The "Travel Time Capture" functionality lets you configure how the D-Tools Cloud Mobile app accounts for the time mobile app users spend driving between office locations and work sites. This functionality captures drive time for every project event and service call and prompts users to log the relevant drive-time entries to Cloud.
Travel Time Capture terminology
You need to be familiar with the following terminology relevant to the Travel Time Capture functionality.
Work site
The Travel Time Capture functionality considers the following as a work site:
For project events, the site address entered or selected when the opportunity was created for the project and where the project event is scheduled
For service calls, the site address selected when creating the service call, where the service request needs to be fulfilled
Home base
A "home base" is a company location address the technicians start from or return to after work, such as your office, warehouse, branch, shop, or their own home.
Home bases define a known starting point for the first travel of the day and the ending point for the last travel of the day.
Example 1
If the technicians' work routine is to visit the warehouse and pick up products first, execute project events and/or service calls at multiple work sites, and check in to the office from the last work site:
The travel from the warehouse to the first site is the first travel of the day
The travel from the last site to the office is the last travel of the day
Example 2
If the technicians' work routine is to directly visit the first work site from their home because a different team delivers products at the work sites and return home after the last work site:
The travel from home to the first site is the first travel of the day
The travel from the last site back home is the last travel of the day
Travel time
Cloud Mobile app automatically calculates the drive time for each travel between:
The home base first visited and the first work site
The first work site to the second work site, and the successive sites. For example, if the technician visited 4 sites in a day, the mobile app captures 3 travel durations between work sites.
The last work site and the last home base visited
The mobile app starts calculating drive time after the technician exits the home base or a work site address and the Exit Debounce Duration has passed, and presents a pop-up to log the drive time when they enter the Geofence radius of the destination address.
Check out this article for more details about Exit debounce duration and Geofence radius.
Drive-time labor type
When you enable Travel Time Capture, you need to associate a project labor type and a service labor type that the Cloud Mobile app uses to calculate the final labor amount technicians are compensated for drive time.
Because both Project and Service labor types on Cloud have a labor price associated with them, the mobile app calculates the drive-time amount as a multiple of the drive time and the per-hour price for the labor type.
While you can associate an existing labor type, such as "Installation" or "Standard Service," with project and service drive time, we recommend creating a dedicated labor type for project drive time and service drive time.
You can create the project labor type under "Settings > Catalog > Labor Types & Fulfillment Locations."
You can create the service labor type under "Settings > Service > Labor Types."
On Cloud, a drive-time entry is created every time the technician logs the drive time in the pop-up shown on the mobile app when a travel is completed.
Check out this article for more details.
You can view them on the "Time Entries" page on Cloud and filter by the project drive-time labor type and service drive-time labor type.
If the technician does not log the travel time on the app, they can add a manual time entry by selecting the drive-time labor type.
Travel gap ceiling
"Travel gap ceiling" is the upper limit for the time duration the Cloud Mobile app considers drive time between the home base and a work site and between work sites. For example, 2 hours.
If the drive time exceeds the travel gap ceiling, Cloud does not consider it travel and does not show the pop-up to log drive time. This keeps lunch breaks, personal errands, and overnight gaps from being counted as travel.
We recommend selecting a duration that reflects your longest realistic travel between two jobs. If your technicians routinely cover a large territory, a shorter duration can discard real travel. If work sites are clustered close together, a high duration can add time gaps that are not really travel.
Enable Travel Time Capture
Travel Time Capture is a global functionality that applies to all Cloud users using the Cloud Mobile app in your Cloud subscription.
Before you enable Travel Time Capture, we recommend that you read how the following settings work and do the needful:
To enable Travel Time Capture and configure its settings:
1/ Go to "Settings > Mobile App" in the left navigation menu.
2/ Set "Travel Time Capture" to ON. You can now configure all other travel time capture settings.
3/ Next, associate the drive-time labor types for project-related and service call-related travel.
a/ From the "Project drive-time labor type" dropdown, select a labor type whose labor rates apply to the time mobile app users spend traveling from a home base to a work site or between work sites to execute project events.
b/ From the "Service drive-time labor type" dropdown, select a labor type whose labor rates apply to the time mobile app users spend traveling from a home base to a work site or between work sites to fulfill service requests.
4/ From the "Travel gap ceiling" dropdown, select a time duration to use as the upper limit for drive time calculations.
You can select: 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or 4 hours.
4/ In the Home Bases tile, add one or more home bases depending on your business.
Cloud looks up the coordinates of each home base address; drive-time capture depends on those coordinates being right. So, enter a complete street address, including city, state or region, and postal code. A partial address, a PO box, or a typo can prevent the location from being recognized, and drive time may not be captured.
You can edit or delete home bases if needed.
Settings are saved as you set them. You don't need to save them explicitly.
Disable Travel Time Capture
You can disable the Travel Time Capture functionality by setting "Travel Time Capture" to OFF. The disablement applies immediately, and the Cloud Mobile app discards all running drive time calculations instantly.
Drive time logs saved before the disablement on that day remain available as drive-time entries.