Changelog
Follow up on the latest improvements and updates.
RSS
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Platform shows unprocessed input file and smaller bugfixes (v0.46.0)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.46.0 of the Timefold Platform and v1.4.0 of the Timefold models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- “Input” now showing unprocessed file: For any new runs, the “Input” page for a Model Run will now show the .json-file as it was submitted to the platform, without pre-processing. Before today we showed a version where default configuration values (from e.g. the configuration profile or tenant plan) were mixed in.
- We have fixed several small UI bugs.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing
(v1 | Stable)- Visualization bugfix: We fixed a bug with character encoding in the visualization of the model.
Employee Shift Scheduling
(v1 | Stable)- Visualization bugfix: We fixed a bug with character encoding in the visualization of the model.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
Today, we’re announcing version v0.45.0 of the Timefold Platform and v1.3.0 of the Timefold models.
With this release we’re happy to announce Timefold has become ISO 27001:2022 certified. Head over to trust.timefold.ai to learn about all of our security & compliance measures. You can use our Trust center to request the certificate & report. We are still in the process for SOC 2 compliance - expect updates on that later.
This new version of the Timefold Platform also comes with these platform improvements:
- Support for external map providers for the Cloud platform: We now also support connecting external map providers to tenant on the Timefold Cloud Platform, not only on self-hosted installations. Learn more about external map providers. We have also made sure any configuration changes to location sets, maps deployments and external providers are logged to the Audit Log.
- Ability to plan routing problems spanning the full US: We now have a map in production spanning the full United States. View all available maps. (We still recommend people to pick the map with the smallest fitting region, as it will speed up the solving process.)
- We have improved our documentation on the lifecycle of runs in the platform to a.o. clarify what happens if a run is cancelled, and when webhooks are triggered.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing
(v1 | Stable)- Deprecated /run and /new-run endpoints: The endpointsGET /v1/route-plans/{id}/runandPOST /v1/route-plans/{id}/new-runhave been deprecated, and replaced. See upgrade to the latest version for details.
Employee Shift Scheduling
(v1 | Stable)- Working time fairness metric fix: We have fixed a bug that caused incorrect calculation of the Fairness metric when Full-time equivalent configuration was used in employee contracts.
- Deprecated /run and /new-run endpoints: The endpointsGET /v1/schedules/{id}/runandPOST /v1/schedules/{id}/new-runhave been deprecated, and replaced. See upgrade to the latest version for details.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Improved invites, EU AI Act transparency and travel time constraints (v0.44.2)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.44.2 of the Timefold Platform and v1.2.0 of the Timefold models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- Improved member invite flows: When you invite colleagues to your tenant, they will now receive an invite email they must accept. This adds an extra layer of verification and clarity in onboarding.
- EU AI Act compliance documentation: We've published a new document detailing how Timefold complies with the EU AI Act. It highlights our transparent, deterministic approach and explains what this means for users.
- UI improvements and bugfixes: We've made several minor enhancements to the user interface (such as improving how you manage visible columns in the Run Overview) and fixed various bugs.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing
(v1 | Stable)- New travel time constraints: You can now define constraints to limit the travel time of a vehicle shift, reflecting a technician’s preferences or requirements. Learn more in the Route optimization guide.
- Floating break bugfix: Fixed an issue where floating breaks ending after their maxEndTime were not correctly penalized. More details.
Employee Shift Scheduling
(v1 | Stable)- Minutes between shifts fix: We have fixed a bug that caused the constraints to ignore the minutes between shifts rule in some cases. More details.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Configure runtime architecture and several smaller improvements (v0.43.0)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.43.0 of the Timefold Platform and v1.1.0 of the Timefold models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- Ability to configure machine type to run the solving operations: When you set-up a configuration profile, you can now also apply extra scheduling policy labels that let you choose between running solve operations on AMD64 or ARM64 architecture. Configure specific machine types to find the best runtime for your type of dataset and learn which one yields better results.
- We have improved the Maps service documentation with more detailed information on availability of maps.
- Several smaller improvements (including logging more relevant data in the Audit log, more clearly indicating configuration parameter precedence when doing a new run, more clearly indicating for which models API keys can be used, and showing score analysis details when all constraints are satisfied, showing icons for constraint groups) and bugfixes (including returning the right better response headers for Recommendation API calls for non-existing runs).
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- Icons for constraint groups: The score analysis and configuration profiles UI have been updated with icons for each of the constraint groups to help make each of the model features more clear.
- We have added documentation that explains how to handle long-running visits.
- We have made several smaller bugfixes (to the visualization in the platform) and improvements (like not showing the Visit SLA metric if no SLA information is provided).
