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Follow up on the latest improvements and updates.

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new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Configuration profiles and Shift alternatives for ESS (v0.34.0)

We’re very excited to announce this new version of the Timefold Platform, with a major new feature “Configuration Profiles”, and several updates to our models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
  • Configuration Profiles
    : We’ve introduced configuration profiles for the Timefold Platform. With these profiles you can create reusable sets of constraint weights, model configuration parameters and run settings. These profiles will make it a lot easier to do goal alignment, or model benchmarking. We’ve written documentation on how you can use configuration profiles to tweak optimization goals, and how to use them for the Field Service Routing and Employee Shift Scheduling models.
  • Filtering on dates in the Model Runs Overview
    : It’s now possible to set specific date ranges when filtering on the Model Runs overview page. This should make it easier to find a specific historic run.
  • Bug fixes and improvements
    : We’ve fixed a bug where we showed certain warning messages in the layout of an error message, and where we showed an irrelevant warning about justifications. We’ve improved the handling of events that sometimes caused the status of a run to be incorrectly displayed. And we’ve upgraded the framework that the Timefold Platform is built on (Quarkus).
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • Shift alternatives
    : We’ve added a feature to the model that makes it possible to define a group of shifts and make sure only a specific number of them is assigned. You can use this for instance when you know a certain task needs to be done, but there’s a few options for the shift it should happen in. See New and noteworthy for more information.
  • Contractual period rules can limit logged time
    : The contractual period rules can now specify minimum and maximum logged minutes. This feature can be useful when limiting minimum/maximum shift hours that differ from the scheduled shift start to end interval, e.g. because breaks are not included in the shift working hours. See New and noteworthy for more information.
  • Documentation updates
    : We’ve made sure each of the model’s constraints now has clear descriptions. These descriptions show in the OpenAPI Specs, but also when creating a configuration profile for this model. And we have added a guide that explains metrics and optimizations goals for this model.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • Technician costs KPI is now optional
    : The Technician costs KPI introduced in the previous version (v0.33.0) is now only computed when a cost structure is submitted as part of the planning problem. We also have made some small improvements to the feature guide.
  • Visualization improvements
    : We’ve done some minor bugfixes to the visualization.
  • Documentation updates
    : We’ve made sure each of the model’s constraints now has clear descriptions. These descriptions show in the OpenAPI Specs, but also when creating a configuration profile for this model. And we have added a guide that explains metrics and optimizations goals for this model.
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Webhook improvements, FSR technician costs optimization, and more (v0.33.0)

This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • Day Light Saving for Employees
    : We fixed a bug where DLS was not properly applied for employees. For more information, please see: Employee Time Zones.
  • Single-day pattern rules updates
    : We have added a custom move to facilitate matching of PREFERRED patterns. The REQUIRED single-day patterns are now deprecated and will be removed in a future version in favour of PREFERRED patterns with a high weight. More information in “New & Noteworthy”.
  • Updated model information page to more clearly reflect its features and link to relevant documentation.
  • We have added a guide explaining how to do resource-limited planning.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • Added technician costs optimization
    : Every vehicle shift can specify a Vehicle Shift Cost that will be used in the optimization by the minimize shift cost constraint. Please see the Technician Costs guide for details. We have added a new KPI representing the total cost of the solution and a new demo dataset that showcases the feature.
  • Recommendation calls now validate the input dataset
    : Similarly to the model run, the recommendation calls now validate the input dataset.
  • Visualization UI improvements
    : We have improved the Visualization UI, with better formatting of dates and coordinates as well as improvements to the color scheme.
  • Updated model information page to more clearly reflect its features and link to relevant documentation.
This new version of the Timefold Platform also comes with the following improvements:
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Fairness KPI for Field Service Routing and Visualization UI improvements (v0.32.1)

This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • Visualization UI improvements
    : Shift tags are now displayed in the visualization.
  • Several smaller bugfixes.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • Adding a kpi for the load balancing constraint
    : We have added a new KPI for the load balancing constraint that we introduced with v0.30.0. See the feature guide for load balancing or the Timefold Platform UI for a description of its meaning.
  • Recommended Time Window alignment with visits
    : We have implemented
    minStartTime
    ,
    maxStartTime
    , and
    maxEndTime
    to replace the now deprecated
    startTime
    and
    endTime
    . Adding
    maxStartTime
    opens the possibility to get recommendations for fixed-start visits (these are visits where
    minStartTime
    equals
    maxStartTime
    ).
  • Documentation improvements
    : The feature guide explaining Lunch breaks and personal appointments was updated to include how to model “Hotel breaks”, we have added a guide explaining multi-vehicle visits and the Fairness guide has been updated to include examples and images.
  • Several smaller bugfixes.
We have also made several stability, security and performance improvements to the Timefold Platform, including better compression to save on required storage (useful for self-hosted installations) and increased performance.
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Multi-threaded solving for FSR, tag & name management for runs, and more (v0.31.0)

