Create orders automatically with a recurring schedule

Some customers ship the same load on fixed days: every weekday, every Monday and Thursday, or on the first of each month. Instead of creating these orders by hand, give the order template a recurring schedule. Transportial then creates each order a number of days in advance, with the stops on the right dates.

Set up a schedule

1. Open the transport orders list and click + from template. The Order templates list opens. If the order is not a template yet, save it first with Save as template; see Use order templates.
2. Choose Recurring schedule in the row actions of the template. The panel Recurring schedule opens.
3. Under Recurrence, choose how often it Repeats: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly or Rotation (weeks on / off), and set Every (interval), for example 2 for every other week.
4. For a weekly schedule or a rotation, click the weekdays. Without days, the weekday of Valid from is used. For a monthly schedule, enter the Day of the month; for a yearly one also the Month (1-12). For a rotation, enter the Weeks on and Weeks off.
5. Set Valid from (today by default) and, if the schedule should end, Valid until (empty = no end).
6. Optionally change Orders per date (1 by default), for example 3 when the customer ships three loads a day.
7. Optionally set Generate days ahead (empty = platform default).
8. In Occurrence date is the day of, choose whether the date of each occurrence is the day of The first stop or The last stop.
9. Choose the Status of generated orders: Accepted (the default), Draft or Requested.
10. Click Save schedule.

How the orders are created

• Transportial checks each schedule regularly (every 60 minutes by default) and creates the orders for the dates from today up to the number of days ahead (7 by default).
• Each order is a copy of the template. The stop you chose lands on the occurrence date; the other stops keep their distance in days and their times. Dates follow your platform's time zone.
• A new order is handled like any other new order, so order defaults, assignment rules and pricing apply. The duplicate order warning skips these orders.
• Each date is created only once. If you change the schedule or the template, only dates that have not been created yet follow the change.

Check the schedule and create orders by hand

Once the schedule is saved, the panel shows its Status: the Next dates, the Next automatic run and the Last run. An error from the last run is shown in red.

1. Under Generate orders, choose the period with From and To.
2. Click Preview to see how many new orders a run would create.
3. Click Generate now to create them straight away. Click Retry failed dates to try dates that failed before again.

The list Generated orders shows every date with its order number and the status New, In progress, Created, Skipped (already created) or Failed.

Pause or stop a schedule

• Switch on Paused (no automatic generation) and save to stop the automatic runs for a while. You can still create orders with Generate now.
• Set Valid until to end the schedule on a date.
• Click Delete schedule to remove it. Orders that were already created stay.
• To skip a single date, cancel the order that was created for it.

Platform limits

In Settings, tab Environment, section Order entry, under Recurring orders from templates, you set Most orders per generation run (100), Days ahead orders are generated (7), Minutes between automatic runs per schedule (60) and Longest range of a manual generation (days) (92).