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Icons for constraint groups: The score analysis and configuration profiles UI have been updated with icons for each of the constraint groups to help make each of the model features more clear.
- We have made several smaller bugfixes (to the visualization in the platform and we fixed a bug that caused the solver to not respect the shift rotation constraints in some edge cases).
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Visit SLA’s, technician ratings support for FSR, FTE support for ESS (v0.42.1)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.42.1 of the Timefold Platform and v1.0.0 of the Timefold models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- (For self-hosted installations only:)OIDC configuration now requires valid OIDC setup: When using OpenID connect, make sure you have valid OIDC configuration, else explicitly disable it as per the updated “Installation instructions”.
- Filter on Configuration Profile via Platform UI: It’s now possible to filter the runs overview of your models by the configuration profile that was used. On the overview, click “Add filter”, and choose “Configuration profile”. We’ve also added Configuration profile as one of the possible columns for your overview. Click on the three dots at the end of the header of the table to choose which columns you want to view.
See which configuration profile was used for each run.
Choose and reorder the columns you want to see in the overview
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- Ability to define SLA's for visits: Often visits not only have time windows describing the general availability of the location, but they also have a preferred time for when the task of the visit should be finished, often referred to as a Service Level Agreement (SLA). More information can be found in the feature guide for Visit SLAs.
- Ability to prefer picking technicians with higher ratings: We have added a new feature that allows you to specify the rating of each technician based on feedback from previous visits. Technicians can be assigned to visits based on their ratings where technicians with the highest ratings are more likely to be assigned. Learn more in the Technician ratings feature guide.
- Ability to exclude technicians/vehicles for certain visits: We have added the possibility to prohibit vehicles from being assigned to a visit. You can specify this in the visit'sprohibitedVehiclesattribute when submitting a new route-plan. See Prohibited vehicles in the Visit requirements guide.
- Several smaller bugfixes, see “New and noteworthy”.
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Allow to define employee min/max by FTE: We have added support for full-time equivalent (FTE) configuration in employee contracts, enabling fair scheduling for employees with different employment types. This feature allows you to define part-time, full-time, and other employment arrangements while ensuring fair distribution of work. The “balance time worked” constraint now automatically adjusts for different FTE levels, so a part-time employee (FTE 0.5) working 20 hours is considered equivalent to a full-time employee (FTE 1.0) working 40 hours. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- Extended support for weekend constraints for rolling windows: We have extended our weekend constraints support with the ability to limit weekend work in rolling windows. You can now additionally express rules such as: “Maximum 2 weekends worked in any 4-week rolling window” or “Maximum 4 weekends worked in any 16-week rolling window”. This complements our existing weekend constraints for fixed periods, giving you more options for creating employee-friendly schedules. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- A small bugfix related to the solver not terminating properly in corner cases.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Audit log visibility via Platform UI, contract rules around weekends for ESS (v0.41.2)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.41.2 of the Timefold Platform and models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- Audit log: We have added the ability to see the audit log of changes made to your tenant via the Platform’s UI. Anytime a user is added or removed, anytime a webhook is created or changed, or other configuration changes, information about this change is logged to the Audit Log. By going to your Tenant Settings, and choosing “Audit Log” in the sidebar, you are now able to see those changes. The UI supports filtering for certain types of event, Actor, IP and date.
- Ordering of metrics on Run Overview: It’s now possible to define the order of the columns when seeing the run overview of your model. You can pick from input and output metrics, as well as run data, and decide which information you want to see, and in what order. This change makes it easier for you to compare those metrics between runs you care most about. On the Runs Overview, click the dots at the end of the header row.
- Support for multiple vehicle types: We now have support for multiple vehicle types in our Maps service: cars, bicycles, and walking. We have set up a bicycle map for Georgia, USA as a demo - please contact us if you have specific requests for new maps with other vehicle profiles. We have also improved our documentation of the maps service.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- We have a bugfix for a potential score corruption with Balance movable and non-movable visits constraint.
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Ability to define contract rules around weekends: We have added support for weekend-related constraints, allowing you to limit weekend work for employees. These constraints help enforce restrictions on weekend work, which is important for maintaining employee work-life balance. You can: Limit the total minutes an employee works during weekends in a period. Limit the number of weekends an employee works in a period. Limit the number of consecutive weekends an employee works. See "New and noteworthy" for details.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
(This version has been available on app.timefold.ai since Monday June 9th. Our apologies for the delay in posting here.)
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Further improvements to rolling time windows contract requirements for ESS and several other improvements (v0.40.1)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.40.1 of the Timefold Platform and models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- Sticky table header for runs overview: When scrolling down your list of runs in the Platform UI, table headers will now stay visible, so it’s easier to know the meaning of the metrics and run properties if you’re comparing lots of runs.
