One of your ideas has been delivered from your suggestion.Appointment Options - Consider Transit Time

This feature extends the Schedule Appointment logic to consider transit time and future appointments when generating the list of feasible appointment options.  You will find this feature beneficial in any situation where your appointment scheduling requirements require awareness of appointments that have been made on more than one stop on your shipment.

This feature is controlled using two properties:

Property - glog.appointment.considerNextStopApptTime - When set to true, time feasibility of the appointment options will be determined based on the next stop appointment time following the formula, Appointment end time <= next stop appointment time - transit time. The application logic determines the time feasibility of the appointment options based on the order release date constraints when you schedule an appointment. To check the time feasibility based on the next stop appointment time, set this property to true. The default value for this property is false.

For example, if the transit time is 6 hours and the next stop appointment time is 5:00 PM, the appointment end time at the current location should be at or before 11:00 AM (5:00 PM - 6 hours).

Property - glog.appointment.considerTransitTime - When set to true, the time feasibility of the appointment options will be determined based on the transit time following the formula, Appointment end time + transit time >= Order's early delivery date (EDD) or Order's late delivery date (EDD).  The application logic determines the time feasibility of appointment options based on the order release date constraints when you schedule an appointment. To check the time feasibility based on transit time, set this property to true.  The default value for this property is false.

The time feasibility of the appointment options is determined at the current location based on the transit time, using the formula:

  • For a pickup location when the next stop is a dropoff/delivery location:
    Appointment end time + transit time >= Order's Early Delivery Date (EDD) AND Appointment end time + transit time <= Order's late delivery date (LDD)
  • For a dropoff/delivery location when the next stop is a pickup location:
    Appointment end time + transit time >= Order's early pickup date (EPD) AND Appointment end time + transit time <= Order's late pickup date (LPD).

In the example below, with both parameters set to true, a delivery appointment will be set before the pickup stop appointment.  In this setup, the feasible options for the pickup appointment will filtered based on the transit time to the delivery stop appointment and the delivery appointment itself.  To simplify the scenario the order delivery dates have not been added.

The example shipment goes from DC1 to the 90056 Customer Location, the transit time between these two location is 1 hour and 11 minutes.

Planned Stop Times and Transit Time

Planned Stop Times and Transit Time

For the fist appointment scheduled, the delivery stop appointment, the noon/12:00 pm appointment will be selected as shown below.  

Delivery Location Appointment Scheduled

Delivery Location Appointment Scheduled

With the two properties set to true, when the DC1 pickup appointment is scheduled, the Feasible options provided are limited considering both the next appointment and the transit time.  In this example, that limits the appointment options for the pickup appointment to just the two options shown below.  In this next stop appointment case, the property glog.appointment.considerNextStopApptTime takes precedence.

Pickup Appointment Feasible Options with Next Stop Appointment

Pickup Appointment Feasible Options with Next Stop Appointment

With the two properties set to false, the default/backward compatible behavior when scheduling the pickup appointment at DC1, with the Customer delivery appointment already set, a much longer "Feasible" list of options are provided as shown below.  Clearly, many of the "Feasible" options are not feasible given the current delivery appointment of 12 pm noon at the customer location.   The purpose of this feature is to remove these operationally infeasible options from the list when you schedule your appointments.

Properties set to false - Pickup Appointment "Feasible" Options

Properties set to false - Pickup Appointment "Feasible" Options

Improves Appointment Management usability by limiting the feasible Appointment Options displayed to a list that considers the transit time required to arrive at a location with a set delivery appointment.

Steps to Enable

To take advantage of the transit time and next stop appointment logic the following configuration is required:

  • The Enforce Appointment Time Window checkbox must be selected in the location resource as shown below for DC1.

Enforce Appointment Time Window

Enforce Appointment Time Window

  • The properties below must be set to true:
    • glog.appointment.considerTransitTime
    • glog.appointment.considerNextStopApptTime

To set the properties you will need to navigate to Configuration and Administration > Property Management > Property Sets.

NOTE: Only the DBA.ADMIN user can access and use the Property Sets page.

Tips And Considerations

The property - glog.appointment.considerNextStopApptTime - takes precedence over the property - glog.appointment.considerTransitTime - in situations where an appointment is available at the next stop. Otherwise, the - glog.appointment.considerTransitTimeproperty is considered when finding Feasible Appointment options.