Beacon re-orders the walk list by street so each canvasser walks a short, sensible path rather than a list in import-row order. Priority leads are weighted toward the front. Under the hood it runs a nearest-neighbor plus 2-opt TSP solver.
— Capabilities
The walk list ships with route order baked in, and any contact can be tapped for a turn-by-turn handoff to the phone's maps app. Priority leads sit at the top of the route, so they get hit early in the shift.
/01 — SOLVER
The solver builds a short, sensible route across every door on the list, then trims the obvious detours. Nearest-neighbor seeds an initial tour, and 2-opt iteratively improves it. A typical walk list finishes in well under a second.
/02 — PRIORITY
High-score leads, hot tags, and VIPs can each be weighted earlier in the route, so priority doors are knocked first in the shift.
/03 — HANDOFF
The route renders on the mobile map with stop numbers and distance to the next door. Tapping a contact hands off to Apple Maps or Google Maps for navigation.
— Why it matters
An unsorted walk list zigzags, and canvassers end up crossing the street four times when they should cross once. On a 100-door shift that adds up to roughly an hour of walking time. The solver runs once and the order respects the street grid from then on.
— How a route gets built
Run it once at campaign launch, then re-run whenever the universe changes.
/01
Choose a campaign and turf. Beacon loads every contact in the walk list along with its geocoded position.
/02
The solver runs in-browser. Nearest-neighbor builds an initial tour, 2-opt prunes the obvious detours, and the route paints onto the map.
/03
Canvassers see the ordered list with stop numbers and distance markers. Tap-to-navigate hands off to the phone's maps app.
/04
Add canvassers, drop a turf, or swap a list and re-optimize. The route updates and the mobile sync picks it up on the next pull.
— FAQ
Q / 01
Nearest-neighbor seeds a route and 2-opt iteratively swaps stops to shorten the path. It's the standard pragmatic TSP heuristic. Not provably optimal, but very close in practice.
Q / 02
Lead score, tags, and statuses can each be configured to weight a contact earlier in the route. Set the rules once at the campaign level and they apply on every re-run.
Q / 03
Both. The solver minimizes geographic distance, which works either way, and the mobile map hands off to Apple Maps or Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions.
Q / 04
The built-in solver handles up to roughly 500 contacts in well under a second. Larger or constraint-heavy operations (time windows, capacity) can use a backend solver for the heavier lifting.
— Start optimizing
Open an account, import a list, and click optimize. Hand the phone to the canvasser and the route is ready.