In order to plan your orders in MaxOptra, you need to get your orders into MaxOptra. There are three ways of doing that. You can create orders manually, import them from a file or develop an integration with your order management system using the MaxOptra API.

To create an order manually, press the Add button on the Orders screen:

Most of our customers do not use this function as the main method of getting orders into MaxOptra because it is very time consuming and error-prone. But it is a good way to create an ad-hoc order, which was not in your import file for some reason. The majority of our customers import their orders from a file.

MaxOptra can work with CSV files.

A CSV file is a text file which contains a data table where each line is a row and columns are separated by commas:

You can create and edit CSV files in Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet software. There is a certain default layout of columns in the import file, which MaxOptra can read straight away. However, it is possible to configure MaxOptra to read other column layouts. Most order management systems and ERPs are capable of exporting a list of delivery orders in a CSV file or an Excel file. If you are able to generate such a file but are not sure that MaxOptra can work with it, just email it over to our support team and they will help you set up your account to read it.

Let us review a typical import file example. You can download this and other examples from our documentation.

Open the file in Excel. You can see this file contains your orders data in a simple table. The typical columns, which most import files will have to have are: order reference, delivery date, distribution centre, customer location name, customer location address, contact person name, contact number, contact email address, the order size in terms of the configured capacity units, time window start and time window end, and additional instructions.

For more information, seeOrder Import File Guide and Customer Location Import File. Column Names and Requirements .

To import your orders, make sure the selected role is Dispatcher and you are on the Planning tab and you have selected the correct date and distribution centre:

You can either click Import from file button at the top of the Unplanned orders section or simply drop the import file from your computer directly on the Unplanned orders section:

In case you select the file you want to import, the following dialog is displayed.

The Remove existing orders option will make sure all the existing orders for the selected day are removed before importing file. If you select a date in the Import orders for the following date option and your file contains orders from multiple days, the only the orders for the selected day will be imported. MaxOptra will ignore the rest.

Click Import. MaxOptra checks if the order data you provided is valid. If any issues are found you will see an error window. You will have the option to correct the invalid input, save it and continue the import, skip this line or finish the import.

If a distribution centre could not be found, a special window will be shown allowing you to correct the distribution centre name

If an address could not be found, a special window will be shown allowing you to correct the address using a map.

If an address isnt fully accuract. The system automatically finds the nearest possible match and a special window will be shown allowing you to correct or confirm the address using the map.

When the import is completed the orders will appear in the Unplanned orders list:

The third and the final, method of getting orders into MaxOptra is developing an integration using our API. This option will require programming in most cases but will allow you to establish a real-time replication of all orders into MaxOptra without having to worry about exporting and importing files. If you are interested in exploring this option, please visit the REST API of our system documentation.