Scheduling preferences introduction

S-006-V5-EN

The Preferences menu allows you to configure hard and soft rules of how vehicles and duties must be scheduled, what is allowed or not, time definitions, and more.
​

To open the menu, click the Preferences icon on the top-left side of the Scheduling screen:
​

Preferences are split into 4 main categories:
​

Each category is named according to what its preferences affect, with the exception of Misc which contains preferences for both vehicles and duties.

You can click on a category to look for a preference or start typing its name in the search bar in the top-left corner of the menu.
​

There are two different views within the preferences called Recommended View and Expanded View. The recommended view is the default view that users will see, and this is driven by which preferences have been made available in the configuration of the domain. This may typically display the preferences that are required for your schedules.

However, other preferences are still available and can be accessed by switching the view to Expanded View. Preferences in recommended view will be in bold, whilst preferences in expanded view are not.

Some preferences will have predefined templates of UI for use, it may have been designed for specific use/customization or it was saved by a user to have a ready-made template of what they had already defined previously. To use a preference template, click Load Template.
​

Non-template preferences have a structured and predefined UI that can be used without a template. To use this kind of preference, click on Add Preference.
​

Most preferences are hard rules by default. That means that when your schedule breaks a rule, it’s shown as a warning or issue in the validation panel. Also, if you use the optimization engine, it will avoid breaking the rule as much as possible, otherwise displaying warnings or issues.

You can turn a preference into a soft rule by enabling the Penalty option. This is most commonly used in trip connections and layover preferences.
​

Enabling the penalty will open a penalty box where we can specify the penalty if the rule is broken. The penalty is equivalent to cost. This way you can express your operational considerations and the system will try to minimize the sum of cost and penalty. It is best to set a penalty in proportion to the costs you set up. Penalty input can be a matter of trial and error.
​

These rules of thumb may be helpful:
​

If you use the optimization engine, there are a few preferences that you must always set: