Detect Travel Keys Automatically
Oracle Fusion Field Service can detect activity travel keys automatically using machine learning. When you select the Detect activity travel keys automatically option, you don't need to decide and configure the keys manually. The application detects and configures travel keys automatically based on the country of operation, cities, and the ZIP codes of the activity locations. When you apply the key, the application learns and keeps updating the travel keys, and the estimated travel durations, based on the reported data.
To have Oracle Fusion Field Service detect travel keys automatically, select the Detect activity travel keys automatically option on the page, under Activity Travel Keys. Any existing keys that you've configured manually are deleted.
If you haven’t specified the country code, the default country specified in the Default country for geocoding field on the Business Rules page is used. Oracle Fusion Field Service estimations travel durations and learns continuously using the reported travel durations and data from location services, based on the newly detected travel keys.
The travel keys that are detected are typically a combination of the country code and a part of the ZIP code, if enough data with ZIP codes is available. The length of the ZIP code depends on the country and it's calculated in a way to optimize the geographical area of travel keys. For example, if the entire postal code is detected as a travel key and the area represented by it's too small, then only the first characters of the postal code may be considered to represent a larger, and more optimal, area, therefore providing better travel estimations.
If enough data exists, these are the typical travel keys used by the application based on the country:
| Country | Code | Travel Key |
|---|---|---|
| Argentina | AR | country_code, czip(4) |
| Austria | AT | country_code, czip(4) |
| Australia | AU | country_code, czip(4) |
| Belgium | BE | country_code, czip(4) |
| Bermuda | BM | country_code, czip(2) |
| Brazil | BR | country_code, czip(6) |
| Canada | CA | country_code, czip(5) |
| China | CN | country_code, czip(5) |
| Czechia | CZ | country_code, czip(6) |
| Germany | DE | country_code, czip(5) |
| Dominican Republic | DO | country_code, czip(5) |
| Ecuador | EC | country_code, czip(5) |
| Spain | ES | country_code, czip(5) |
| Finland | FI | country_code, czip(5) |
| France | FR | country_code, czip(5) |
| Great Britain/UK/England | GB | country_code, czip(first word + 1 char) |
| Greece | GR | country_code, czip(5) |
| Guatemala | GT | country_code, czip(5) |
| Hungary | HU | country_code, czip(4) |
| India | IN | country_code, czip(6) |
| Italy | IT | country_code, czip(5) |
| Japan | JP | country_code, czip(5) |
| Mexico | MX | country_code, czip(5) |
| Netherlands | NL | country_code, czip(4) |
| New Zealand | NZ | country_code, czip(4) |
| Puerto Rico | PR | country_code, czip(5) |
| Portugal | PT | country_code, czip(4) |
| Romania | RO | country_code, czip(5) |
| Sweden | SE | country_code, czip(6) |
| Singapore | SG | country_code, czip(2) |
| USA | US | country_code, czip(5) |
Spaces and Special Characters
Except for Great Britain/UK/England, spaces and special characters are excluded for all countries (given in the table) when calculating the travel keys. For example, a postal code with a value of '40301-110' is considered the same as '40301110'. For countries not included in the table, the format of '(country_code, czip(5))' is used by default. If the proportion of activity locations with valid zip codes isn't significant, the application uses a combination of the country code and the city as the travel key.
API Overrides
If you’ve selected the 'Detect activity travel keys automatically' option, you can’t apply API overrides for travel keys. The message corresponding to the 'Apply statistics API overrides only' option on the 'Apply Changes' page is adjusted to convey this.
When you select 'Detect activity travel keys automatically' and apply the changes, the learned statistics and overrides related to the manually configured keys are deleted. However, the earlier configuration is preserved, so if you deselect the check box later, the travel keys that were manually configured earlier are displayed. In this case, when you apply the changes, you can apply the travel estimations based on the earlier configured keys either overnight or immediately by selecting the 'Apply configuration changes' option.
If you’ve only saved the changes and not yet applied, a message is displayed alerting that the changes haven't yet been applied. This is applicable whether you select or deselect the check box.
View Travel Key Data
You can view the data related to travel keys that are detected automatically, in the Travel Statistics reports and the APIs related to travel statistics. The column for organization in the Travel Statistics report shows 'All organizations' for travel keys that are automatically detected.
The travel keys that are automatically detected work the same way as the travel keys created manually, including gathering statistics and estimating airline distance based on the travel time at the key level, if configured that way. These travel keys are also independent of organizations and only vary based on the country of operation.