What is a location?

A location is a position in the zone defined by its latitude and longitude coordinates, that may specify a business, customer, or other entity. In other words, locations are the physical places where the vehicles are routed to provide service. When a location is created, it is added directly to an existing zone.

What is a location used for?

Each place a vehicle needs to visit is specified by a location. This includes partner locations, such as restaurants and retailers, as well as customer locations, such as their homes. A location is used by Interplai to create a waypoint in a route. The route solver will determine the most cost-effective route based on the distance between locations or the time it takes a vehicle to travel between locations.

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Tip: Locations can be reused

Once a location is created, it can be used for multiple trips.

A location only needs to be created inside a zone one time. For example, once the location of a restaurant is created, it does not need to be created again for each take-out order to be filled from that restaurant. This can be thought of as an address book that stores location information, which can be referenced when creating trips.

Example

A popular grocery store may receive lots of delivery orders. The location for the grocery store will be created once in the zone, and each trip for picking up an order from that grocery store will reference that location. Then, a route created based on that trip will include a waypoint for picking up an order at the restaurant location.

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Key Takeaways

• Locations are the specific latitude and longtude of a place.
• Locations can be reused.
• A location can only belong to one zone.