The auto assign function makes it easy to group students together and then have the system auto-assign the students based on their transportation plans.  Note – to auto assign students to the nearest stop, you will not need to have transportation plans in place as it will automatically used the nearest stop.  This is especially helpful at the beginning of a school year. 

Video on Auto Assigning Students 

Before you auto assign students, you may want to determine if the students need door-to-door stops or will be assigned to existing stops.  Let’s say for example that we want to route all of our new kindergarten students using door to door stops.  We would first want to filter for those students and then do a batch edit to ensure that their student information indicates transportation plans for routing from home to school and then school to home.

The first stop in this scenario is to filter for students who are Kindergartners and who are designated as riders.

From the Students Tab:

Filter for Kindergartners

Filter for Riders, All Riders

Next we will go to Operations, Batch Edit.  The batch edit will work on the selected students.  In our example, we are filtered for 80 kindergartner riders.

Find the section on transportation plans.  Select the option to “Create new transportation plans”.  Note: If the students being auto-assigned will need to be assigned to the nearest stop already on a route, you will not need to create transportation plans.

Adjust any information on the screen.     By default the settings will indicate a plan from the student’s home to the attending school and back.     Adjust the times if needed – the times are approximate and helps indicate to the system a morning stop and an afternoon stop.

Click “Ready to Apply”

Click the green save button.

Then go to Operations, Auto Assign to tell the system to auto-assign the students.

Make any adjustments to the screen and click on the “Search Assignments” button.

Review the assignment information and click on “Save Assignments”.  You can always make adjustments to the assignments individually.