This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • New metadata in the model run
    : Every run will now also have the properties
    activeDateTime
    and
    shutdownDateTime
    that keep track of when the solve-phase of a run started and stopped.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • Enabled multi-threaded solving
    : We have enabled multi-threaded solving for this model. Based on our benchmarking results, the maximum number of threads is limited to 4 for now. The desired maximum number of threads can be specified by the
    maxThreadCount
    attribute in Run configuration. The default is 1.
  • Visit can specify preferred vehicles
    : We have added a capability to specify preferred vehicles for a visit. When set, the visit can be assigned to a shift of one of the specified vehicles if possible. You can specify these as
    modelInput.visits[].preferredVehicles
    when submitting a new route-plan. Refer to the OpenAPI Spec for details.
  • New metadata in the model run
    : Every run will now also have the properties
    activeDateTime
    and
    shutdownDateTime
    that keep track of when the solve-phase of a run started and stopped.
This new version of the Timefold Platform also comes with the following improvements:
  • Tag & run name management via UI
    : You can now edit the name and the tags of a run via the Platform UI (after it’s finished solving). Use this to make specific runs easier to find, or to distinguish between production runs and tests or simulations.
  • New API endpoint
    POST …/{id}/new-run
    : Each model now has a new endpoint that allows you to re-run a specific dataset. The endpoint will solve the dataset again, but with the new configuration parameters you submit. This endpoint wants to make it easier to tweak configuration parameters to get to the desired result.
  • New API endpoint
    GET …/{id}/config
    : Each model now has a new endpoint that returns all the configuration parameters that were used for a specific run. You can use this endpoint to audit whether different configuration parameters had an effect on the results of different runs.
IP tracked in Audit Log: The Timefold Platform keeps an audit log for administrative actions. (The audit log is not - yet - exposed in the UI.) For safety reasons, we are now also storing the IP of the user that did the action.
docs.timefold.ai
Our documentation website has been updated with the following improvements:
  • Improved search
    : When you use the search on our documentation website, we’ll now only show results from the product you’re looking at. Previously we also suggested articles from other products, which made finding what you were looking for harder.
  • Dark/Light mode switch
    : Go to the footer of the documentation site to choose between light or dark for the documentation website. By default we’re still using the system setting, but if you prefer to override it for this specific site, now you can.
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Fairer distribution of work and more fine-grained control over visit priorities for FSR (v0.30.0)

This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • Fine-grained rule priorities
    : It’s now possible to define visit priorities with numbers 1 to 10 (both included). Previously only 4 priorities were supported. This allows you more fine-grained control. We are deprecating the old values, but they continue to work and have been mapped to corresponding numbers. See Upgrading to the latest versions for details and New and noteworthy for details on the 10 levels.
  • Balance work fair across technicians
    : We have added a new constraint to the model that allows you to balance the workload across technicians based on their time worked. The constraint also allows for historical data to be considered. This can be useful when you want to balance the workload based on past hours worked by the technicians. Please refer to the fairness and load balancing guide for details.
  • Visualization improvements
    : Several improvements and bugfixes were made to the visualization of planning solutions, including indications of pinned items and showing
    freezeDeparturesBeforeTime
    times.
  • Bugfix for visit time window validations: Validation for visit time windows was too strict in certain cases. This has been fixed.
This new version of the Timefold Platform also comes with the following improvements:
  • Soft Delete of Run Data
    : We now have support for restoring deleted runs for a limited amount of time. When you delete a run from your model’s run overview, they are now kept in trash for 7 days. After those 7 days the run will be permanently deleted. During those 7 days you can go to your run overview and add a filter for the property “Deleted”. If you filter on those, you can select previously deleted runs and click the Restore button.
  • Dark Mode
    : We’re launching Dark Mode on the platform. By default the UI will use your system settings, but if you prefer to override that, go to the footer of the platform to choose between light or dark.
  • Several stability and performance improvements.
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Tag filtering via UI, and mandatory and optional shift assignments for ESS (v0.29.0)

