Concepts and types of itineraries

The itineraries in Involves Stage allow you to have a clear and objective view of the field team's route planning, allowing activities and tasks to be scheduled. The itineraries are planned by the company's back office team on the Web and executed by the field team on the App.

Before setting up the sequence of visits for your employees in the system, you must define what kind of itineraries they will follow. The system has three types of itineraries: periodic, scheduled and portfolio customers.

PERIODIC ITINERARY

Periodic itineraries are those that have regularities and cycles that can be weekly, every two weeks or every four weeks. It is not necessary to have a standard itinerary for the entire operation, but each employee can have only one type of periodic itinerary. In total, there are three types:

• Weekly Periodic Itinerary: For employees that repeat the same visit itinerary each week.
• Every Two Weeks Periodic Itinerary: For employees that alternate each week between visit itineraries.
• Every Four Weeks Periodic Itinerary: For employees who perform one visit itinerary one week, a different one the following week, another on the third and fourth weeks, returning to the first itinerary on the fifth week.

The chosen itinerary will depend on your operation. For example: If an employee follows an itinerary that is considered weekly - with points of sale that are repeated weekly, but needs to perform some activities every other week or every month, the best type of itinerary to choose would be every two weeks. That is because when creating itineraries, it is necessary to plan actions for the long term. The solution for the example cited is to fill out all visits in the format for every two weeks, duplicating the visits in the two weeks and registering the visit every two weeks.

• Learn how to manually register periodic itineraries
• Learn how to import itineraries

WEEKLY CYCLES

The types of periodic itineraries are based on weekly cycles. Involves Stage´s weeks start on Sundays and end on Saturdays. Therefore, when planning the team's itineraries, it is necessary to consider the day when changes occur:

• Weekly Periodic: There is no standard change between weeks since they repeat themselves.
• Every Two Weeks Periodic: The itineraries complete a cycle in two weeks, divided into Week 1 and Week 2. In the itinerary registration, the system will always use the current week as a basis for determining Week 1.
• Every Four Weeks Periodic: The itineraries will have cycles divided into four weeks. In this case, the cycles are organized into Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4. The behavior of the weeks will be the same as with every two weeks, but with two extra weeks.

For example, when registering an itinerary every two weeks on March 1, the system will identify the period between 02/25 and 03/02 as week 1 and the period between 03/04 and 03/09 as week 2. On March 11, a new cycle will begin:

In another example, registering an itinerary on March 7, week 1 will comprise 03/04 and 03/09. Week 2 will be between March 11 and March 16. A new cycle will begin 03/18:

On the other hand, when registering an itinerary for every four weeks, where the cycle is divided into four weeks, the division is as follows:

SCHEDULED ITINERARY

In addition to periodic itineraries, there are also scheduled itineraries. They are for when visits do not fit into the periodic itineraries. For example, if an employee has a weekly periodic itinerary that they already execute, but need to make an individual visit to a point of sale, they will create a scheduled itinerary for this individual visit.

• Learn how to manually register scheduled itineraries
• Learn how to import itineraries for import

CUSTOMER PORTFOLIO

A customer portfolio is a type of itinerary that allows your employees greater freedom in organizing visits in their work routine. Unlike other types of route planning, in which the back office defines which points of sale are part of the itinerary with the customer portfolio the employee chooses the visits they want to make during the day among the available POS.

• Learn how to register manually
• Learn how to register by import

EXPORT

The itinerary can be exported in two ways. From the whole team, used to import the data again, or from a specific employee. To export the data for the whole team just access the path Menu > Itineraries and Visits > Itineraries. In the lower corner of the screen, click on Options and choose one of the reports.

To export the data for a single employee, go to the employee's itinerary and click on Options, and after choose one of the reports. You can also allow it to download in the My reports feature.

On all the pages, the options are:

• Export (PDF): To export the itinerary in the PDF format.
• Export (XLSX): To only export periodic itineraries in a spreadsheet.
• Export Records: To export periodic and itineraries scheduled in a spreadsheet.
• Export Portfolio: To export Portfolio itinerary data.