- We have added a new guide explaining the importance of validating and building trust in an optimized plan. The guide explains which features Timefold offers that help with this.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Further improvements to rolling time windows: We have further improved the rolling time windows feature in contract requirements so that you can now also specify hourly time windows for more rules. See “New and noteworthy” for details. This feature can help formulate constraints like: “Maximum 5 days worked in any 168-hour period”, “Maximum 2 night shifts worked in any 168-hour period” or “Minimum 2 consecutive days off in any 168-hour period”.
- Removed unchanged constraints from the recommendations API response: The recommendations API response no longer includes constraintDiffs entries for unchanged justifications to improve clarity and lower the size of the response.
- We have written a new feature guide about Shift assignments (it goes in detail on the complex task of managing the type and amount of shifts that get assigned).
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- Improved break handling: Break end times are now exclusive instead of inclusive. This change removes confusion that could occur when a break end time overlapped with a shift start time.
- Required Breaks API improvement: The way of defining required breaks has been deprecated and has been replaced with a simpler alternative that avoids confusion. See “New and noteworthy” for details and instructions on how to upgrade.
- Removed unchanged constraints from the recommendations API response: The recommendations API response no longer includes constraintDiffs entries for unchanged justifications to improve clarity and lower the size of the response.
- Several bugfixes (including a fix for the visualization).
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
New default smart termination, and multiple new capabilities for ESS (v0.39.1)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.39.1 of the Timefold Platform and models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- New smart termination “Diminished returns” as default: There is now a new smart termination option for runs. It’s enabled for all models by default. “Diminished returns” terminates the solver early if expected improvements are minimal. It is used if no “unimproved time” configuration is set. See documentation for more details.
Example of termination settings in a Configuration profile
- Improved troubleshooting script: Improved troubleshooting script and documentation for self-hosted installations to help report version information.
- Smaller bugfixes and improvements, including a fix for filtering on deleted runs, and tags that contain an underscore. Additionally we now show the optimization gain on a run also as a relative percentage, when you hover over the optimization gain in the sidebar.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Shift rotations: We have added the ability to define rotations for shift types. Use this to make sure that the employee’s shift types rotate in consecutive periods, for example, "morning" shifts on week 1 and "evening" shifts on week 2. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- Better handling of consecutive days off: We have introduced 2 new constraints for better handling of consecutive days off. This feature allows a minimum of consecutive number of days off per period to be set on contracts. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- Ability to ensure an "even" start time for all employees: We have added the ability to limit the variation in shift start times. It checks whether the time between the earliest shift start and the latest shift start in this period is larger than the period rule’s shiftStartTimeDifferenceInMinutesMax. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- Metrics for shift groups: We have added separate metrics to know how many shift groups were assigned and unassigned.
- Demo data updates: A series of updates have been made to the available demo datasets. The BASIC demo dataset has been removed in favour of the CONTRACT_RULES dataset. The CONTRACT_RULES demo dataset has been extended to a full week (7 days, 60 shifts) for 13 employees. The demo data is now more representative of real working rules, including contract patterns, maximum hours worked per day, maximum hours worked per week, preferences, and unavailabilities.
- New smart termination “Diminished returns” as default: “Diminished returns” terminates the solver early if expected improvements are minimal. This termination is the new default. See “Upgrading to the latest versions” for details.
- Removed unchanged justifications from the recommendations API response: The recommendations API response no longer includes matchesDiff entries for unchanged justifications to improve clarity and lower the size of the response.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- New smart termination “Diminished returns” as default: “Diminished returns” terminates the solver early if expected improvements are minimal. This termination is the new default. See “Upgrading to the latest versions” for details.
- Removed unchanged justifications from the recommendations API response: The recommendations API response no longer includes matchesDiff entries for unchanged justifications to improve clarity and lower the size of the response.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
improved
fixed
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Rolling time windows contract requirements for ESS, input metrics, and several other improvements (v0.38.0)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.38.0 of the Timefold Platform and models.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- See and compare the amount of scheduled entities and other problem size metrics: When viewing details of a single model run, we’ll now also show some metrics related to the input. These metrics indicate the problem size and will give you more context when comparing multiple runs.
Example of input metrics showing for a Field Service Routing planning problem
- Expiry dates for tenant members: In cases where you want colleagues or partners to have temporary access to your Timefold tenant, you are now able to set an expiry date. You can use this feature to e.g. give Timefold Solution Engineers temporary access to your tenant to help you with a certain project or troubleshooting.
- Ability to self-host the Timefold Platform on OpenShift: We added support for OpenShift deployment for self hosted installations. See updated Installation instructions for details.
- Documentation updates: We have added a guide to help you troubleshoot failing runs for self-hosted installations.
