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Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

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Posted on by JandostKhoso 266

Hello

I am getting somehow big differences in the distance and travel time between resources on the schedule board. I want to know what is the mechanism to calculate the distance and time travel on the scheduling board? My client uses both Bing and Google map to check the correctness of the distance and travel time and they are literally losing their confidence on the system because the discrepancies they see after comparing Bing Map and the travel time/distance on the schedule board?

I was under impression that every time the schedule board is loaded, the platform calls Map API but after using fiddler I realised that no map API is being call each time the board is loaded. So the question is how the distance is calculated? Is it based on a cached table in database or on the go? 

Any insight to reduce this difference is highly appreciated. 

Categories:
Resource Scheduling Optimization
  • JandostKhoso Profile Picture
    JandostKhoso 266 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    @ Alexander, the traffic and distance are handled by BING/Google. All you will pass is two input parameters. The first one is the location where you want to reach and the other parameter is set of bookable resources that you want to get the time and distance.

    What I have seen is that, when you pass these two input parameters, the platform calls the MAP API 3 times. The first call will send destination and array of resources. The second call swaps the parameters and first passes the array and then the destination and for the last time, it again sends the requests with destination first and array second.  This is not very important when you use BING because it is free, but when you use Google, you will have to pay for 3 calls in each query and this web service is a premium google service charging 0.25x3 per call.

  • JandostKhoso Profile Picture
    JandostKhoso 266 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Dominik The units can be KM or ML on the scheduling board. In case you will want to change the unit on the resource, I suggest to create a workflow to convert units to another field on the work order or booking entities. 

    [quote][/quote]

    Hello

    I am getting somehow big differences in the distance and travel time between resources on the schedule board. I want to know what is the mechanism to calculate the distance and time travel on the scheduling board? My client uses both Bing and Google map to check the correctness of the distance and travel time and they are literally losing their confidence on the system because the discrepancies they see after comparing Bing Map and the travel time/distance on the schedule board?

    I was under impression that every time the schedule board is loaded, the platform calls Map API but after using fiddler I realised that no map API is being call each time the board is loaded. So the question is how the distance is calculated? Is it based on a cached table in database or on the go? 

    Any insight to reduce this difference is highly appreciated. 

  • Thomas David Dayman Profile Picture
    Thomas David Dayman 11,323 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Thanks Jandost!

  • Al Iggs Profile Picture
    Al Iggs on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Hi Jandost, great blog posts. Just curious about traffic consideration. How did you handle this in your project? AFAIK, the 2 actions don't carry time/date, so how did you cater for traffic delays during different times of day?

  • DominikG Profile Picture
    DominikG 35 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Thanks for your quick response.

    Your blog posts are great! Keep it up.

    After a few more tests, I realized the problem lies somewhere else. The field in bookable ressources is called "Traveled distance in kilometer" but the value shown is still in miles.

    Now I am looking for the unit property. May be you could also help me with that. The only thing I found is the  "Default radius unit", which only works for the filter in the schedule board.

  • Suggested answer
    JandostKhoso Profile Picture
    JandostKhoso 266 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Hello Dominik

    The issue is more complex than we thought. I try to summarise it below:

    1. The fact that you see different values between the board and bing requires some investigation. For this, you will need to see if the long/lag of your work order is the same points you are finding the distance in bing.

    2. If the long/lats are exactly the same, you will need to ensure to keep your work order and resources locations in sync. For example, if you create a work order for a resource and see it on the schedule board, and then update the location of the resource or work order, CRM does not update the locations automatically. You will need to update long/lats using a workflow.

    3. Sometimes bing shows you more than one route for two locations. Have you checked the 24 km is not one of those routes?

    4. I could not find the solution for my problem above due to dependency on the bing maps. I eventually moved to google maps and I got the desired results. I spoke to the product team and explained to them the issue but I don’t think it gets resolved in near future because there is more on bing than crm. I wrote two blog posts explaining all my experiences you can find it in the below blog posts:

    [View:https://dynamicsce212.blogspot.com/2018/09/under-hood-of-booking-resources-using.html]

    [View:http://dynamicsce212.blogspot.com/2018/08/inaccurate-resource-distance-in.html]

    [View:http://dynamicsce212.blogspot.com/2019/01/using-google-map-api-instead-of-bing-in.html]

  • DominikG Profile Picture
    DominikG 35 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Hello Jandost,

    I recently implemented Field Service at a customer and ran in the same problem you described.

    Scheduling a resource for a work order returned a travel distance of 24.11km. Exactly the same route on bing maps returned 33.7km and on google maps 33.3 km.

    Also the travel time is somewhere between the value from bing and google maps.

    Could you find any solution to this problem?

    Dominik

  • JandostKhoso Profile Picture
    JandostKhoso 266 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    Yes you are right. There is no accuracy in our results and unfortunately we are assessing to use google maps because with bing maps not only duration but also distance is not correct. And what makes the situation even worse is he fact that the duration and distance on the board is not consistent with bing map.

  • moko33 Profile Picture
    moko33 1,784 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    I think currently it still doesn't include traffic information into the estimated travel duration.

  • JandostKhoso Profile Picture
    JandostKhoso 266 on at
    RE: Distance and travel time calculation on schedule board

    You are really right. It calculates when the board is loaded or when the filter is changed. However I want to know why am I getting a different distance when I use the board rather than something near to bing map.

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