Routing and Dispatching Setup — Step 3 of 3
With your service areas built and your drivers scheduled, you're ready for the final step: planning and dispatching your routes. Once orders are set to Delivery by Driver, you'll use NikoHealth's Routing feature to generate routes from your service areas and drivers, fine-tune them, dispatch them to your drivers' mobile app, and track progress in real time.
Navigating the Routing Feature
To access the Routing feature, go to the quick access options in the upper-right corner of NikoHealth and choose Routes. This is where you'll plan and dispatch the stops for your drivers out in the field.
The core of this screen is the map, showing your service areas in their shaded colors. The house icon represents your drivers' starting point — really your inventory locations.
The map shows the stops for the selected day.
Every stop falls into one of three statuses.
Unassigned: Stops not yet assigned to a route. All stops start out unassigned until you generate your routes. After you generate routes, the stops that remain unassigned are usually those that fall outside of your service areas, or those whose order was entered after you generated routes for the day. You can manually assign these to a route at any time.
Planned: Stops assigned to a route, but not yet dispatched to a driver. These are the stops you're still planning.
Dispatched: Stops sent to your drivers. These stops appear in the mobile app for the assigned driver.
Triangle markers represent the unassigned stops for the date:
Yellow — the stop is within a service area.
Orange — the stop is outside all of your service areas.
Red — there's a problem with the order associated with that stop.
Click any stop on the map to see the specific patient and delivery address.
On the left side panel, you can filter by service area and view the day's stops broken out by area, or use the tabs to view stops by status.
Generating your Routes
The first step to planning your routes is to Generate them. Click the blue Generate Routes button in the upper right corner.
The system builds routes based on your service areas, your driver preferences, and the ability to minimize drive time. The stops move from Unassigned to Planned, but nothing has been dispatched yet.
Most triangle markers become numbered stops, organized by service area and driver and color-coded by service area.
Manually Adding Unassigned Stops
Any stop that falls outside your service areas stays unassigned so you can handle it manually. Once routes are planned, you can fine-tune the day's deliveries.
To manually assign the stops outside your service area, go to the Unassigned tab in the left-side panel. Click on the action menu next to the stop you want to assign and choose Assign to Route.
To assign every unassigned stop in a service area at once, click the action menu next to the service area's name. Then choose one of these options:
Auto Assign: automatically assigns all unassigned stops in the service area across available drivers based on their shifts.
Assign All to Route: assigns all unassigned stops in the service area to a route you choose.
Dispatching your Routes
When your routes are ready, in the left-side panel, click your service areas and choose Dispatch Route.
As soon as routes are dispatched, they're sent to the drivers' mobile app in real time, and each route's dotted path becomes solid.
On the left-side panel, those stops move to Dispatched, where you can view each service area's stops and expected delivery times.
Below the map, an interactive timeline shows stops by service area and driver.
Manually Changing Dispatched Routes
If you need to make changes to a dispatched route, you can do that on the interactive timeline.
To change a route, click and drag a numbered stop:
Up or down to move the stop to a different driver's route
Left or right to change the order of stops on a route
After dropping a stop to its new location, the system updates the routes to include your change exactly as you made it. A menu appears below that allows you to take additional action on this change.
To ensure changes are processed through NikoHealth's Routing functionality, choose Optimize. The system will re-process all your stops, incorporating the manual change, and optimize your routes. When you're set, be sure to Save Changes.
Overtime warning: if a manual change pushes a driver beyond their working hours, the system will let you know the stop is putting that driver into overtime.
Tracking your Drivers
Once a driver accepts their route in the NikoHealth mobile app, their geolocation turns on and you can follow their progress on the Routes screen. The driver's initials appear on the map at their current location and next to their route in the list below the map.
A green dot on the driver's initials means they're online and their geolocation is on. A red dot means their geolocation is off. Hover over the initials to see the driver's name and status.
Viewing and Managing Orders on a Stop
To view and manage the Orders for a stop, go to the left-side panel and select the stop's action menu. Choose View Orders.
A panel opens showing the patient's name and address, estimated delivery time, driver information, and order details.
From here you can:
Add a note to the driver, sent directly to their mobile app in real time.
Open the full Order screen by clicking the Order link.