The Planning screen only shows routes and orders for a certain day and a certain distribution centre. Before you start planning, make sure you have the correct date and distribution centre selected. Upload your orders or create them manually.

To create an order manually, click the

button and fill in the necessary information.

For more details about importing orders, see Order Import File Guide .

If you need to update any vehicle or driver information before you start planning, you can do so by clicking the driver name and the vehicle name on the left-hand side:

Note When you make changes to these parameters on the Planning screen, press Save to update information for the selected day only or press Save and update defaults if you want to apply these changes for all of the following dates.

Planning your routes with MaxOptra is very easy both manually or automatically.

To build a route manually, just select an order on the right-hand side and drag it to the timelines in the middle:

You can drop the order onto an existing route to edit or onto free space to create a new route. As you build routes you will see them displayed both on the timeline and the map below.

You can also use the map for allocating orders. Simply drag the order icon and drop it onto the timeline or on the route right on the map:

To reallocate the orders, simply drag them from one route to another either on the timeline or on the map:

To unallocate an order, drag it back to the Unplanned list:

You can pretty much drag anything anywhere and MaxOptra does what you would expect to. You can also drag around groups of orders. Simply hold down the Ctrl key and select the orders you want to move.

Using the map and holding down the Ctrl key you can also draw a rectangular selection to quickly select a group of orders. You can add or remove orders from that selection by clicking on them while still holding the Ctrl key.

When you allocate orders to routes manually, MaxOptra automatically calculates a lot of things for you. It automatically puts the orders for the route in the most optimal sequence minimizing the travel while still ensuring that all orders meet their time windows. If it cannot plan a route in such a way that it meets all constraints, the vehicle will be highlighted red. You can get information about what constraint is violated by hovering your mouse over the exclamation mark on the vehicle:

You do not have to fix it if you do not want to. MaxOptra will highlight all the violations but will not prevent you from going ahead with them. Ultimately, you have the final decision about the routes as you have all the knowledge.