Optimization strategies

An optimization strategy is a saved, reusable ruleset that batches and sequences your orders into routes, and decides when that optimization runs. You build it once — which contracts and store locations it draws from, a timing schedule, route restrictions, and what to do with the routes once they're built — and reuse it instead of configuring an optimization run from scratch every time.

How Nash actually turns a pile of orders into sequenced routes — the solve itself, and everything that shapes which vehicles and drivers are even in play — is covered in how optimization works. This page is about the strategy: the reusable ruleset that drives that solve, not the solve itself.

Note

Optimization strategies are available depending on your organization's setup. If you don't see them, reach out to Nash.

Where you find it

Optimization strategies live at Orchestrate ▸ Optimization Strategies: a left rail lists your Active and Inactive strategies, and a right-hand editor holds the one you've selected.

Two ways it runs

A strategy doesn't just sit there — it runs one of two ways:

• On its own schedule. Once a strategy is active, it optimizes itself according to the timing you've set, with no one needing to trigger it.
• As a preset when you optimize by hand. When you optimize a set of orders yourself, you can pick a saved strategy as a starting point instead of configuring the run from scratch. See optimize orders into routes for that workflow.

Either way, the result is the same: sequenced draft routes you can review before they go out.

Optimization strategies vs. dispatch strategies

It's easy to mix these up because they sound alike, but they answer different questions. An optimization strategy decides how orders get grouped and sequenced into routes, and when that happens. A dispatch strategy decides who delivers — which provider or fleet an order goes to once it's ready to go out.

There's one more difference worth knowing: a dispatch strategy can be applied automatically by a workflow action. An optimization strategy can't be — it only ever runs itself, on its own schedule, or when you pick it by hand for a manual run.

Active and inactive

A strategy only runs while it's active. Deactivating one pauses it — it stops running on its schedule and stops showing up as a preset — without losing anything you've configured. Reactivate it later and it picks back up right where it left off. Nothing about deactivating a strategy deletes it.

What you can do

• How optimization strategies work — the full picture: what a strategy gathers, how its timing and schedule model works, and how it hands off to dispatch.
• Set up an optimization strategy — create a strategy, configure it, and activate it, step by step.
• Optimization parameters reference — every field and setting on the optimization strategy editor, for reference.

Nash optimizes and dispatches; the provider or your own fleet performs the delivery.