Slot Ranking
When a customer opens your booking calendar, Driive doesn't just list every opening it can find — it puts the best ones first. Slot ranking is the setting that decides what "best" means for each appointment type. A sales estimate and a warranty callback both need a time on the calendar, but they don't want the same time: one wants the soonest possible slot, the other wants the one that keeps the truck close to the jobs already booked.
Where to find slot ranking
- Navigate to Setup > Appointment Types.
- Click the appointment type you want to configure.
- Open the Scheduling tab and find the Slot Ranking card.
- Pick Speed to lead or Route density, then click Save Changes.
New appointment types use Speed to lead.
What ranking does — and what it doesn't
Ranking is the last step in availability, not a filter. Before ranking ever runs, Driive has already worked out which times are genuinely bookable using your business hours, per-user availability, existing appointments, synced calendar events, buffers, team eligibility, the booking window, and drive-time limits.
Slot ranking only decides the order of the times that survive that check. It never adds a slot your team can't work, and it never removes one they can.
That order matters more than it sounds, because most customers never scroll:
- The booking page leads with a short list of recommended times and opens the date picker on the first date that has any availability.
- The in-app scheduling flow suggests times the same way when your team books a job by hand.
- Dot reads from the same ranked list when it offers times on a call.
Speed to lead
Speed to lead treats the calendar day as the thing that matters most. It sorts the days that have any availability, and the earliest one wins outright — no amount of drive-time savings on Thursday will beat an opening on Tuesday.
Within that day, it balances two things:
- Earlier start times — the largest factor, so a morning slot beats an afternoon one.
- Shorter drives — a secondary tie-breaker, weighing the drive from the previous stop a little more heavily than the drive to the next one.
If a day has no other work on it at all, there's no route to protect, so that day stays purely chronological — earliest first, straight down the list.
Use Speed to lead for:
- Sales consultations and in-home estimates
- Free inspections and quotes
- Emergency and urgent repair
- Anything where a competitor getting there first costs you the job
Tip: Speed to lead is about the first slot a customer sees, not about overriding your rules. If nothing is bookable tomorrow because of your minimum lead time, Speed to lead can't invent a slot — see Scheduling Settings.
Route density
Route density ignores the calendar-day hierarchy and scores every feasible slot against each other, favoring the ones that fit neatly into the work already on the books. Three factors drive the score:
| Factor | Weight | What it rewards |
|---|---|---|
| Drive time | Half the score | Short drives, counting both the drive in from the previous stop and the drive out to the next one |
| Gap quality | Most of the rest | Slots that sit tightly against existing work instead of leaving an awkward hole in the day |
| Round start times | A small nudge | Times on the hour or half hour over :15 and :45 |
How gap quality works
Gap quality is the part that surprises people, so it's worth spelling out. Driive looks at the idle time around the slot — after the previous appointment ends and its drive is done, and before the next appointment needs to start:
| Idle gap | How it scores |
|---|---|
| 0–30 minutes | Best. The job clusters tightly against existing work. |
| Around 60 minutes | Worst. Too long to be useful padding, too short to fit another job. |
| 90–120 minutes | Better again. There's room to sell another appointment into the gap. |
| Over 2 hours | Neutral. The gap is big enough that it isn't really a route decision. |
So a slot that leaves a single dead hour in the middle of a technician's day scores below one that leaves two hours — because the two-hour hole is still sellable.
Use Route density for:
- Recurring and preventive maintenance
- Warranty and callback visits
- Filter changes, tune-ups, and other short routine work
- Anything where windshield time is the main cost of the job
Choosing between them
| If the appointment type is... | Pick |
|---|---|
| A revenue opportunity that a competitor could take | Speed to lead |
| Urgent from the customer's point of view | Speed to lead |
| Work you've already been paid for | Route density |
| Flexible on timing but expensive to drive to | Route density |
| Your highest-volume, lowest-margin service | Route density |
Because the setting lives on the appointment type, you don't have to choose once for the whole business. A roofing company can run "Free Roof Inspection" on Speed to lead and "Annual Gutter Cleaning" on Route density at the same time, on the same crew.
After you change it
Switching the algorithm takes effect on the next availability search — there's nothing to publish and nothing to recalculate.
- Already-booked appointments don't move. Ranking only affects times being offered.
- Feasibility doesn't change. The same slots are bookable before and after; only their order changes.
- Empty calendars aren't a ranking problem. If a customer sees no times at all, the cause is upstream — availability, eligibility, buffers, or the booking window. See Troubleshooting Appointment Types.
Tip: Testing the difference is easiest on a day that already has work on it. On a wide-open calendar, both algorithms land in nearly the same place, because there's no route to optimize around.
What's next
- Scheduling Settings — Duration, buffers, and booking windows, which decide what's feasible in the first place.
- Arrival Windows — Book by window instead of an exact time, and dispatch the jobs later.
- Availability and Service Area — Control when and where your team is available.
- Team Eligibility — Decide who can be assigned to this service.