Build a route from orders

There are two ways orders become a route: you group the ones you want together yourself, or you hand a set of orders to Nash's optimizer and let it work out the grouping and sequence for you. Both start from the same place — your Ready-to-Dispatch orders — and both end up in the same place: a draft route on the Routes tab, ready for you to review, edit, and dispatch. This article covers the two ways in, plus a third starting point that runs the other way round: create an empty route first, then add orders to it.

Path 1 — Create a route from selected orders

This is the hands-on option: you already know which orders belong together, so you say so directly.

On the Ready-to-Dispatch list, select two or more orders you want in the route, then choose Create Route. Nash asks you to confirm — choose Continue — and builds a draft route from exactly the orders you picked. You'll see a confirmation with a View details link to open it.

That draft route lands on the Routes tab, where you can reshape its stops, assign a provider or vehicle, and send it out when it's ready:

• To reorder, add, or remove stops, see Edit a route.
• To send it out, see Dispatch a route.

Creating the route doesn't dispatch anything on its own — the orders stay put until you dispatch the route from the Routes tab.

Path 2 — Optimize orders into routes

This is the same job — turning a set of orders into sequenced routes — done by a solver instead of by hand. It's the right tool when you have more orders than you'd want to group by eye, or when you want Nash to work out the cheapest, most efficient way to carry them rather than deciding that yourself.

The short version: select the orders, choose Optimize, pick an optimization strategy, run it, review the sequenced routes it proposes, and save the result as routes. Saved routes land on the Routes tab as drafts, exactly like the ones you'd build with Create Route. A strategy can also run on a schedule so routes are optimized and saved for you automatically.

For the full walkthrough — the setup steps, what the optimizer weighs, and the scheduled option — see Optimize orders into routes.

Path 3 — Start with an empty route

The first two paths start from orders. This one starts from the route: on the Routes tab, choose Create route, give the route a name — and, if you want, a start and end location — and Nash creates a draft route with no orders on it and opens it so you can add them. It's the right tool when you know the run you want to build before you know everything that goes on it.

Don't confuse the two similarly named buttons: Create Route on the Ready-to-Dispatch list builds a route from the orders you've selected, while Create route on the Routes tab makes an empty one. The Routes tab button shows only if your role allows it. For the full walkthrough, see Create an empty route.

Either way, you land on the Routes tab

Whichever path you take, the result is the same kind of thing: a draft route sitting on the Routes tab, not yet dispatched, fully yours to change. None of these actions sends anything out by itself — dispatching is a separate, deliberate step you take from the route once it's ready. For how a route relates to the orders inside it and what changes once you dispatch, see How routes work.

Availability

Routes — and every path into one — depend on whether your organization has routes enabled. If you don't see a Routes tab or the Create Route / Optimize actions, availability varies by org; reach out to Nash.