How do you reorder a technician's stops to cut drive time?
Open the technician's day on a map next to the schedule, then reorder the stops. In Fieldproxy, Best order reorders them to cut drive time inside each arrival window, and any order you try is previewed with new start times and missed windows before you apply it.
This walkthrough shows route planning on the Fieldproxy schedule map at Summit Home Services, a demo HVAC, plumbing and electrical company: one technician's route, Best order cutting drive time, and a manual reorder that would miss customers' arrival windows.
Chapters
Summit Home Services is a demo company with fictional customers. Every screen is the real Fieldproxy product; some sequences are sped up.
Step by step
Open the schedule map
Switch the schedule to Map to see each technician's day beside their route.
Pick a technician
Click their name to draw the route and list their stops with drive time between them.
Click Best order
It reorders the stops to cut drive time inside each arrival window and shows the new total and start times.
Or drag your own order
Drag a stop up or down; the preview recalculates drive time and flags visits that would miss their arrival window.
Apply or cancel
Nothing is saved until you apply; cancel leaves the day as it was.
Questions people ask
- How do I minimize backtracking on technician routes?
- Look at each technician's stops on a map and reorder them so the route doesn't double back, while keeping each customer's arrival window. Best order does this automatically and shows the drive time saved.
- Does reordering change customers' appointment times?
- It proposes new start times from the drive model, and flags any visit that would arrive after its promised window. Nothing changes until you apply it.
- How much drive time can it save?
- In this example, Best order cut one technician's day from about 1 hour 57 minutes of driving to about 1 hour 24 minutes.
- Can I reorder stops myself?
- Yes. Drag a stop to a new position; the preview shows the new drive time and any missed windows before you apply or cancel.
- How long does it take to set up?
- Fieldproxy builds your own field service management system around your workflows, and it can be live within a day.
- Is Summit Home Services a real company?
- No. Summit is a demo company with fictional customers. The screens are the real Fieldproxy product, recorded live and sped up.
Transcript
Show
- 0:00How do you cut a technician's drive time without breaking your promises to customers?
- 0:05Put the schedule and the map side by side, reorder the stops, and see the drive time and arrival windows before you commit.
- 0:13Here it is at a demo heating, plumbing and electrical company.
- 0:19Every mile between jobs is time nobody pays for, and fuel you can't bill.
- 0:23The schedule's map view puts each technician's day right next to their route, so you can see the backtracking before the trucks roll.
- 0:32Click a technician, and their route draws on the map. Danny Ortiz has four stops today, about an hour and fifty-seven minutes of driving, with the drive time shown on every stop.
- 0:44Click Best order, and it reorders the stops to cut drive time, while keeping each customer inside their arrival window: from an hour fifty-seven down to an hour twenty-four. That's over half an hour back in one technician's day.
- 0:58New start times come from the drive model, and nothing is saved until you apply.
- 1:04Or plan it yourself. On Thursday, Leah Kim has three leak and water heater calls, about an hour twenty-eight of driving. Drag the last stop to the top.
- 1:15The preview recalculates on the spot: seven minutes less driving.
- 1:19But two visits would now arrive after the window promised to the customer, and each one is flagged in red with its old time.
- 1:27So you cancel, and nothing changed. The day stays exactly as the customers were promised, and you saw the trade-off before a single customer ever did.
- 1:37Shorter routes, and promises kept. Get your own custom field service management within a day, tailored to your workflows. Start at fieldproxy dot ai.
