Terminology

This section lists frequently used terms and their meanings:

Scheduled periods within a vehicle shift when a technician is not available for visits. Floating breaks (such as lunch breaks) can be taken at any location and are slotted in around visits. Fixed breaks occur at a specific time (optionally at a specific location); when a location is provided, travel time to and from the break is included in the route plan. Learn more about lunch breaks and personal appointments.

The hard, medium, and soft rules that must be taken into account when creating a field service routing plan. Learn more about constraints.

A geographic area defining where a technician can work. A required coverage area is enforced as a hard constraint; a preferred coverage area is a soft constraint. Coverage areas are defined using GeoJSON polygon geometry. Learn more about coverage areas.

Timefold accepts input datasets that include information about customer visits and the available vehicles to be scheduled and optimized. Input datasets are created using our predefined model schema which follows the OpenAPI specification. Timefold returns output datasets that contain the optimized solution.

See the API Spec for more information.

The principle of distributing workload evenly across technicians. Fairness is measured as a percentage, where 100% indicates a perfectly balanced workload. Learn more about fairness.

A break that occurs at a specific start and end time. When a location is provided, Timefold includes travel time to and from the break in the route plan. When no location is provided, the time is blocked but travel time cannot be accounted for. Fixed breaks model personal appointments, team meetings, and hotel stays. Learn more about fixed breaks.

A break with a defined duration that can be taken at any location within a specified time window. Timefold slots floating breaks in around visits to minimize disruption to the route. Lunch breaks are a typical example. Learn more about floating breaks.

A mandatory visit has a time window that falls within the current planning window and must be scheduled. An optional visit has an optional priority or a time window that extends beyond the planning window and can be deferred to a future day. Learn more about priority visits and optional visits.

A visit with a time window that spans multiple days and can be scheduled on any of those days. Contrast with non-movable visits, which have a single-day time window. Learn more about multi-day schedules and movable visits.

Locking a visit to its assigned technician and position in the route so it cannot be moved during re-planning. Useful when a technician is already en route to or working on a visit. Learn more about pinning visits.

The time period that will have visits scheduled during planning. Learn more about planning windows.

The ability to adapt a route plan in response to disruptions such as a technician taking ill, a visit taking longer than expected, or an emergency visit being added. Learn more about real-time planning.

An API that quickly provides a range of time window options for a visit when a customer is requesting service, without having to wait for a full solve. Learn more about recommendations.

The process of minimizing the travel time or distance technicians spend driving between visits. By default, Timefold minimizes travel time. Learn more about route optimization.

A route plan contains the travel, visits, and breaks that are assigned to vehicles. The route plan for a dataset can be found in the itinerary object of the output dataset.

A contractual commitment that a visit must be completed by a specific time. Visits that miss their SLA deadline incur a soft score penalty. Learn more about visit SLAs.

Capabilities that technicians possess and customer visits may require. A technician must have all required skills to be assigned to a visit. Learn more about skills.

Labels applied to vehicle shifts to model additional requirements not covered by skills or visit requirements. Visits can require specific tags, restricting which technicians can be assigned to them. Learn more about tags.

The wages and overtime rates associated with technicians. Timefold can minimize the total cost of all vehicle shifts in a plan. Learn more about technician costs.

A numerical quality rating for a technician, typically derived from customer feedback. Timefold can use ratings to prefer higher-rated technicians for visits when other constraints allow. Learn more about technician ratings.

The period during which a customer visit can be scheduled. Required time windows are enforced as hard constraints; preferred time windows are soft constraints. Learn more about time windows.

Vehicles and technicians complete visits at customer locations.

A single work period when a technician can visit customer locations. Learn more about vehicle shifts.

A visit to a customer’s location to provide a service.

A relationship between visits that controls the order in which they are completed. For example, an assessment visit may need to be completed before a repair visit can begin. Learn more about visit dependencies.

A set of visits that must be started at the same time by multiple technicians either in the same or multiple locations. Learn more about multi-vehicle visits.

A revenue value assigned to a visit that influences scheduling priority when capacity is limited. Timefold maximizes total profit across all scheduled visits. Learn more about visit profit.

Restrictions on which technicians can be assigned to a visit. A required technician must complete the visit; a preferred technician is assigned if possible; an excluded technician is never assigned. Learn more about visit requirements.