This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with the following improvements:
  • Tag filtering
    : Finding the run you’re looking for has just become a lot easier. When you do a run that contains a tag, the UI will now display those tags on the model run details and overview pages. Use the “Add filter” button, or click an existing tag to filter on all runs with that tag.
  • Unified error responses (including Breaking Change for API)
    : We have made sure error responses for all platform API endpoints now return the same format:
    { id: “string”, code: “string”, message: “string”, details: … }
    . While doing so we changed the
    /logs
    endpoints (like
    /v1/route-plans/{id}/logs
    ) to return a
    { details: “string” }
    object. If you depended on this endpoint, this is a breaking change.
  • Better error reporting when uploading custom files via UI
    : When you upload a custom JSON file via the Platform UI, validation errors and warnings will now be displayed in a cleaner way. We’ve moved all details to a separate dialog with the option to copy all errors and warnings as a JSON structure.
  • Improvements to trials
    : We’re now allowing newly added Tenant admins to also extend trials of models, and we’ve improved the UX when doing so.
  • Displaying maximum values for resource settings
    : When making configuration changes for a model, we’ll now display the maximum values for the resource settings (cpu’s, memory & threads), so it’s clear what range of options you have for the model’s configuration.
  • Several
    bugfixes
    (including a bug with the APIs to update environment variables for model configurations) and
    improvements
    (including loading states for models list and run details page, and opening a model’s documentation in a new tab so it’s more easily shareable and searchable).
The new version also comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • Mandatory and optional shift assignment
    : We have extended shift priorities to distinguish between
    mandatory
    (default) and
    optional
    shifts. Optional shifts are useful in scenarios when conformance with a soft constraint (e.g. a
    PREFERRED
    multi-day pattern rule) is more desired than having an extra shift assigned. Learn more.
  • Multi-day pattern rules updates
    : We have added a custom move to facilitate matching of PREFERRED patterns. You may now also specify the weight of a multi-day shift pattern in the relation to the other multi-day patterns. See “Employee works preferred multi-day shift sequence pattern” rule for more information. The weight can be used to migrate from REQUIRED patterns to PREFERRED patterns with high weight, see Upgrading to the latest versions for details. Additionally we have implemented a custom move for multi-day patterns so you should see performance improvements.
  • Limit scope of “minutes between shift” rules
    : In Employee Contracts, you can specify the minimum or maximum time between shifts with
    minutesBetweenShiftsRules
    . You can now provide a scope for these rules. The scope will limit which pairs of shifts the rule is applied to. The scope excludes shift pairs where the start of the later shift is after the end of the prior shift plus the scope duration. See the updated Employee Contracts guide for examples.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • Improved validation and error handling when datasets contain breaks with negative durations.
  • Real-time planning documentation
    : We have added several guides explaining how to better handle day-to-day planning with scenarios that require the initial plan to change. The following scenarios are covered: a visit takes longer than expected, an urgent and unexpected visit must be added to the schedule, travel disruptions, the customer is unavailable, a technician is taken ill.
Launching a feature requests board
We’re launching a feature requests board to streamline the process of how we collect ideas and feature requests from customers like you. Please head to https://feedback.timefold.ai/feature-requests to see feature requests from others, upvote them, or add your own. When you upvote ideas, you’ll always be notified of changes to the status of the idea, including when it’s being worked on, and when ideas are implemented and made into a new version. Check “Feature requests” for a full overview of the process.
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Redesigned documentation website, improved search and new ESS preference KPI’s (v0.28.0)

