The Estimated time of arrival or ETA is the time when the vehicle is expected to arrive at a certain point of the route (customer location). ETA in MaxOptra is available on the Track&Trace screen:

Estimated time of arrival is calculated when a driver starts an order. At the moment when the driver starts moving to order, the driver coordinates are sent to the geo-provider, which calculates ETA for the order the driver is moving to. For the rest of the orders in the run, ETA is calculated in the following way: MaxOptra deducts or adds the difference between the received ETA and the planned time of arrival to order location to the arrival time to the rest of orders in the run.

ETA calculation depends on the ETA calculation service used: MaxOptra, Google, or TomTom.

It is possible in MaxOptra to notify clients about delivery N minutes before estimated time of arrival (see SMS/Email messages (Notification templates)).

MaxOptra calculates ETA for each non-completed order in each started run. ETA calculation is possible only if the actual information about the order execution is available and the scheduled order sequence is not broken.

Perhaps, the driver is planned to depart from the depot and has some orders to perform. When the driver departs from the depot, MaxOptra, based on the actual departure time from the depot geo-zone, calculates ETA for the order the driver is driving to. ETA for the rest of orders in the run is calculated by deducting or adding the received difference (as described above).

In the figures below, you can see that ETA is calculated for the latest visited order only and the same time is deducted from or added to the rest of orders.

MaxOptra adds time to the arrival time vs MaxOptra deducts time from the arrival time

MaxOptra cannot calculate ETA if a driver violates the order sequence in the run. For example, a driver performed Order 1 and Order 2 and started Order 4. ETA calculation will be stopped in this case, as the driver violates the order sequence.

ETA depends on many parameters. There are various sources of information: speed limits imposed by load traffic rules, the number of turns along the route, average speed within the selected area at the different time of the day, and the information obtained from different users. Real-time ETA is calculated on the basis of aggregated data. If TomTom or Google are used as an ETA calculation service, the real-time ETA will be calculated using real-time traffic information provided by TomTom or Google.

When a driver starts off for an order (clicks the Start button on his mobile device, order gets the status PICKUP_ON_MOVE or DELIVERY_ON_MOVE), the mobile application sends data about driver's location to an external geo-provider. The current position of the vehicle/performer is used as origin, if it is not expired (expiration timeout is set to 10 minutes). If the current position of the vehicle/performer cannot be retrieved, the coordinates of the previous order in the run sequence is used as origin. Location of the current order is used as destination. The system requests current duration of route from origin to destination from GIS provider and calculates real-time ETA for the current order.

When an order gets the status DELIVERY_ARRIVED or PICKUP_ARRIVED, DELIVERY_ FINISHED or PICKUP_FINISHED, the system calculates and saves real-time ETA for the next order in the planned sequence, if it is not started yet. The current position of the vehicle/performer is used as origin, if it is not expired (expiration timeout is set to 10 minutes). If the current position of the vehicle/performer cannot be retrieved, the coordinates of the previous order in the run sequence is used as origin. Location of the next order is used as destination. The system requests current duration of route from origin to destination from GIS provider and calculates real-time ETA for the next order.

The received ETA is represented on the Track&Trace screen, available to dispatcher for monitoring and analysis. ETA can be used as well when SMS/Email messages (Notification templates) to customers.