Dispatch and visits

The Schedule is where jobs become a day’s work. A visit is one appointment against a job — a job can have several, and each has its own status independently of the job’s.

Getting around

Day, Week and Month, with Today to jump back. Within a day you get three ways to look at it:

• Day — the run sheets, crew by crew
• Map — the same visits geographically, which is how you spot a route that doubles back
• Calendar — times against a grid

Filter by visit status, by type — Install, Service, Sales appointment, Warranty, Repair, Comfort Club / Maintenance — or by crew, including Unassigned.

The run sheet

Each crew gets a run sheet showing the crew, its vehicle, and a completion count like 0/1 — visits done over visits booked. Under it, each stop with its time, the customer, the address and the job reference.

Two things the run sheet tells you at a glance:

• A crew reading “No techs assigned” is a truck with work on it and nobody on the truck. Fix that in Crews.
• The Unassigned row is work nobody is going to do. It should be empty by the end of the day before.

Visit statuses, and what each one sends

A visit moves through its own states, separate from the job:

Status	What it means	What the customer gets
Scheduled	Booked	Appointment booked confirmation, then reminders
En route	The tech is driving	A “technician en route” text
On site	Working	—
Complete	Done	—
Problem	Something stopped it	—
Cancelled	Not happening	Cancellation / rebook message

Note

Marking a tech en route is what sends the “on my way” text. It is not the job status and not a separate button — it is the visit’s status, and moving it to En route is the trigger. It can happen at any point after booking, so a visit that has been rescheduled twice still sends it.

The reminders — one day before, eight hours, one hour — are keyed to the visit date rather than to when it was booked, so they are recalculated on every pass. All of it comes from Messaging → Automations, where you can reword any of it.

Rescheduling does the right thing

Move a visit to a different time and the reminders for the old slot are stopped, then the new slot earns its own. You do not get yesterday’s “see you tomorrow at 9” for an appointment that has moved.

Booking a visit in the past — importing history, say — deliberately sends nothing. Only a genuinely upcoming appointment is confirmed, so backfilling does not text people about last month’s work.

Arrival windows

Customers see a window, not a time: Morning, Afternoon, Evening. Which ones you offer is set on your booking page, and the window is what appears in reminder messages via {arrival_window}.

“Suggested slots” is real route optimisation

On your booking page, Suggested slots shows a short list of days rather than an open calendar. Those days are ordered by drive time: the customer’s address is geocoded, matched to the service area it falls in, and the days offered are the days a rep covers that area — ranked so the new stop fits sensibly against what is already booked.

That is why it is the better setting if you care about your routes. Open calendar gives the customer free choice and gives you the drive time that comes with it.

Booking a visit changes the job

Putting a visit on the calendar moves the job to Scheduled on its own — you do not set it. See the job lifecycle for what each job status does.

Before you finish for the day

• Unassigned empty for tomorrow
• No crew with visits and no techs on it
• Anything marked Problem actually followed up, since nothing chases it for you