Newsletter 1: OptaPlanner team continues as Timefold
Timefold Solver is the faster, Open Source fork of OptaPlanner. It’s built by a dedicated Open Source company, co-founded by the OptaPlanner creator.
Subscribe to Planned, planning education for real-world stuff.
By Maarten Vandenbroucke
December 13, 2023
In the past, you’ve worked with OptaPlanner. This globally used Open Source software was at the core of a wide array of planning optimization projects, significantly impacting efficiency in diverse industries. My co-founder, Geoffrey De Smet, the creator of OptaPlanner, and I witnessed first-hand the transformative impact of this technology. Driven by our mission to Free the world from wasteful scheduling we decided to build upon this legacy. Thus, Timefold was born.
As announced on May 2nd, 2023, OptaPlanner continues as Timefold. When the future of OptaPlanner at Red Hat seemed uncertain, we took the initiative to ensure that this vital technology not only survives but also thrives. Timefold represents not merely a stable continuation but also an evolution - a new chapter. We already fixed a good number of bugs and released new features. Timefold is twice as fast, and comes with better documentation. But this is just the start as our ambition reaches far higher into making our planning optimization products as accessible and easy to use as database technology or even spreadsheets!
We are honored to welcome the core OptaPlanner team - Lukas, Radovan, and Christopher - to Timefold. Their expertise and insights are invaluable in our journey ahead. We are proud of the Timefold team and thankful for being on this ride together.
Timefold is more than a tool; it’s a community and a movement. Your contributions, feedback, and ideas are the keystones of this community. Find us on StackOverflow or star us on GitHub.
We invite you to continue on this journey with us. We will send out a monthly newsletter that we will keep informative and on-point. Feedback is always welcome. We look forward to your continued support and engagement!
For reliability, features and speed. Timefold adds features and fixes bugs, many that still reside in OptaPlanner. Timefold is twice as fast as OptaPlanner out-of-the-box. Here’s how to upgrade OptaPlanner to Timefold.
Featured Update: Recommended Fit API, designed for appointment scheduling. Whilst on a call, operators can receive a list of appointment choices, ranked from best fit to worst, for informed decision-making. Also, score corruption errors now provide better debugging information.
Featured Update: JSON-friendly score explanations. Timefold Solver can now break down the score all the way to individual constraint matches. It can also compute differences between any two solutions. Also, Spring Boot integration has improved significantly.
Geoffrey De Smet & Lukáš Petrovický at Devoxx Belgium:
Continue reading
Blog
How we upgraded 15 projects to Timefold Solver 2.0 in under 10 minutes
We upgraded 15 Timefold Solver quickstarts to 2.0 in under 10 minutes using an OpenRewrite recipe. Here’s exactly what that migration looked like.
Blog
I vibe-coded an optimization model and my colleagues found all the holes
AI makes it remarkably easy to build things that look right. It’s much less helpful at telling you when they aren’t.
Blog
Timefold Solver 2.0 released
The next major milestone in open source scheduling and routing. Full support for list variables, a new Neighborhoods API to escape local optima, faster solving, and a new Plus edition for Explainability.