portatour® schedules for the current day and six additional calendar days by default, taking into account the home location provided as start and end point of your route. Go to Schedule > Scheduling parameters to change the following parameters individually.
You can save the modified scheduling parameters by clicking Save or you can discard them by clicking Cancel.
Starting location
The default setting is Automatic. portatour® automatically recognizes if the schedule should start at your home location, at an overnight stay address or at the address of the last customer you visited.
You have the following options to manually set the starting location:
- home location: The schedule starts at the home location.
-
Manual: Use this setting if you want to start your schedule from a different location than the last customer address. When clicking Update schedule at the schedule, you will be prompted to enter the address of the starting location:
Enter the desired departure address in the form, then geocode it. You can also set the position manually on the map (see Set geo-location manually). Click Calculate schedule to start the schedule calculation. -
GPS location: Use also this option if you want to start your schedule from a different location than the last customer address. After clicking Update schedule your location and the respective address will be shown on the map:
Correct the position by clicking the map. Click Calculate schedule to apply the position found and start the schedule calculation.
Hint: The precondition for GPS tracking is a GPS receiver on your device. When you first use the GPS location with portatour®, the browser will ask you if portatour® may track your current location with the device. Confirm this question with Yes.
Start time
By default, the selection box shows Now. During your working hours, the schedule is calculated from the point in time when you click Update schedule. If you run a schedule calculation outside of your defined working hours, portatour® uses the beginning of your next working day as start time (see Working hours).
The start time can be postponed in 15-minute intervals if, for example, you carry out the calculation during your lunch break or in the course of a customer call preparation, and can therefore not leave immediately. Similarly, you can select one of the 90 upcoming days as start time. In this case the beginning of your work day as set in the options will be used as start time (see Working hours).
Duration
portatour® schedules 1 week by default and only includes days with registered working hours (see Working hours). 1 week is the recommended setting because each day of the week is scheduled exactly once.
A reduction of the scheduling period to between 1 day and 6 days limits the possibilities for portatour® to optimally schedule customer calls accordingly. Use this option if you primarily want to call manually included customers as soon as possible.
Extending the scheduling period to anything between 2 and 4 weeks is possible.
Please note:
- The longer the scheduling period, the more complex and thus longer the calculation. 4-week schedules for many possible customers may take more than one minute of calculation time. Only use scheduling periods beyond 1 week if the customer calls in the following week(s) are actually of interest to you.
- In case overnight stays on the way have been allowed, portatour® can automatically prolong the planning period to ensure that the schedule will definitely end at the home location. This increases the quality of the calculated schedules. You will be notified about this possibility when setting the planning period. If the planning period is set to less than 1 week, i.e. 1 to 6 days, there will be no automatic prolongation.
Planning mode
By default, the schedule combines both appointments and customers with reservations with additional customers. The selection box shows Complete. In the Reservations & appointments only mode the schedule only includes customers with reservations and appointments.
Break
Here, you can set whether your work break should be Scheduled today or whether you Already had a work break today. The settings of the portatour® options (see Work break settings) will be used to schedule breaks. If breaks are generally disabled, then this selection box will not be displayed.
Traffic conditions for first ride
By default, when updating the schedule, portatour® will ask you if you want to consider the current traffic situation for the first trip or not. The selection box shows Ask. To set your preference, select Current traffic to always include the current traffic situation, or Typical traffic to also use historical traffic flow data for the first trip (see also Update schedule with current traffic).