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Support for contract requirements for rolling time windows: We have introduced several rolling window rules that allow you to specify both required and preferred amount of shifts, days, minutes, etc. worked over a rolling time window (instead of e.g. fixed weeks). This feature can help formulate requirements that need to be satisfied over a rolling window of time, for example: Maximum 10 Sunday shifts worked in any 52-week period, Maximum 40 hours worked in any 7-day period, Minimum 11 consecutive hours off in any 24-hour period. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- Days off per period in range for employees: We have introduced 2 new constraints for better handling of days off. This feature allows a minimum and/or maximum of days off per period to be set on contracts. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- Rebalanced hard constraint weights: A missing skill or tag in an input dataset was penalized as -1hardresulting in a much smaller penalty than, for example, violating the maximum service end time of a visit. As a result, an infeasible solution that broke a skill or tag requirement was favored over an infeasible solution with all skills/tags but that didn’t finish the service in time by a couple of minutes. See “New and noteworthy” for details.
- We have done a small bugfix to the visualization.
Please let us know if you have feedback.
new
fixed
improved
Timefold Platform
Employee Shift Scheduling
Field Service Routing
Configurable justifications in Recommendation APIs for both models, tag exclusion filtering and several other improvements (v0.37.0)
Today, we’re announcing version v0.37.0 of the Timefold Platform and models, including improved timeline and statuses for each model run.
This new version of the Timefold Platform comes with these platform improvements:
- Support for excluding runs with certain tags when filtering: When filtering the run overview, you can now choose to exclude runs with a certain tag. This gives you greater flexibility in finding and comparing certain runs. (E.g. you could label any simulation runs with a tag, and then exclude it when you want to look at only production runs.)
- Tenant Members with expiry date: It’s now possible to give people temporary access to your tenant by setting an expiration date when adding/editing the members of your tenant. Use this to e.g. give our customer support team temporary access to your tenant for troubleshooting.
- Self-hosted platforms are now single tenant: We’re limiting the ability for self-hosted platforms to create additional tenants. We’re doing to limit the complexity and recommend customers that self host to have multiple installations of the platform instead. More details about self-hosting the Timefold Platform versus using the Timefold Cloud Platform can be found in this comparison guide.
- Rework of run policies: We have reworked the policy limiting the amount of simultaneous runs to check simultaneous threads instead. When you have e.g. 10 simultaneous threads available in your plan, you can use it to do 10 simultaneous runs each using 1 thread, or do 5 simultaneous runs each using 2 threads. We have dropped the policy that checks the maximum runs per hour.
- We have updated the documentation to more clearly explain the different statuses of a run.
- Smaller bugfixes (including using the configuration profile from the run when calling the score analysis API endpoint).
Next to that, this new version of the Timefold Platform comes with updates to these Timefold Models:
Employee Shift Scheduling (v1 | Stable)
- Configurable justifications in the Recommendations API: When submitting a recommendations API request, you can specify an optional booleanincludeJustificationsquery parameter to control whether constraint match justifications should be included in the response. This is useful for getting more fine-grained information about the constraint matches, for instance to learn which period rule is violated by the recommended employee assignment. See New and noteworthy for details.
- Priorities on Contract Rules: Priorities have been added to contracts. This means some contracts can now have higher priority than others. This feature allows for granular control over how much contracts comparatively weigh in solutions. It comes in handy when there is a contract that defines a certain rule that is more important than another, e.g. Contract A defines rules related to period which are more important than Contract B’s rules related to minimum time between shifts. See New and noteworthy for details.
- Maximum number of unique tags per period per employee: We have introduced 2 new constraints to limit the number of unique tags that can be used to assign shifts to employees. You can use this feature to limit the amount of shift types, routes or skills that will be assigned to an employee. See New and noteworthy for details.
- Significant speed improvements for bigger datasets: By pre-calculating matching rules and shifts we were able to improve the performance of datasets using global rules. We’re seeing improvements anywhere between 10% and 50%.
- Several documentation updates, including new feature guides explaining Alternative shifts, Shift travel and locations, and Shift rules.
- Smaller improvements (e.g. to the demo data sets) and bugfixes.
Field Service Routing (v1 | Stable)
- Configurable justifications in the Recommendations API: When submitting a recommendations API request, you can specify an optional boolean includeJustifications query parameter to control whether constraint match justifications should be included in the response. This is useful for getting more fine-grained information about the constraint matches, for instance to learn which visits are not completed in time because of the recommended visit (or visit group) assignment. See New and noteworthy for details.
- Smaller improvements (e.g. to the demo data sets and the visualization UI) and bugfixes (e.g. to the termination limit not always being respected).
Please let us know if you have feedback.
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