Auto Assignment
Auto Assignment
TransVirtual allows users the ability to automatically assign work to Agents or Employees; no manual intervention is required-freeing up time for other tasks.
How To
1. The Auto Assignment Rules page is found by navigating to Settings > Rules and Automation > Auto Assignment.
2. Here you will see a list of your current rules. Click on 'New Rule' to setup another.
3. Enter in the details for this rule; name, priority and the type. The priority is used to tell the system which rules will be looked at first-the higher the number means the higher the priority. You can also choose what type of assignment this will be by using the drop-down list. 'Delivery Assignment Only' means this rule will only assign work that is for a delivery type; nothing else. Once you have the correct information click 'Create'.
4. You will now see your newly created rule appear in orange (indicating it is not yet active) on the left side of the screen.
5. Click on your rule and you will see its settings appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
Note: Clicking on the blue/white question marks next to each field will give you an explanation on what each field is used for/does.
6. Here you need to setup the settings for this Auto Assignment. You can enter a start and end assign time if you wish, which will only assign work between these times. You also need to set what will trigger this assignment using the Allocate Delivery Trigger field; this can be any from the list but 'creation' is a good default. The other main thing to setup is who this will assign to using the 'Assign to Agent/Employee field'.
7. Down the bottom of the page there is a data filter. This can be used to define how you want this auto assignment rule to work. For example, you may only want this auto assignment rule to apply when the receiver suburb is Beresfield. The data filter would look like this upon setup:
8. As per the above setup, whenever there is a consignment in the system that reaches its day of expected delivery and the receiver suburb is Beresfield, this Auto Assignment rule will kick in and assign the work automatically to your selected Employee/Agent.
Note: Ensure you toggle Enable Rule to YES and you then click Update to turn this rule on:
Auto Assignment Using Linehaul Scanning
The above information runs through how to setup an auto-assignment rule without performing any device scanning. But what if you want to assign freight automatically from Linehaul Scanning on a device? This can also be done, it simply requires a bit of configuration. See below for an example on how this could be setup.
The first things you will need to do to set this up are setup your auto-assignment rules and setup your scan tags.
Starting with the scan tag setup go to Settings > Lists and Zones > Dictionary Lists > Scan Tags:
Click on add to create new scan tags.
Scan tags are useful for further refining of scans - they can be used to add extra information to a scan. An example might be Linehaul scan with a tag of Driver 1. This can be used to let you know that this scanned freight is being handed over to Driver 1 who will then complete the delivery from there etc.
Setup scan tags with your agent or driver names. If you have a driver called "Driver 1" setup a scan tag exactly matching this.
Once all the scan tags have been setup we will use these in our auto-assignment rules.
Note: Setting up scan tags in the dictionary list means these tags are not forced and so the user doing the scanning does not have to select a tag. There is also the option to setup forced scan tags under Settings > Lists and Zones > Freight Scan Types:
Setting the tags up here means that anyone doing Linehaul scanning in your account MUST select from the available tags listed. They cannot proceed with Linehaul scanning without a selected scan tag.
It is up to you as to which way is the better of the two options, but forcing can be useful especially when requiring scan tags for auto-assignments, as forcing the user to select a tag means there is no possibility of them forgetting to add a tag - if this were to happen any auto-assignments based on scan tags wouldn't work.
The next thing to setup is your auto-assignment rules.
This page can be found under Settings > Rules and Automation > Auto Assignment:
Click New Rule:
Give the rule a name and allocation type. The allocation type is what sort of consignments you are wanting to assign to the agent or driver. In the above example, our rule is called Andre and we are going to assign Andre pickups and deliveries. Click create.
From here, click on your newly created rule. You are going to modify your auto-assignment rule:
To start, click on the drop-down bar for the data filter. We need to find scan tag and add this in to our filter.
So:
Click Next and select equals and then select the scan tag you want to use - then click add rule:
Doing this adds a line to the data filter as per the above.
Generally too with Linehaul based scanning assignments it is a good idea to limit assignments to a particular Linehaul destination because the driver or agent you are assigning freight to would normally only cover a specific region.
To set this up, click on the data filter drop-down and select Linehaul Destination equals and select the relevant location:
Click add rule and you see the line added to the data filter:
It is very important to limit each auto-assignment rule to a Linehaul location where possible as this helps refine the data and assignment process. You may have lots of scan tags setup - in which case each of the agents or drivers you use may only service one area for you. If this is the case you would need to make sure the data filter is limited to a destination for each of your rules.
The next things to setup are the settings at the top of the page:
The allocation type was set when the rule was created but you can change again if needed.
The allocate delivery trigger will need to be set to either scanned linehaul or Linehaul Manifest created.
It is up to you which of these options is best; keep in mind that if you pick Linehaul Manifest created, if the user doing the scanning forgets to create the manifest after all the scanning, the auto-assignment will not work. Therefore, it may be 'safer' to select scanned linehaul as this means the trigger happens as soon as freight gets a Linehaul scan - it doesn't require a manifest be created.
The assign to agent/employee field needs to be set. Click the source to choose either employee or agent. Then click the drop-down arrow to the right to set the relevant agent or employee. This will be who is assigned the connote when the auto-assignment triggers:
The assign start and end times are not necessary - these fields simply allow you to set times for which an auto-assignment will be active. Outside of your specified times an auto-assignment will still work but the assignment won't occur to the agent or driver until the start assign time is reached - meaning that the connote will show the assignment to the agent or driver but it will be 'on hold' until the start assign time and will not release until then. This functionality can come in handy for assigning to drivers; they may have set shifts and possibly you wouldn't want any jobs auto-assigned to them to appear on their devices until the assign start time etc.
Once you have the settings configured it is a good idea to review before enabling an auto-assignment rule.
For our above example we are going to assign connotes to employee Andre when a Linehaul scan with a destination of Sydney and a scan tag of Andre has been performed. We are going to assign both pickups and deliveries to Andre - whatever is scanned with the above criteria essentially.
Once you are happy with the rule, enable it to begin using this auto-assignment:
From here, all that is left to do is perform the appropriate Linehaul scanning. Based on our above example, the below scan when applied to a connote will assign the connote to Andre - at which point if Andre is an employee/user the connote will appear on his device. If Andre was an agent, then the job would just assign to that agent and wouldn't display on any devices; simply because an agent is usually company (collection of users) and not a single user-assigning to an agent is useful though for pricing in terms of costs involved in a connote etc:
The scan tag is located top-right. Tap and hold to change and select one from the list.
Under the history tab of any scanned connotes you will then see that the auto-assignment to your specified driver (employee) or agent has occurred:
This job will now appear on that user/employee's device.
If you scan 10 consignments in the same manner, the user will then have all 10 jobs on their device etc.
Important to Note
Consignments actively assigned to a driver will not be eligible for auto-assignment as the assignment to a driver takes precedence over any applicable auto-assignment rules. The driver will need to complete their assigned portion of the consignment or return/remove it from their device before auto-assignment is possible.
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