Field services - Kardinal API

A field-service operation dispatches technicians directly from home rather than a shared depot, matches or prefers specific certifications to specific jobs, keeps drive time between two appointments short, and often has a backlog of lower-priority jobs that only get slotted in when the schedule has room.

What makes this vertical distinctive

Skill preference — a senior technician is preferred on demanding jobs, without excluding a generalist when the senior isn’t available.
Opportunistic scheduling — lower-priority jobs stay optional and only get planned when the route has capacity left.
Travel-distance cap between jobs — a technician’s hops from one job to the next stay under a set distance.
Home start/end — every route starts and ends at the technician’s own home, not a shared depot.

Combined example

{
  "resources": [
    {
      "id": "technician-senior",
      "vehicleProfile": { "type": "car" },
      "departure": { "lon": 2.375, "lat": 48.872 },
      "arrival": { "lon": 2.375, "lat": 48.872 },
      "preferredStopTags": ["tag:senior-preferred"],
      "maxInterStopDistanceInKm": { "firstTravel": 100, "interStop": 15, "lastTravel": 100 }
    },
    {
      "id": "technician-junior",
      "vehicleProfile": { "type": "car" },
      "departure": { "lon": 2.362, "lat": 48.824 },
      "arrival": { "lon": 2.362, "lat": 48.824 }
    }
  ],
  "orders": [
    {
      "id": "order-demanding-client",
      "stops": [
        {
          "type": "single",
          "id": "stop-demanding-client",
          "position": { "lon": 2.38, "lat": 48.832 },
          "kind": "delivery",
          "operationDuration": "PT45M",
          "tags": ["tag:senior-preferred"]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "order-routine-job",
      "stops": [
        {
          "type": "single",
          "id": "stop-routine-job",
          "position": { "lon": 2.358, "lat": 48.836 },
          "kind": "delivery",
          "operationDuration": "PT20M"
        }
      ],
      "priority": -5,
      "optional": true
    }
  ],
  "objectives": ["maximizeMandatoryStops", "maximizePreferredStops", "maximizeOptionalStops", "minimizeCosts"]
}

Skill preference

technician-senior.preferredStopTags: ["tag:senior-preferred"] is matched against the same tag on stop-demanding-client. See Driver skills and qualifications — the exact worked example this pattern follows.

Opportunistic scheduling

order-routine-job sets optional: true with a negative priority, so the engine only plans it once every mandatory and preferred stop is already placed, via the maximizeOptionalStops objective. A more negative priority pushes a job further down the queue relative to other optional orders. See Order, stop.

Travel-distance cap between jobs

technician-senior.maxInterStopDistanceInKm bounds each leg of the tour independently: firstTravel/lastTravel (home to first job, last job to home) get a looser cap than interStop (job to job), keeping consecutive appointments close together without also restricting how far the day’s first and last jobs can be from home.

Home start/end

Each technician’s departure/arrival points to its own position rather than a shared depot — technician-senior and technician-junior don’t share coordinates. See Depot vs. position for how a “depot” is just a resource’s departure/arrival, not a first-class object.

See also

Modeling advanced constraints — preferredStopTags and requiredSkills, hard vs. soft.
Data model — how per-resource departure/arrival represents a home or depot.
Data model — optional, priority, and the rest of the order/stop shape.