Zones

Draw a zone

Routes are for the plow; zones are for the dispatcher. A zone is a shape on the map (a district, a postcode, the north side of town), and dispatching it means everything in here, now, whoever services it. Large operations run the whole night from a handful of zones. The zone map Draw one 1. Open Locations → Zones in the left menu. 2. Press New zone. The map says Draw a zone polygon, then press Enter to confirm: click corner by corner around the area and press Enter. 3. Enter a Zone name and press Save. Reset Drawing starts the shape over; Discard abandons it. The zone appears in the list on the left as a card. The number on the card counts what is inside it. Addresses that fall in no zone are counted under Unassigned, so you can see what a zone dispatch would miss. Read a zone Click a zone's card to pick it out on the map, and open it with the arrow on the right. A zone opened, with its routes and addresses The open card is the zone's legend: - Routes comes first: every painted road route that runs through the zone, each with a short line in the route's own colour, the same colour its roads are drawn in on the map. In the example, Nordhavn veje (purple) covers the main streets and Nordhavn stier (pink) the side streets and paths. - Below them, the addresses inside the zone, each with the business that services it. While a zone is picked, its road routes are drawn thicker on the map and the others fade, so you can see at a glance which roads belong to it. A route driven stop by stop has no line of its own on the zone map; its addresses show as pins and in the list instead. Find an address The search box under New zone, Search address or customer, finds one address on the map without scrolling through zone cards. From two characters it lists up to 50 addresses matching the name, the street, postcode or town, the customer's name or the customer number, best match first: exact, then starting with what you typed, then a word starting with it, then anything containing it, shorter names ahead of longer ones. Each hit shows the address and its customer (with the customer number on your own addresses; an address a business handed to you shows no number). Use the arrow keys and Enter, or click. Picking a hit does what clicking the address in its zone card does: the zone card opens, the map flies to the pin, the pin's popup opens and the address's drawing is painted. If the company holding it was switched off under Companies on this map, it is switched back on. An active address that has no position is listed greyed with No position and cannot be picked; give it a position on the address first. Inactive addresses are not on the zone map, so they are not found here either. Edit or delete Click the card and press Edit to reshape or rename; Delete removes it for good: This zone will be permanently deleted. Dispatches already made from it keep their history. Whose address is whose Every pin on the zone map is drawn in the colour of the company responsible for that address: the subcontractor it was handed to, or your own company where nobody else holds it. A company picks its colour under Settings → Business, Company colour, see setting up your business; one that has never picked keeps the old blue and grey. The same dot appears on the rows of a zone card and on the pin's popup. Companies on this map in the bottom right corner names every company with work on the map, in its colour, and it is also the filter: - The box beside a company takes its addresses off the map and puts them back. - Clicking the company's name leaves only that one on the map; clicking the name again brings the rest back. - Deselect all clears the map in one press and turns into Select all, and Show all appears whenever anything is hidden. - The title row folds the key away when you already know the colours, and then carries how many companies are still showing, so a filter cannot hide behind a folded panel. How you left it folded is remembered on that browser; which companies were hidden is not, so a reload shows everybody again. Zones and route lines are never filtered away, because they are the map rather than the work on it, and the zone list on the left keeps every address: clicking one there brings its company back rather than flying to a pin that is not on the map. While the map is zoomed out, addresses close together are gathered into one bubble with the number of them on it, in the colour most of them carry, so one subcontractor's corner of town still reads as that company. Click a bubble to zoom to what is inside; past a certain zoom every address is a pin of its own again. What is "inside" An address is in a zone when its pin falls inside the polygon. That is decided when the zone is saved and when addresses are created or moved, not at dispatch time, so a zone drawn today covers an address added tomorrow inside it. An address can be in several zones; dispatching two overlapping zones does not dispatch the shared addresses twice; they are collected into one dispatch. An inactive address is not on the zone map at all: no pin, not counted on the zone's card, not in its list. It keeps its place in the polygon, so the day its active period opens again it is back on the map without anything to redo. Zone dispatches look at the planned date rather than today, so an address whose season starts next month is already offered when you plan next month's dispatch. Zones are private to the business that drew them. A subcontractor does not see your zones; it sees the dispatch that comes out of them. Good to know before the first zone dispatch - A route with Excluded from zone dispatch switched on is never picked up by a zone, however much of it lies inside. Use it for routes you always dispatch by hand. - A route with Automatic driver invitation on has its drivers accepted and invited the moment the zone goes out; without it the subcontractor invites drivers itself after accepting. - Under Settings → Business, Call on zone dispatch phones the users you choose every time a zone is dispatched, useful for the duty manager. What actually happens when you press Dispatch now on a zone is its own article: What happens when you dispatch a zone. See also - What happens when you dispatch a zone - Create a dispatch - Build a route

