Every week, Groupe Gbaguidi sends a truck from Cotonou to Natitingou through Parakou, with a stop at the same fuel station in Dassa. Each time, Orou Sabi in Parakou used to rebuild the same route by hand: the stops, the legs, the price of the toll, the truck. He wants to define it once and reuse it for every transfer. This page follows Orou as he saves that route as a trip. The same steps apply to any business that runs the same delivery round again and again.

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Name the waypoints that are not locations

Dassa is not a location of the group. Orou records it as a named waypoint with Create a waypoint, with an address and, if he wants, its coordinates. All the companies of the organization can use it. He keeps the list with List waypoints, View a waypoint, Edit a waypoint and Delete a waypoint. The other stops of a trip are location groups, described in Locations, vehicles and site sharing.

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Define the trip

Orou creates the whole route in one go with Create a trip: a name, whether it is private to his company or shared with the organization, at least two stops in order, the legs between them, the rates and the vehicles. If anything is refused, nothing is created. List trips and View a trip show the trips he can use. Later, he changes the name or description, or archives a trip that is no longer run, with Edit a trip. An archived trip is frozen until it is made active again.

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Build it step by step

Orou can also refine an active trip piece by piece: Rates are private to the company that enters them. Orou’s company owns the trip, so it is the one that sets the toll. The Cotonou company can read the shared trip but does not see those rates, and a transfer it creates from the trip takes none of them.

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Use it, retire it

When the next transfer is planned, Orou picks the trip in Create a stock transfer: its location group stops become the steps, and its legs, its vehicles and his company’s rates are copied into the transfer; see Plan and run stock transfers. When the trip is obsolete, Delete a trip removes it, unless a transfer or another record refers to it. Then he archives it instead.

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The rules

  • A trip is shared (visible to every company of the organization) or private (visible only to its owner company). This is chosen at creation and cannot change.
  • Only the company that owns a trip can change it. This includes adding rates. A trip shared by another company can be read but not modified. Each action has its own permission, and nested stops, legs, rates and vehicles in a creation need the matching permissions too.
  • A trip name must be unique among the shared trips of the organization, or among the private trips of the company. Trips, stops, legs, rates and vehicles are deleted for good.
  • A trip has at least two stops, each at its own position. Stops cannot be reordered. The types of stop are location group, waypoint, supplier, supplier pickup point, customer and customer address; all but location groups and waypoints are allowed only on private trips.
  • A stop keeps a copy of the name and address taken when it is created or re-pointed. Editing a waypoint later does not change the stops that already use it.
  • A leg joins two stops, the second after the first. The same pair cannot be joined twice. A stop that is the start or end of a leg cannot be removed: delete the leg first.
  • A stop used by a transfer step or by a delivery cannot be deleted. A stop used by a delivery cannot be pointed to another point. A trip referenced by any transfer or delivery cannot be deleted.
  • An archived trip accepts only a change of status, which is how to reactivate it. Stops, legs, rates and vehicles cannot be changed while it is archived.
  • A rate has a label and an amount, in major units, not negative, with at most the currency’s decimals. A label can be used only once per company for the whole trip, and once per company for each leg. A rate belongs to a company: only that company can change or remove it. Other companies never see it. A rate cannot move to another leg.
  • A vehicle must be a vehicle of the organization, and can be attached to a trip only once. Deleting a leg also deletes its rates, whoever owns them.
  • A waypoint name is unique in the organization. A waypoint used by a trip stop cannot be deleted. Latitude is between -90 and 90 and longitude between -180 and 180 when sent.

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All the actions of this topic