SnowManager tells people about a dispatch in two ways: a bell notification in the web app (the Notifications list, see The notification bell) and a push to the phone of anyone signed in to the app. Bell notifications belong to a business: you see them in the business you are working in. What is sent, and to whom, depends on the event.
When a dispatch is created
Every business invited to it (a subcontractor holding addresses on it, by zone, by route or one by one) gets one bell notification, {0} has invited you to a dispatch, and each of its administrators a push: New dispatch invitation, {0} has invited you to a dispatch. Open the app to respond. That is the whole alert; the invitation itself is answered on the dispatch, see Accept or decline a dispatch invitation.
Your own drivers on the dispatch get a bell notification, You have been assigned to a dispatch, and a push: New dispatch, You have stops assigned to you on a new dispatch. Only your own: a stop you handed to a subcontractor belongs to that business, and its drivers hear about it when it accepts. Stops a service rule left out alert nobody, because the alert is sent after the rules have run. A driver who creates a dispatch from the app gets a confirmation push for it instead.
When a driver is put on a stop afterwards
That one driver gets the same bell notification and push, for that one stop. Nobody else on the dispatch is told again. See Put drivers on a dispatched route.
When addresses are added to a running dispatch
Any business invited by the new addresses, and still owing an answer, gets the same invitation alert it would have got at creation. A business that has already answered is not asked twice. See Add addresses to a running dispatch.
When an invitation is accepted
Each driver of the accepting business on the accepted stops gets a bell notification, You have been assigned to a dispatch, and a push: New dispatch, Your business accepted a dispatch with stops assigned to you. The same goes out when the owner records the acceptance on the subcontractor's behalf.
When an invitation is declined
The owner's business gets a bell notification, {0} declined {1}, with the reason as its text, and its administrators a push: Dispatch declined, {0} declined {1}. Reason: {2}. See What a decline does.
When the owner answers for a contractor
When the owner presses a contractor's Awaiting response pill on a zone dispatch and answers in its name, the contractor's business gets a bell notification, {0} accepted {1} on your behalf or {0} declined {1} on your behalf, with the owner's reason as its text when it was a decline, and its administrators a push: Invitation answered for you. A forced accept also sends the contractor's drivers the same You have been assigned to a dispatch alert an ordinary accept sends. The owner hears nothing: they did it. See When the owner answers for you.
When a driver marks a stop unable
When a driver marks a stop Unable from the app, an e-mail goes to the address saved under Settings → Business, Email on error (see Set up your business). Two businesses can get one:
- the business that dispatched, and
- the subcontractor responsible for the stop, when that is another business that has accepted it.
Each gets its own mail, in its own language, with the time the stop was marked in its own time zone, date order and clock. The subject reads Address could not be done: and the address; the mail names the dispatch code and planned date, the route, the work type, the driver and their company, The driver's note, how many photos the stop has, and carries a link that opens the dispatch. Names follow the usual rules of who may know whom, and the customer is named only to a business that holds the address for a customer. A business with no address saved, or an address that is not a valid e-mail, gets nothing; when both businesses saved the same address it is mailed once.
The mail goes out once per unable registration, after it has been saved. A double tap, or an offline retry of a stop that is already unable, sends nothing more, and a mail that fails is logged without stopping the driver. Marking a stop unable from the web sends no mail: that is the office acting, and it already knows.
Nothing is sent for
- Cancelling a dispatch, see Cancel a dispatch.
- A manual registration of work already done, on purpose: it would announce a job nobody can still go and do.
- Completing a dispatch or a stop. The job-completed and job-incomplete message templates under Settings can be edited, but nothing sends them today.
- Customers. The portal shows them their dispatches; it does not alert them.
E-mail and SMS
Apart from the Email on error mail above, no dispatch event produces an e-mail, and none produces a text message. SMS is used for sign-in codes only. If a subcontractor has nobody signed in to the app and nobody watching the bell, the invitation waits unseen; a phone call is still the only way to know it was read.
The other operational event that goes by e-mail is a new complaint, to the colleagues each business picks for it; see Get an e-mail when a complaint is created.