What happens when you dispatch a zone

A zone dispatch is one button for a whole district. Behind it, the system works out who services what, invites them, and builds each of them a job, while making sure nobody gets an address twice and nobody gets an address that is not theirs. Step by step 1. Find the addresses. Every address whose pin lies inside the zone (yours and the ones you have handed out) is in scope. An address outside its active period on the planned date is left out; the popup already hides it for that date, and the creation checks once more. To find one address or customer in the popup, and see which zone it is in, type it in the search box; while the search narrows a zone, that zone's box ticks only the addresses shown, see Create a dispatch. 2. Find the businesses. For each address, the business currently responsible for it: your own for addresses you kept, the subcontractor for addresses you assigned (and their subcontractor if they passed it on). Each of these businesses is invited, with a bell notification and a push to its administrators. 3. Find the routes. For each invited business, the routes it holds that contain addresses in the zone, including routes you assigned to it yourself. Those routes are put on the dispatch, but only their addresses inside the zone are activated. A route that runs out of the zone keeps its outside stops off this dispatch. Routes with Excluded from zone dispatch are skipped entirely. 4. Apply the rules. Service rules and frequency limits remove what they must, the owner's May dispatch my addresses switch removes what it blocks, and addresses already on a matching active dispatch are collected rather than duplicated. 5. Attach drivers. Each route's drivers are attached to its stops straight away; they are told there is work once the subcontractor accepts, and the subcontractor can add or change drivers after that. Drivers always go onto a route, never onto the zone: on the open dispatch your own routes are listed under each zone with a driver pill of their own, and a subcontractor's routes are only ever crewed by that subcontractor, see Add drivers to an existing dispatch. 6. Phone the duty manager if Call on zone dispatch is on in your settings. Your own addresses are active at once. A subcontractor's part is view-only until it accepts: its drivers see nothing before that. Until the answers come in you see a pill per contractor (Awaiting response, Accepted, Denied) which retires as soon as their work is under way. One address, one stop If two routes overlap on an address and both are dispatched by the zone, the address is one stop with a visit per route. Both routes' drivers see it; it is completed once; it is invoiced once. If two zones overlap and you dispatch both within eight hours, the second dispatch is collected into the first instead of duplicating the shared addresses. Addresses nobody holds An address in the zone with no responsible business (Missing business in your list) cannot be dispatched to anyone. The dispatch carries a No business assigned warning and lists them, so you can assign them and Add locations afterwards. Likewise an address that is on no route is flagged under Locations not in route; it is dispatched to the business as a loose stop, without a driving order. What the subcontractor sees Only its own slice: its routes, its addresses, its drivers, its message. It does not see the zone, the other contractors, or your addresses. When it accepts, the job behaves like a route dispatch of its own; when it declines, its stops show Denied to you and it is never billed or settled for this dispatch. A subcontractor that instead starts its own dispatch on those addresses is asked to Join the existing dispatch. Completing and invoicing Each contractor's part completes on its own. You can Confirm & create invoices for any subcontractor as soon as it is done; you don't have to wait for the whole dispatch. Your own addresses are confirmed the same way. The dispatch as a whole is marked complete by you when every part is. See also - Draw a zone - Accept or decline a dispatch invitation - Why your dispatch was merged into another - Route settings