Tour setup: Timeslot definition

[Baktash_Agheera]

Hi,
is it mandatory to set the so called time window while defining stops for a tour?
We have a customer that only provides locations of stops but no predefined time window. However, the customer wants to have ETA. That should not be a big deal.
Please explain how to disable time slot and "serviceTimeAtStop"

Cheers
Baktash

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Baktash,

a property that isn't explicitly specified as "optional" is "mandatory".

About the time slots:
In the current implementation of the service both the time slots and the service period are mandatory.

If you do not have a proper input for those values we recommend to use 00:00 of the current day as earliestArrivalTime and 23:59:59 as latestDepartureTime. Once a tour is in progress we compute the ETA and you may use the STATUS to enable the user to separate theoretical values from computed ones.

If your tour contains more than one stop you should try to identify a proper period value because this has an impact both on the construction of the desired tour and the ETA at the processing time: service periods at intermediate stops will be added and therefore shift the ETA of the later stops.
For example you can use the average service period of previous visits.

Please let us know whether this info satisfies the current demand - otherwise we might try to look for a better solution depending on more details of your usecase being provided.

Best regards from Germany,

Bernd

[Baktash_Agheera]

Hi Bernd,

thank you for your reply. We'll use a workaround in cases we do not receive earliestArrivalTime, latestDepartureTime and service time.
In fact one of our customer provides only information of planned start and planned end of a tour consisting of multiple stops. We'll use the the planned time slot of the complete tour for each stop location and a default service time value. I hope we do not mix up the order of stops in that way
The customer is aware that ETA is not that precise.

Best Regards from Troisdorf
Baktash

[Michael.Hubschneider]

In meantime, both time slots and PTA (planned time of arrival) are not mandatory anymore,
so in case you don't have this information available, you don't have to fill in anything, when creating a trip/tour