You do not have to wait for the office: a dispatch can be started from the phone. On Home, under Start new dispatch, there are two cards: Route dispatch for one or more of your routes, and Single address for one location.
[ Screenshot to add: the Home tab, showing the Start new dispatch heading with the Single address and Route dispatch cards. ]
Dispatch a route
- Press Route dispatch. The sheet is headed New dispatch and Select routes, and lists the routes you are on, the same list as your Routes tab. Type in Search to narrow it; No matches means nothing fits.
- Tick the routes you want. Every ticked route goes onto the same dispatch. Under each route the app shows who would be invited: your name, or No drivers on this route.
- Pick a Work type. The list holds the work types your business uses.
- Set Date (DD/MM/YYYY) and Time (HH:MM), or press Now at the end of that row, which fills in both with five minutes from now. See The planned time below.
- Write a Note if the crew needs one (Add a note).
- Press Dispatch, or Dispatch · 2 when you ticked two routes.
[ Screenshot to add: the Route dispatch sheet on step one (a plain driver), showing Select routes with the Nordhavn route in the list and the Work type, Date, Time and Note fields above the Dispatch button. ]
The button is greyed out until at least one route and a work type are chosen.
The planned time
Dates and times on the sheet are your company's clock, not the phone's: a driver whose phone is set to another time zone is offered the same day and times as the office.
- The date starts at your company's today, and today can be picked.
- Now fills in the date and the time: five minutes from now, rounded up to the minute (after 23:55 that is tomorrow).
- Leave the time empty on today, or pick a time that has already gone on today, and the dispatch is planned for Now instead. Leave the date empty and it means today.
- On any other date you have to pick a time. Dispatch otherwise stops with Choose a time for this date., so nothing goes out at midnight by accident.
- A time that passes while you fill in the rest still counts: it is accepted until five minutes after it has gone, so Now stays good for ten minutes. Older than that, the app stops with That time has already passed. Choose a later time. before sending anything.
If you are an administrator
Administrators using the app get the same sheet in two steps. Step one is the route list with a Continue · 2 button, which stays greyed out until every ticked route has at least one driver. A ticked route also gets Edit, which opens a Drivers list with Search drivers, a You badge on yourself, and Save. What you pick there is the crew for this dispatch only; the route's configured drivers are not changed. Step two, Plan the dispatch, holds the work type, date, time and note, and the Dispatch button.
Dispatch a single address
Press Single address. The sheet is headed Select locations and lists your business's addresses, with the same Search field. Tap one address to pick it (tap it again to clear it), then fill in the same Work type, Date, Time and Note. There is one extra switch, Should this be invoiced?, on by default. Leave it on and the dispatch bills both the customer and the subcontractor, as any dispatch does; switch it off and nothing is invoiced for it on either side, though the stop is still recorded and completed as usual. The office sees the choice on the dispatch and can change it there, where it can also pick one side only; see Who is invoiced for an address dispatch. Press Dispatch.
What happens next
The dispatch appears in your active list at once and you are already on it as an accepted driver. The other drivers on the routes you picked are invited instead: the dispatch shows up under their Invitations, and they accept or decline there, see accept or decline a dispatch on your phone. The office sees the new dispatch on the web immediately.
The server applies the address rules as when the office dispatches from the web: an address whose service rules exclude the planned moment, or whose limit for the period is used up, is left off (see why an address was left out). The address's active period is judged on the planned date, not on the day you press the button, so an address whose season starts tomorrow can be dispatched for tomorrow. A stand-in whose route schedule puts them on a route for the planned date may dispatch that route too.
If the work is already out
When the address you picked, or one of the routes you ticked, is already on an active dispatch of your company for the same work type, planned within eight hours of your time, nothing is created yet. The app asks first, for a single address: This address is already on an active dispatch for this work type. Add your work to that dispatch, or create a new one?
- Add to existing dispatch puts your work on the dispatch that is already out: you join the address's stop there, or your routes, stops and crew are added to that run. Nothing is duplicated.
- Create new dispatch creates a separate dispatch over the same work, for a genuine second run.
- Cancel closes the question and leaves the sheet as it was.
On Android the route question answers with Add to it and Send it again, which mean the same two things. If that dispatch ended, or its stop was closed or handed to another business, while the question was open, the app shows That dispatch is no longer running, so your work was not added to it. Try again to start a new one., reloads, and asks afresh the next time you press Dispatch. The office asks the same question on the web, see create a dispatch.
Pressing Dispatch twice, or retrying after the connection dropped, does not create two dispatches: each sheet carries one request id, and the server answers the repeat with the dispatch it already made. Close the sheet and open it again if you really want a second one.