Import Shipments into Route Planner
What are Shipments?
Each shipment has a pickup and a corresponding delivery step. Shipments can be used to model real-world scenarios such-as food delivery, ride hailing, or third-party logistics, where specific items or persons are picked-up from a location and then delivered to another location. Details such as time windows, service times, priority, or required skills can be specified to further model actual constraints for completing the shipment.
How to Import Shipments in Route Planner?
Route Planner can optimize a large number of daily shipments through data imports. You can input data by either downloading and modifying a sample CSV template or uploading your own CSV or Excel file.
Step 1: Ensure “Shipments” Data is in the Right Format
Before importing, it is essential to ensure that the data within the file adheres to the necessary format. The shipment-related fields and their corresponding formats must be compatible with Route Planner.
| Item Name | Required | Description / Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Description | No | Any custom description for the vehicle. It should only be in text. |
| Skills | No | Specify the skill needed to perform this shipment. When optimizing, the app will assign the shipment to a vehicle having all the required skills. Accepts positive integers only. Specifying different skills for pickup and delivery steps is not allowed. Example: 110 |
| Priority | Specify the priority of this shipment. The valid values are in the integers in the range of [0, 100]. Setting a priority will only decide whether this job will be assigned or not, but has nothing to do with the sequence of job fulfillment. Example: 95 | |
| Pickup ID | Yes | A unique identifier for the pickup step of each shipment. Supports text values. Example 1: “123” Example 2: Pickup 1 |
| Pickup Service | The time required to perform the pickup step, in seconds. Accepts positive integers only. Example: 180 | |
| Pickup Location | Yes | Provide the pickup location coordinates. You can either provide the latitude and longitude coordinates in separate columns or both of them together in a single column. While mapping, use the correct map keys to reflect the way in which locations have been added. |
| Pickup Start Time | The start of the time window after which the pickup can be performed. Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm | |
| Pickup End Time | The end of the time window before which the pickup has to be started. Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm | |
| Pickup Setup | Specify the time needed to complete the necessary setup before/after performing the pickup, in seconds. This can be used for any one time activity like parking, or recording information for compliance etc. Please note that setup time is applied only once for a given job location. Example: 120 | |
| Delivery ID | Yes | A unique identifier for the delivery step of each shipment. Supports text values. Example 1: “123” Example 2: Delivery 1 |
| Delivery Service | The time required to perform the delivery step, in seconds. Accepts positive integers only. Example: 180 | |
| Delivery Location | Provide the delivery location coordinates. You can either provide the latitude and longitude coordinates in separate columns or both of them together in a single column. While mapping, use the correct map keys to reflect the way in which locations have been added. | |
| Delivery Start Time | The start of the time window after which the delivery can be performed. Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm | |
| Delivery End Time | The end of the time window before which the delivery has to be started. Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm | |
| Delivery Setup | Specify the time needed to complete the necessary setup before/after performing the delivery, in seconds. This can be used for any one time activity like parking, or recording information for compliance etc. Please note that setup time is applied only once for a given job location. Example: 120 | |
| Amount Capacities | The quantity of the items that need to be shipped. You can provide quantities in multiple units/dimensions (e.g., weight, volume etc) in separate columns and map these columns to “Amount Capacity 1”, “Amount Capacity 2” and so on while adding map keys. Supports integer values only. |
Step 2: Import the “Shipments” File into Route Planner
On the file import widget
- Navigate to the Shipments section in the application.
- Click on the Upload a CSV button.
- In the pop-up window, select the CSV file with details of your shipments.
- Click Open to import the file.
Step 3: Mapping “Shipments” Attributes to File Columns
Once you have successfully imported the shipments file, the subsequent step involves mapping the columns within the sheet to the corresponding fields available in Route Planner. This can be achieved by selecting the appropriate information represented by each CSV column from the respective "Map Key" dropdown menu.
Shipment attributes
All columns must be accurately filled with the correct data and format. Ensure there are no empty fields to prevent import errors.
To import a new file, click “Discard and Upload new file”. If you wish to keep the current file but change the mappings, click “Reset Field Mapping”.
The data format and mappings can be validated by clicking “Next” after the shipment import process is complete. The import widget will proceed to the next section if the validation is successful; otherwise, any errors in the data will be highlighted.
