illogical, and describes what's happening behind the scenes in each of the scenarios below.

Door-to-Door or Clustered Deliveries

Use cases involving door-to-door or clustered deliveries are not well suited to single-day route optimization. In these cases, the resulting routes may not follow the most logical or efficient path for the optimization method used.

### Pin Location and Rear-of-Building Routing

The generated route depends on the pin's precise location as indicated by the record's coordinates. If a pin is positioned at the rear of a building and there's an accessible road there, the system may calculate that the quickest path to the pin is via that rear route. This behavior is by design. When this happens, use the Set Verified Location feature to manually move the marker to the front of the building, aligning it with the main access point for more accurate routing.

Multi-Day Route Start and End Points

When reviewing an optimized route for single-day or multi-day trips, consider the initial and final destinations. You may notice the route starts in one region, shifts to a different area, and then circles back to the starting point. This routing behavior is influenced by the nature of the route, past traffic trends, and the structure of the roadways.

Optimization Order Without a Schedule Priority Field

When using the "Add to Schedule" functionality in the Maps Schedule Week View, if no Schedule Priority field is designated in your Maps Base Object configuration, records are considered by the optimization engine in the order they appear in the "Unscheduled" list. The scheduling engine checks whether each entry can be accommodated within the user's available time frame for the days specified. Because of this, different waypoint combinations can result from each optimization run. Salesforce can't guarantee visits to every location within an optimization due to the wide range of variables involved, and this is expected behavior.