Optimize a technician route for the day

Optimize Day analyzes one technician's day and tells you whether reordering their jobs would cut drive time — with the estimated minutes saved, the current versus recommended stop order, and an Apply button that writes the new order back to the schedule. You'll find it on the Calendar in Day view, once the technician filter is set to a single tech.

Before you start

• Jobs need addresses — the optimizer routes between customer locations and the technician's base.
• Give your Job Types realistic default durations; the optimizer uses them when actual job times aren't available (blank types count as 30 minutes).
• The button only appears for a specific technician — not for All Technicians or Unassigned — and only on Day view.

Step 1 — Filter to one technician's day

1. Open Calendar and switch to Day view on the day you want to plan.
2. In the toolbar's technician dropdown, pick the technician by name.
3. The Optimize Day button appears in the filter row. (On Week or Month view you'll see a disabled hint instead — "Optimize (Day view only)".)

Step 2 — Run the analysis

Click Optimize Day. While it works the button reads "Analyzing...", then a result card replaces it with one of two headlines:

• "Route is already efficient" — no change worth making; you're done.
• A reorder headline with the minutes saved — e.g. "Reorder to save 45 min" — plus a one-line summary of the day: job count, total drive, total service time, and the confidence level of the estimate.

Any risk notes (tight windows, constraints that limit the reorder) are listed right on the card, not hidden.

Step 3 — Review the route details

Click "Show route details" to expand:

• Current order and Recommended order — the stop-by-stop sequence, starting from Base, with per-leg drive minutes on hover.
• A savings line comparing before/after drive time — marked road-verified when real road data backed the numbers.
• How many jobs are fixed (committed time windows) versus flexible, and any backtracking penalty in the current order.
• "Show route map" — a map preview of the current and recommended paths.
• "Data quality" — what the confidence rating is based on.

Step 4 — Apply it

Click Apply. The technician's flexible jobs are rewritten into the recommended order and the card confirms with Applied. The calendar refreshes to show the new sequence. If you'd rather not, Dismiss closes the card without touching anything.

Troubleshooting

• The button isn't visible — check all three conditions: Day view, a single named technician in the filter, and the Calendar page (the optimizer doesn't run from the Jobs list).
• "Failed to analyze route" — the analysis call failed, usually missing/un-geocodable addresses or a connection issue. Fix the job addresses and retry.
• "Failed to apply order" — the reorder didn't save. Re-run the analysis (the schedule may have changed underneath) and apply again.
• Savings look small — that's honest math: with mostly time-constrained jobs there's little freedom to reorder. The card's fixed-versus-flexible count shows how boxed in the day is.