Redesigned docs.timefold.ai
Our documentation website is completely redesigned. We’re giving it a crisper and fresher look, more in line with our recently redesigned website and platform. We hope you enjoy the new look, and will enjoy the better experience on mobile devices, as well as dark mode support.
The documentation homepage now guides you through the correct documentation, depending on the Timefold product you want to use.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with the following improvements:
  • End-to-end encryption
    : All internal network traffic between different components of the Timefold Platform is now end-to-end encrypted.
    (External traffic was already encrypted.) (For self-hosted installations, see our updated Installation Instructions for how to enable end-to-end encryption.)
  • Improved Search in Model Runs
    : The search functionality on the Model Runs Overview page now searches across multiple pages. Searching is case-insensitive and supports partial exact matches.
  • Improved Search in Tenants via Global Admin
    : Users self-hosting the Timefold Platform that have access to the Global Admin will now see improved search functionality on the Tenants Overview page in the Global Admin. It now searches across multiple pages. Searching is case-insensitive and supports partial exact matches.
  • Stricter password policies
    : When registering on app.timefold.ai we now enforce three more password policies: You can not reuse previous passwords. You can not use passwords from a dictionary of the most common passwords. We disallow passwords that contain any part of provided personal data (like your name, email).
  • Documentation updates
    : The platform documentation is restructured. A new high level product diagram was added to our Platform Concepts guide. There is a new guide explaining how to submit feature requests. And we have added documentation comparing using the Timefold Cloud Platform versus self-hosting our platform.
  • Improvements to Model Trials
    : If you’re trialing the Timefold Models, we’ve made a couple of improvements to the process of signing up and extending a trial. All model runs and logs are now also kept for the full duration of the trial.
The new version also comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • “Average Duration of Employees' Preferences Met”, “Minimum Duration of Preferences Met Across Employees”, “Average Duration Employee's Unpreferences are Violated” and “Maximum Duration of Unpreferences Violated Across Employees” KPIs added
    : For new runs of the model, you’ll see that 4 new KPIs became available in the output, as well as visualized in the platform. The KPIs are marked as experimental and thus subject to change. We are looking for your feedback. You can use these KPIs to compare the quality of the provided planning solutions. Here is a description of the new KPIs:
    "Average Duration of Employees' Preferences Met"
    : The average number of time (defined in the ISO 8601 format) employees' preferences are met for preferred employee pairings, time spans, and shifts. This metric represents how the employees' preferences are being accounted for. Portions of shifts may be counted multiple times if they meet multiple preferences.
    "Minimum Duration of Preferences Met Across Employees"
    : The minimum number of time (defined in the ISO 8601 format) employees' preferences are met for preferred employee pairings, time spans, and shifts. All other employees have more minutes where they work according to their respective preferences.
    "Average Duration Employees' Unpreferences are Violated"
    : The average number of time (defined in the ISO 8601 format) employees' unpreferences are violated for unpreferred employuee pairings, and unpreferred time spans. This metric represents how the employees' unpreferences are being accounted for. Portions of shifts may be counted multiple times if they violate multiple unpreferences.
    "Maximum Duration of Unpreferences Violated Across Employees"
    : The maximum number of time (defined in the ISO 8601 format) employees' unpreferences are violated for unpreferred employee pairings and time spans. All other employees have fewer minutes where they work according to their respective unpreferences.
  • There is a new guide explaining how to submit feature requests.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
Please let us know if you have feedback.

new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Platform UX improvements, shift pattern improvements for Employee Shift Scheduling, and more (v0.27.1)

This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with the following improvements:
  • Subscribe to get changelog notifications
    : We are now using a new system for changelog communication. Please use the subscribe button to get notified about new releases. Additionally, you can now filter the changelog on components or types of updates.
  • Improved Model Run Logs
    : The Logs page of a Model Run now contains only the output of the Timefold Solver itself.
  • Confirmation before deletion
    : When deleting items in Tenant Settings via the Platform UI (e.g. webhooks, or api keys), we now require users to type the name of the item they’re deleting. We’ve added this extra layer of confirmation for destructive actions that cannot be undone to prevent mistakes.
  • Hardened Tenant Selection
    : Users that are in multiple tenants should no longer experience problems switching between tenants. We have made the tenant id part of the Tenant Settings pages’ urls so that you can have multiple tabs open from different tenants as well as share urls with colleagues.
  • Various UX Improvements
    : We have done several UX improvements to the Platform UI, including improved feedback when actions are being submitted, items are being refreshed, when you reached the maximum amount of concurrent model runs, or when navigating through different steps in modals.
The new version also comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • Improvements to shift patterns
    : We have fixed multi-day shift pattern rules to correctly handle a pattern starting with
    OFF
    . See New and noteworthy for details. The
    REQUIRED
    multi-day patterns are now deprecated and will be removed in a future version in favor of
    PREFERRED
    patterns with a high weight.
  • New demo data set showing multi-day shift patterns
    : When you start a new run, you now have the option to start a run of a demo data set that showcases the multi-day shift patterns feature. This dataset demonstrates a problem where 2 employees have a contract with 2 types of multi-day shift patterns: Day Call and Night Call.
  • “Assigned Shifts”, “Working Time Fairness” and “Disruption Percentage” KPI’s added
    : For new runs of the model, you’ll see that 3 new KPIs became available in the output, as well as visualized in the platform. You can use these KPIs to compare the quality of the provided planning solutions. Here is a description of the new KPIs:
    “Assigned Shifts”
    : The number of shifts assigned to an employee in this schedule.
    “Working Time Fairness”
    : This percentage indicates how fair a given solution is in terms of how many hours employees are assigned. The higher the percentage, the more equally distributed the working time is between employees. The value is null if no fairness rules were defined.
    “Disruption Percentage”
    : When an existing schedule is posted, this KPI represents the percentage of shifts that were disrupted, i.e. assigned a new employee. If the provided schedule didn't have any assigned shifts, the value will be 0%.
  • We have added Employee contracts and Pairing employees feature guides to our documentation, explaining how to use these powerful features.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
Please let us know if you have feedback.

