With Fleet Engine, you can track and share the progress of vehicles as they complete jobs. A key concept in this process is the Journey. This document provides an overview of what journeys are, how they are used, and how they relate to other components of Fleet Engine.
What is a Journey?
A Journey represents the route for a vehicle from the origin to the termination of a specific assignment. This is the portion of a vehicle's activity that you want to share, for example, with an end-user awaiting a ride or a delivery.
Think of it like this: a delivery vehicle might be active for an 8-hour shift, but a single journey might only be the trip from the warehouse to a specific customer's address to drop off a package.
Journeys in Action: Examples
Journeys are fundamental to both on-demand and scheduled services:
- On-Demand Services: For a ridesharing service, a journey typically represents a single ride for a passenger, from their pickup location to their destination.
- Scheduled Services: For deliveries, a journey could be the vehicle's travel to a single stop to deliver a particular package.
Key Aspects of a Journey
Several pieces of information define and describe a journey:
- Origin and Destination: The defined start and end points of the assignment.
- Vehicle: The specific vehicle assigned to complete the journey.
- Route: The planned path the vehicle is expected to take.
- Real-time Updates: Fleet Engine provides real-time updates, including the vehicle's current location and Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA).
- Status: Journeys have a lifecycle, with statuses such as Active, Completed, or Cancelled.
How Journeys Relate to Other Fleet Engine Concepts
Journeys don't exist in isolation. They are closely tied to other core concepts in Fleet Engine:
- Vehicles: Journeys are always performed by vehicles. You can learn more in the Vehicles Introduction.
- Trips (On-Demand): In the context of on-demand rides and deliveries,
a journey often corresponds directly to a
Tripentity. See the Trips Introduction. - Tasks (Scheduled): For scheduled operations, such as multi-stop
deliveries, a journey might represent the travel involved in completing
one or more
Taskentities. See the Tasks Introduction.
Benefits of Tracking Journeys
Tracking journeys with Fleet Engine offers several advantages:
- Enhanced End-User Experience: Provide customers with real-time visibility into the status of their ride or delivery, including map visualizations and accurate ETAs.
- Improved Operational Oversight: Monitor the progress of assignments and vehicle locations in real time.
- Accurate ETA Prediction: Use Google's traffic data and routing capabilities for reliable ETAs.
Next Steps
To dive deeper into how journeys are managed within Fleet Engine, explore the following guides:
- Learn how journeys are used in on-demand services: Manage Trips
- Learn how journeys are used in scheduled services: Manage Tasks