Operational Groups

Operational Groups are a new entity assigned to an order and shipment that let you define guidelines that apply specific behavior during financial settlement and shipment execution. This gives you the flexibility to run your parallel business divisions simultaneously but separately. 

There are three types of Operational Groups:

• Division
• Order operational group
• Shipment operational group

It is common for companies to organize themselves into business divisions with unique needs. With our Operational Groups framework, you can manage your business into multiple divisions with the necessary tools to define specific sets of financial and operational criteria for each division. Operational Groups provide a structured, multi-layered mechanism to define, evaluate, and apply a qualified set of standards on the order and shipment transactions conducted by each division.

Important Note: Operational Groups are not enabled by default and are currently only available as a limited beta feature. Contact your Turvo representative for more information on the limited beta if you are interested in enabling this feature.

Visibility groups

While Operational Groups and Visibility Groups are both created using the Create group modal, they are unrelated entities. Visibility Groups allow you to control the visibility of users, ensuring that they see information that is relevant to them. For more information on Visibility Groups, see our Create and manage visibility groups article. 

Functionality of Operational Groups

Divisions

To use Operational Groups, you create a Division, shown in the image below. 

Once you have created a Division, you can define the settings that apply specifically to that division.

Order Operational Groups

Order operational groups allow you to define assignment rules and settings specific to a Division. In the example below, you see an assignment rule that automatically adds this Order Operational Group to an order if that order meets the rule’s specific criteria.

These assignment rules function similarly to Autopilot rules by using When/If/And logic to define the rule. To learn more about how Autopilot logic works, see our Autopilot: Automatically apply customer billable rates to shipments article. 

Similar to Divisions, Order Operational Groups allow you to define settings. In this case, you can configure the billable cost allocation method, allow the system to consider order consolidation when rating, and add a fuel surcharge plan. All of these settings are specific to the respective Order Operational Group.

Shipment Operational Groups

Shipment Operational Groups are simply sets of combinations. A combination is a set of Order Operational Groups from the same or different Divisions. Two combinations are identical when they have the same set of Order Operational Groups, and no two identical combinations are allowed in a Shipment Operational Group. 

Consider the example below:

In this example, Combination 1 and Combination 3 are identical, unless the Order Groups originate from different Divisions. For further clarity, OrderGroup48 in Combination 1 and OrderGroup48 in Combination 3 may share the same name but are from two different Divisions. 

Note: In cases where identically named Order Operational Groups are from different Divisions, the combinations are not identical.

Settings fallback mechanism

With Operational Groups, the system uses a limited fallback mechanism when settings are not defined at certain levels. For example, if settings are not defined at the Shipment or Order Operational Group levels, Turvo will check for the required settings at the Division level. If settings are present, the system applies those settings. If settings at the Division level are not defined, the system creates an exception, requiring you to define settings at the Division level. 

Ideally you would define settings for Divisions, Order Operational Groups, and Shipment Operational Groups, but at a bare minimum, settings must be defined at the Division level.