fixed

Timefold Platform

Security fix for Timefold Platform (v0.26.3)

We have released an update to the Timefold Platform to fix a security issue (affecting versions v0.25.0 and v0.26.2). A certain API endpoint of the platform exposed sensitive keys. This has been remedied with the release of v0.26.3 which was deployed to app.timefold.ai on Oct 17th at 8:26PM GMT+2.
We recommend self-hosted solutions to upgrade to v0.26.3 and to revoke the applicable keys.
For Azure:
secrets:
data:
azureStoreConnectionString: YOUR_AZURE_BLOB_STORE_CONNECTION_STRING
For AWS:
secrets:
data:
awsAccessKey: YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY
awsAccessSecret: YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_SECRET
For GCP:
secrets:
stringData:
serviceAccountKey: YOUR_GOOGLE_STORAGE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY
Please let us know if you have questions.

new

improved

fixed

Timefold Platform

Employee Shift Scheduling

Field Service Routing

Public Platform launch, with trials for models (v0.26.2)

Today we’re publicly announcing the Timefold Platform. This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with the following improvements:
  • Timefold Platform has a new look. We’ve redesigned the UI to look more modern, professional and clean. Additionally, the platform is now easier to use on mobile devices.
  • Users can now self-register on app.timefold.ai and try out our Timefold Models.
  • Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use have been updated to govern the use of (trials on) the Timefold Platform.
  • We’ve also made the following minor changes: Model Run names are limited to 255 characters, Model Run tags have a maximum of 100 characters, and we’ve introduced better validation for names of a Timefold tenant.
The new version also comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
  • The recommendation API has been extended with dependent vehicle shifts. We’ve added
    includeDependencies
    as a new parameter to the
    VisitTimeWindowRecommendationRequest
    API. With this parameter you can select whether you want to check for possible dependent vehicle shift plans that might be influenced by a recommendation. If the recommendation for a visit puts it before other visits, it might change the arrival, start of service, and departure times of the previously planned visits. If those visits have relations to other visits (e.g. visit groups, visit dependency), the recommendation might also affect other vehicle shift plans. By setting the
    includeDependencies
    parameter to
    ALL
    , these dependencies will be part of the response.
  • We’ve changed the order of the KPI’s shown in the UI on the Model Run details page to focus on travel times before travel distances.
  • When running demo datasets via the Platform UI, we have added descriptions of what the demo data showcases and which features it highlights (basic features, visit groups, or visit dependencies).
  • We’ve updated our lunch breaks feature guide to include an explanation video.
  • We’ve added documentation on how to use the OpenAPI Spec.
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
  • We’ve added a constraint to minimize gaps between split shifts for an employee. We’ve added a constraint to prefer assigning employees to shifts that are close to each other to minimize the time between those shifts. This is useful for cases where the employee works multiple shifts per day. See Minimize gaps between shifts for employee rule for more information.
  • When running demo datasets via the Platform UI, we’ve added descriptions of what the demo data showcases and which features it highlights (basic features, contract rules, or hourly demand).
  • We’ve made a minor bugfix to the visualization of a model run, and improved the overlay to show the full IDs of shifts.
  • There is a new guide explaining the employee preferences features.
  • We’ve added documentation on how to use the OpenAPI Spec.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
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