Tune routes

Zendera plans your day automatically. The optimizer assigns orders to drivers and sequences stops continuously in the background, so most days you’ll just check the plan in Order Overview and dispatch.

Tune routes (also called fine tuning; the page is titled Manually tune routes in the app) is the manual override layer on top of the optimizer — where you step in when you know something the optimizer doesn’t:

A driver who needs to leave early.
A customer who has to be visited first.
A stop you want kept on a specific driver no matter what.
A reshuffle the optimizer wouldn’t pick on its own.

You give those instructions by locking, sequencing, freezing, and dragging. The optimizer respects everything you lock and continues to optimize the rest.

See How the system works for what the optimizer actually does in the background.

When to open Tune routes

You don’t need this screen every day. Open it when:

The auto plan needs a human judgment call.
You want to pre-commit a stop to a specific driver.
A driver has special constraints today (early finish, lunch break shift).
You want to re-trigger optimization with new constraints.

How to open the planning board

Click Tune routes in the left sidebar, or
Go directly to https://app.zenderatms.com/tune-routes/<YYYY-MM-DD> for a specific date.

The date picker is at the top left. The arrows step day by day.

What you’ll see on the screen

Area	What it shows
Top bar	Page title (Manually tune routes), date with ‹ / › to step days, and a “Routes not fully synced” indicator that appears when your unsaved changes haven’t been pushed back to the optimizer. A cogwheel for page settings sits on the far right.
Top metrics row	Day-level totals: Total travel distance, Total travel time, Total waiting time, and Optimizer cost.
Left sidebar — Filters and sorting	Sort drivers/vehicles dropdown, Filter on groups, and the Drivers and vehicles list (search, plus Hide all / Show all buttons; tick or untick a driver to show or hide their column).
Stops on hold column	Unassigned orders, with their own filters. The header badge shows how many stops are on hold.
Driver columns	One column per driver in the day plan. Header shows driver name, vehicle ID, vehicle type, and counts of Completed / Arrived / Dispatched / Planned stops. Driver info expands extra detail; Actions opens per-driver operations.

Tip: When you have lots of drivers, scroll right to see more columns, or use Hide all in the left sidebar and tick only the drivers you care about.

How to review and adjust the auto plan

Most days, this is the workflow:

Open Tune routes for the date you want. The board already shows the optimizer’s plan — drivers, stops, sequence.
Use the metrics at the top to spot issues (overloaded drivers, unassigned stops, time-window violations).
Make adjustments where needed:
- Click and drag a stop card between status sections, between drivers, or onto Stops on hold.
- Lock a stop so the optimizer can’t move it.
- Re-sequence stops within a driver’s day.
Click Save to persist. The optimizer takes your locks/changes into account from this point on.
Click Dispatch all (or Dispatch on a single driver) to send the plan to the driver app.

Unsaved changes block date navigation. If you try to switch to another date with unsaved changes, you’ll see “Please, save changes before going to the other date.” Save or discard first.

How to lock a stop to a driver

Click the padlock icon on a stop card. The stop is now fixed to that driver — the optimizer won’t move it, even when new orders arrive later. This is your most-used override. Use it when you know something the optimizer doesn’t (a customer who always wants the same driver, a dispatcher’s promise, etc.).

How to fix a stop’s sequence position

A stop must be locked first before its sequence can be fixed. Then:

Lock the stop (padlock icon — see above).
Click the route-number icon on the stop card.

The optimizer will keep that stop at its current position in the route.

Sequence requires lock first. If a stop isn’t locked, the route-number toggle stays disabled.

How to freeze an entire route

A frozen route is “done” — the optimizer won’t touch any stop in it, and won’t add new stops to it. Useful when a driver is about to leave and you want certainty about what’s on their truck.

Click the route header’s ⋮ menu.
Choose Freeze route.

Freeze does not cancel bookings. If a stop in the route was booked on a route-scheduling interval, the booking stays.

How to use the Replan function

When you click stop cards to select them, a Replan action appears at the top of the page. Use it to re-run the optimizer on just the stops you’ve picked, across just the workshifts you choose — a light optimization rather than a full replan of the day.

What “light” means here. The optimizer only re-considers the stops and workshifts you select; the rest of the day’s plan is left untouched. Use it when you need a targeted reshuffle, not a full rebuild.

