Terms

This section lists frequently used terms and their meanings:

The hard, medium, and soft rules that must be taken into account when creating an employee shift schedule. Learn more about constraints.

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.

A model run is an instance of an input dataset being solved.

The time period that will have visits scheduled during a planning run.

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

Skills represent the different capabilities that technicians possess and customer visits require. For instance, a technician with the skill plumber will be required by a visit to fix a broken pipe. Learn more about skills.

The period of time when a customer visit can occur. Learn more about time windows.

Vehicles and technicians complete visits at customer locations.

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

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

Visit dependencies occur when multiple connected visits are required by a customer. Learn more about visit dependencies.

Visit groups are used to define visits that require multiple vehicles to complete the service. Learn more about multi-vehicle visits.