Appointment Times

With a May 2024 update, the Trip Management service now supports appointment time windows. Time windows help improve ETA calculations in cases where there is a defined time an asset needs to arrive at a location. This feature also allows for the calculation of slack time, which denotes how much time (in hours) an asset will be earlier than the appointment time.

To use this feature, appointment times need to be enabled at the API key level by reaching out to your account representative.

How to set appointment times

When appointment time windows are enabled, the earliestArrivalTime and latestArrivalTime parameters need to be set. They are part of the stops object, which is an array that defines the stops in the trip.

Appointment times allow the service to provide more accurate ETAs for stops later in the trip. For example, let’s say an asset can’t arrive at location “A” before 1 p.m. but its ETA is 11:30 a.m. based on its current location.

• With Appointment Time windows “off,” the estimated departure time from location “A” would be based on the arrival time (11:30 a.m.) plus planned duration (assuming 30 minutes). So a departure time of 12 p.m. would be used and all downstream ETAs in the trip would be based on that time.

• With Appointment Time windows “on,” the estimated departure time from location “A” would be based on the earliestArrivalTime plus the planned duration (assuming 30 minutes). So a departure of 1:30 p.m. would be used to more accurately predict all ETAs later in the trip.

Alerts

ETA alerts will also be triggered based on this arrival time window. When set, alerts will be triggered when an Asset is Early (ETA is before earliestArrivalTime) and when an Asset is Late (ETA is after latestArrivalTime).

Slack Time

When appointment times are enabled, Trip Management also returns a slackTime, which denotes how much time (a decimal value for hours and minutes) that an asset will be earlier than the appointment time. Slack time is updated with each ETA update/Recalculate response and is returned in Get Trip, Plan Trip, and Recalculate Trip Responses.

When an asset’s ETA falls within the Appointment window or is late, then slackTime = 0.