Heads up: because this is a light optimization, it won’t always place every order the way you want. Time-window and capacity constraints can leave some stops unplaced. Re-run or adjust constraints if that happens.

The Replan dialog has two steps:

Step 1 — Choose workshifts

A count at the top tells you how many selected stops will be moved (e.g. “34 selected stops will be moved to the workshifts you select here”).

Use the Search box to find a driver quickly.
Select All to tick every driver, or tick individual rows.
Each row shows the driver name and workshift hours (e.g. Alexander Larsen (05:00 – 13:00)).
Click Plan to run, or Cancel to discard.

Step 2 — Change constraints (skills check)

A matrix shows each selected order as a row and each chosen workshift as a column:

A green checkmark means the workday can handle that order.
A red X means it can’t — usually because the order requires skills the driver / vehicle doesn’t have.

If you want a workshift to take an order it currently can’t, remove the mismatched skills from the order:

Tick the order’s checkbox and click Choose selected, or
Click Remove all skills from all orders to clear skills across the board, or
Right-click an order row and pick Remove order skills from the context menu.

Once the matrix shows green checkmarks where you need them:

Click Select workshifts to step back to step 1 if you want to change the driver selection.
Click Plan to run the light optimization.

The optimizer respects everything you’ve locked or frozen. Locked stops, sequence-fixed stops, and frozen routes are never moved — by either auto re-runs or a manual replan.

How to filter and sort the driver columns

In the left sidebar:

Group filter — show only drivers in a specific group (e.g. “Oslo - South”).
Sort dropdown — by Driver name, Vehicle name, or Start time.
Hide a single driver — click the eye-slash icon in their column header to collapse the column. Show again from the eye icon at the top.

How to use batch operations

To act on many drivers at once, tick the checkbox on each driver column header (or the master checkbox at the top), then choose:

Dispatch all — send all selected plans to the drivers.
Plan all — re-run the optimizer for selected drivers.
Lock all — lock every stop on the selected drivers.

A confirmation dialog tells you how many drivers and stops are affected.

Granular dispatch options per driver

When you focus on a single driver (from the driver column’s Actions menu, or by clicking a driver in Order Overview), you get finer control over exactly what gets sent to the driver’s app:

Dispatch Next Pickups — send only pickups (across rounds) to the driver.
Dispatch Next Trip — send stops up to the next depot pickup.
Dispatch All Stops — send everything planned for this driver.
Re-plan All Stops — re-run optimization (stops are temporarily hidden from the app).
Stop Optimization — pause optimization for this driver.
Cancel All Stops — set all stops to cancelled status.

A per-stop ⋮ Quick Update lets you change the pickup/delivery time, dispatch just that stop (or all stops up to and including it), change priority, change driver, or cancel the order.

How to undo and redo

The left sidebar has Undo and Redo buttons (or use the standard keyboard shortcuts). Each drag, lock, or freeze is undoable until you save.

Clicking Cancel discards every change since the last save. The browser will warn you if there are unsaved changes.

How to customise the board layout

Click Page settings (top of the left sidebar).
The dialog has four tabs:
- Driver view — what to show in the driver column header.
- Driver card — drag fields to reorder, toggle on/off.
- Stop card top / middle / bottom — same for each section of the stop card.
Save. Your layout is per-user.

How to switch between simple and batch view

Simple view — every stop is a separate card. Best for fine-grained edits.
Batch view — consecutive stops at the same location with the same type are merged into one card. Best for bulk operations.

Switch via the eye/list icon in the driver column header.

Some operations only work in simple view. Per-stop status overrides aren’t available in batch view.

How to build a day plan from scratch (rare)

If you’ve started a day with no orders auto-assigned (e.g. the optimizer is disabled, or you’ve moved everything to Stops on hold to start over):

In the Stops on hold column on the right, find the stops you need to assign.
Drag each stop onto the right driver’s column. Pickup and delivery stops of the same order keep their relative order automatically (you can’t deliver before you pick up).
Save and dispatch.

In normal day-to-day use, you won’t do this — the optimizer will already have a plan ready for you.

What’s next

To watch the dispatched plan unfold live, see Order Overview.
To set the driver and vehicle data the optimizer uses, see Drivers and Vehicles.
To understand the optimizer itself, see How the system works.