Set Up Routing for Travel Time Calculations

Considerations for When You’re Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization

Pay attention to the considerations if you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization.

• Point-to-point predictive routing is always used with Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization. Other scheduling methods (besides fallback to aerial when point-to-point predictive routing fails to calculate travel) aren't applicable in Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization.
• Point-to-point predictive routing is used regardless of the travel distance.
• Service resources must have their home base location geocoded so that the scheduling engine knows the resource’s start and end points.
• When you drag a service appointment onto the Gantt to be scheduled, the routing calculation depends on the chosen start time. The time of day can affect typical road speed measurements, for example.
• If you define Travel From Home (minutes) as part of the Service Resource Availability work rules, resources can travel before the start of the work day. This additional time is considered when calculating the departure time.
• If Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization can’t calculate travel time via point-to-point predictive routing, the engine uses aerial routing to estimate travel time. A route can be unfeasible with predictive routing if travel mode limitations apply, a location is more than 1.5 kilometers from an official road, or data coverage is partial. For example, the dispatcher wants to manually assign the work to Alan, as he’s the only available resource. Alan drives a truck, but the route that Alan is assigned to doesn't allow trucks. Or, Alan is assigned to maintain an asset that’s located 2 kilometers from a road or in a new neighborhood. The travel source used to calculate the travel time to the service appointment, resource absence, or home base is automatically shown in the Estimated Travel Time From Source and Estimated Travel Time To Source fields for the assigned resource or resource absence.
• When you're using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, if the last service appointment of the day is at the same address as the service resource’s home base, the Approximate Travel Time From (Minutes) value on the Assigned Resource object is calculated on the second-to-last appointment. The Approximate Travel Time From (Minutes) value for the last appointment is zero. When you're not using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, this travel time to the service resource's home base is calculated on the last service appointment of the day as the Estimated Travel Time (Minutes) value on the Assigned Resource object.

Considerations for When You’re Not Using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization

Pay attention to the considerations if you aren’t using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization.

• Point-to-point predictive routing considers toll roads when relevant. SLR and Predictive travel avoid toll roads, which can result in longer travel times.
• Service resources must have their home base location geocoded so that the scheduling engine knows the resource’s start and end points.
• When you switch from aerial routing to SLR, scheduling recalculates travel times, including times for scheduled appointments.
• When SLR is activated, resource travel speed isn’t considered. However, if the calculation returns to aerial routing, travel speed is considered.
• The Street Level Routing Cache object improves calculation time for distances that were calculated in the previous 30 days between two given points. Don’t delete this object.
• Travel speed in SLR is based on the driving profile in Google maps and can’t be changed.
• When you’re using Predictive Travel or Point to Point Predictive Travel, a service appointment is dragged onto the Gantt to be scheduled, the routing calculation depends on the chosen start time. The time of day can affect typical road speed measurements, for example.
• If you’re scheduling work via Queueable Apex, use the Database.AllowsCallouts annotation to estimate travel time with SLR. If you don’t include this annotation, aerial routing is used instead. See Queueable Apex: More Than an @future.
• The Estimated Travel Time From Source field on Assigned Resources shows Aerial as the calculation method for all appointments, except for the last appointment of the day. Because Travel From is calculated only for the last service appointment of the day, its value is zero for every other appointment. The last appointment of the day is calculated with SLR.
• If a service appointment requires a travel distance of more than 100 kilometers, aerial routing is used.
• Predictive travel isn’t supported with multiday work scheduling. In multiday work scheduling, the exact departure time for each day is unknown, so SLR is used, corresponding to the fastest travel time (the best SLR travel time that you get on a night slot with minimum traffic). Complex work uses point-to-point predictive routing in optimization, and the most optimistic SLR travel time for platform scheduling.
• Any scheduling action that’s triggered in a transaction with data manipulation language (DML) uses aerial routing. When SLR is enabled and scheduling requires SLR travel results that aren’t primed locally, you must use a callout to retrieve the results. If DML occurs in the same transaction as the callout, it causes an exception, for example, an Uncommitted Work Pending error. When the schedule falls back to aerial routing due to a failure in the callout, overlaps can appear on the Gantt after the travel time and break update runs and updates the travel to SLR or predictive travel. To avoid an exception, allow the system to use aerial routing or ensure that DML is completed in a separate transaction. If you want transactions of this type to cause an exception rather than a switch to aerial routing, from the App Launcher, find and open the Field Service Admin app, and then click Field Service Settings | Scheduling. Select Avoid aerial calculation upon callout DML exception.

Additional Considerations for Point-to-Point Predictive Routing

• In Salesforce orgs created before Spring ’21, if you haven’t turned on point-to-point predictive routing, you can still switch to SLR or predictive travel.
• For a location (source or destination) that’s more than 1.5 kilometers from the nearest road, aerial routing is used instead of point-to-point predictive routing.
• Check which territories are fully covered by point-to-point predictive routing in the list of navigable countries.
• If you’re not using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, point-to-point predictive routing provides accurate predictive routing for global optimization when the source and destination are on the same continent, even for long distances. However, for scheduling operations such as Appointment Booking and Schedule, if a service appointment requires travel of more than 100 kilometers, aerial routing is used instead of point-to-point predictive routing. If you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, point-to-point predictive routing is supported for both optimization and scheduling operations for travel of more than 100 kilometers.

Important When you switch to point-to-point predictive routing, scheduling and optimization recalculate travel times, including times for scheduled appointments. You can incur an overlap of appointments because of the more accurate, slightly longer, travel times. Use resource schedule optimization to fix overlaps locally (for specific resources), or run global or in-day optimization to reoptimize the whole schedule (takes longer). If you aren't using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, you must apply the Fix Overlaps scheduling policy.