Key Concepts And Terms
collection
A service event involving the collection (removal) of material of a specific content type from a particular site at a given date and time.
container
Any receptacle, structure, or physically delimited space where materials of a specific content type are stored.
container slot
A named "slot" at a particular site which is expected to be filled by a physical container. A container slot is similar to a parking space in a parking lot. At any given time, a parking space may or may not be occupied by a car, and if the cars change, the parking space remains the same. Likewise, a container slot may or may not be occupied by a physical container, and if the containers change, the container slot remains the same. Fill level history, trends, and other data are associated with container slots, not containers.
content type
A content type is a classification used to identify a range of materials of a similar nature, requiring common storage and handling, and possibly governed by similar legislative or policy requirements.
external id
An external ID is a textual string defined by a customer which may be associated with a managed entity in the REEN CMS service, such as a site, vehicle, container slot, etc. and which may be used when aggregating data from the REEN CMS service to the customer's own IT solutions.
External IDs are usually unique, but need not be. E.g. external IDs might correspond to unique identifiers used in the customer's service to reliably equate REEN CMS service entities with their identity within the customer's own system. Or external IDs may correspond to tags or labels which classify entities based on criteria significant to the customer's solution but not supported by REEN, such as identifying the billable end-customer for each site, or the particular sub-contractor used to service each site, such that multiple sites might have the same classification.
External IDs can be simple or structured, encoding multiple distinct bits of information. Any sequence of up to 200 textual characters is allowed.
It is entirely up to the customer to decide if and how to use external IDs. The REEN CMS service will never inpect, modify, generate, nor attempt to utilize external IDs in any way. External IDs, if and as defined, will simply be included in all descriptions of the state of the entities in question, both in UI views where appropriate as well as in all relevant API responses (NOTE: In the API external IDs are called customerKeys).
delivery
A service event involving the delivery (addition) of material of a specific content type to a particular site at a given date and time.
maximum interval
The maximum length of time allowed between scheduled collections or deliveries; defined for a specific content type at a particular site.
plan
A service list or smart plan specifying a set of sites to be serviced on a particular date, and possibly using a particular vehicle and following a particular route.
Plans are calculated based on a variety of data such as trends derived from historical data, cost models, schedule constraints and exceptions, and the continually changing fill levels of each content type at each site. The scheduled date corresponds to the latest possible date for each particular site such that each specific content type at each particular site will never become overfull or depleted, depending on whether the material is being collected or consumed.
predicted plan
A plan which is scheduled for execution sometime in the future, and which may change or be replaced as new information becomes available. Predicted plans are continually calculated by the service, taking into account ever changing data regarding the state of each content type at each site, as well as gradual variations in trends over time. The plans which are calculated immediately prior to their scheduled date of execution are then frozen as the official plans for that date, ready for use by the customer as the recommended plans to execute during the current day.
schedule rule
A rule which defines an allowed schedule for a specific content type at a particular site, by defining the days of the week when collections or deliveries may be scheduled.
schedule exception
An exception to the normal schedule, as defined by the schedule rules; such as forcing a collection prior to a specified date irregardless of the fill level or excluding special dates from the normal schedule.
service event
The collection (removal) or delivery (addition) of material of a specific content type from/to a particular site at a given date and time.
service list
A basic plan consisting of a list of sites at which material of a particular content type should be collected from or delivered to on a given date. Service lists are intended to be used by customers with existing static schedules and routes, as a means to optimize those schedules over time.
site
A geographically distinct location where one or more containers are managed collectively.
site content type
A virtual container representing the total volume of a particular content type managed at a particular site. Most of the calculations, predictions, scheduling, presentations, trends, etc. utilized throughout the service are based on the total volume of a specific type of material at a particular site, irregardless of how many different containers are located at the site or how many containers at the site contain the same type of material.
Thus, the "fill level" of a specific content type at a particular site corresponds to the total capacity available for that content type at the site which is currently being utilized. Individual containers will likely have fill levels which are higher or lower than this site-wide fill level, and this must be taken into account when evaluating reported fill levels and predictions provided by the service.
For example, at a site with three containers all of which contain metal, where one of the three containers is full and the other two containers are only half full, the site will not be considered full for the metal content type because there is still capacity available in two of the three containers receiving metal. In the same scenario, even though there is available capacity in two of the containers, there is still the possibility of overflow of metal which the service can not know of nor anticipate, such as metal deposited outside and adjacent to the full container, if was unclear that there were additional containers receiving metal (or no effort was made to check for other suitable containers).
When relevant, the fill levels and other information for individual containers is displayed, usually in an expanded view of the site total for each content type.
smart plan
Smart plans are similar to service lists in that they specify a set of sites which must be serviced for a particular content type on a particular date; however, in addition to simply specifying a set of sites, smart plans will indicate which vehicle will be most optimal to use, as well as which order and route would be most efficient to follow to visit each site and when execution of the plan should begin on the specified date, taking traffic trends and other scheduling constraints into account..