Note: This article covers the Dispatch Beta. If you’re using legacy Dispatch, the steps here don’t apply.
Dispatch is where your office plans and manages the field day. It’s built for the office dispatcher who plans a few days to a week ahead, and adjusts as things change.
What Dispatch helps you answer
Who does each visit?
In what order should the stops go?
Does the day fit the crew’s hours and capacity?
The core routine
Most dispatchers follow the same four steps:
Build a route with a crew in mind. See: Building and Ordering a Route - Dispatch Beta.
Assign it once it’s the right size and shape. See: Assigning and Balancing Work - Dispatch Beta.
Save it into future weeks if the visits repeat. See: Saving a Route into Future Weeks - Dispatch Beta.
Adjust it as work changes. See: Keeping Routes Up to Date - Dispatch Beta.
Build the route first and assign once it fits. It saves you from re-routing later.
Open Dispatch
In the sidebar, open the Schedule group and click New Dispatch (it has a Beta badge). You’ll see it if your company is in the beta and your role has Dispatch Board access. If you’re not sure which version you’re on, see Moving from Legacy Dispatch, and Which Version Am I On? - Dispatch Beta.
A tour of the screen
The header
Date control: move to the previous or next day, jump to Today, or switch between Day, Week, Month, or a custom range.
Search and + Filter: narrow the day to what you care about.
Layout toggle: choose Split (list and map), List only, or Map only.
Waitlist: open work that’s waiting to be scheduled.
Print, Quick dispatch, and View (the sliders icon) for printing, jumping to Quick dispatch, and changing how Dispatch looks.
Two ways to see the day
Table: a row for each visit, with columns you can show, hide, and reorder.
Board: a lane for each crew or set of employees, with capacity bars so you can see who has room.
The map shows your visits as pins. Pins with a number are routed stops, and a pin with a badge is several visits at one address.
The footer shows totals for the day, like Events, tracked time, and budgeted hours. When you select visits, it also shows how many are selected (for example, “3 of 12 selected”).
The Work View opens when you click a visit’s row. It’s where you see the visit’s details, notes, and customer.
View more than one day
Use Week, Month, or a custom range to see what’s coming. You can select visits, assign, reschedule, and filter across several days. Routing and printing only work on a single day, so switch to Day view for those.
Key terms
Term | What it means |
Route | An ordered set of stops that one crew completes in a single day |
Stop | One visit on a route. Its number shows in the Stop # column and on its map pin |
Unrouted (00) | A visit that isn’t on a saved route |
Lane | A row in Board view for a crew, a set of employees, or Unassigned |
Capacity | The hours a crew or employee can take. Available is what’s left, and Over means overbooked |
BH | Budgeted hours, the time set aside for a visit |
Waitlist | Work that’s waiting to be scheduled onto a day |
What your plan includes
Most of Dispatch is available on every plan. Optimize, Save and apply to future weeks, and printing Directions and Stops list require a Growth or Enterprise plan.