The Dispatch Grid is an inline grid that organizes estimate, jobs, and calendar tasks by the assigned technician and the scheduled start date. The dispatch grid can be organized by both daily and weekly views. When the daily view is selected, you can choose the time display to be a 12 hour display or a 24 hour display.
The dispatch grid is organized by the assigned technician on the vertical axis, and the time element on the horizontal axis (either by hour in the daily view, or by day in the weekly view).
In the daily view, you can quickly advance further into the day’s schedule by selecting the time shift selections in the top right hand corner of the grid screen, as seen here:
If an estimate, job, additional site visit, or calendar task lacks either an assigned technician, or a scheduled date, these items can not make their way on to the grid. Instead, these will appear in the bottom section of the dispatch grid screen. There are six tabs that exist at the bottom of the dispatch screen. The first two act as a means to schedule estimates, jobs, additional site visits, and calendar tasks that are either unscheduled, unassigned, or both.
*****Note: It is important to note that estimates, jobs, additional site visits, and calendar tasks will appear in this section based on the very specific criteria of lacking one of the two essential elements that will allow the display in the gird. These tabs are not status driven. A job can be in a ‘dispatched’ status, and not contain a scheduled ‘start date’ and the job will appear in the first tab of ‘Unscheduled’. The unassigned tab shows estimates, jobs, additional site visits, and calendar tasks that specifically do not have an assigned technician, even though they may have a scheduled start date for the on - site visit. This unassigned tab is also not status driven.*****
When working with the estimates, jobs, additional site visits, or calendar tasks in the bottom section of the dispatch grid, we are able to both assign a technician, assign an additional technician, as well as schedule, by clicking and dragging on the desired block of information to the desired position on the dispatch gird.
The remaining four tabs to the right of the Unscheduled and Unassigned tabs simply display estimates, jobs, additional site visits that contain interesting information. These tabs are With Open PO’s, which can be used to easily identify jobs with open purchase orders, Partially Completed, jobs that have been started but only partially completed, Paused, which shows jobs that are currently in a paused state, and Marked for follow up, which collects jobs that have been specifically marked for needing follow up. *Note*: Jobs will stay in the marked for follow up until the marked for follow up check mark has been removed.
Also, on these four tabs, these are not estimates, jobs, additional site visits, and tasks that can not make their way to the grid, like the first two tabs in this section, Unscheduled and Unassigned. They are simply blocks that contain certain interesting attributes (outlined above) and the presence of the tabs allow for the easy identification of the blocks with these shared attributes.
Estimates, jobs, additional site visits, and calendar tasks that are already in the grid section of the dispatch screen, as well as the ones that appear in the bottom section, can also be interacted with by single clicking or double clicking on the desired block of information. The following information can be viewed when single clicking the block:
The following information can be viewed when double clicking the block: *Note:* This view is considered the ‘quick edit’ module or ‘Detailed Job View’ and contains additional functionality.
From this detailed job view, that appears as an overlay to the dispatch grid, certain elements of the document that corresponds to the block can be quickly edited, without having to leave the dispatch grid. Anywhere the ‘edit’ action icon is present, the corresponding field can be updated directly from this module, without having to enter into the job, and select to edit. Furthermore, once the desired edit has been made, a simple ‘enter’ key pressed on the keyboard allows the changes to be saved, without having to leave the dispatch grid, or even leave the detailed job view.
You can also view and change the current status of the technician from this view.
You can also view a map of the service location from this screen:
You can also access functionality specific to the block from this screen, either by selecting to send a pre-populated dispatch text message to the assigned technician or assigned technicians (dispatch), along with traveling directly to view mode on the estimate or job (view details), traveling to edit mode on the estimate or job (Make Changes), apply and view payment information (Deposits), close and invoice the job (Close & Invoice), Cancel the job completely (Cancel Job), access the email dialogue for quick distribution of the job (Email), access the print preview of the associated documentation (Print), and simply choose to leave this screen entirely (Exit):
In order to easily isolate estimates and jobs that belong to a certain subset of shared attributes we can employ the use of filters for the items in the dispatch grid, or the items that exist in the bottom section. Note the placement of the two filters section in the dispatch grid:
When we select the ‘Set Filters’ button in the top right corner of the jobs screen, we are presented with the following dialogue in order to interact with the filters applicable for information already in the dispatch grid.
We can filter based on the following 6 criteria:
- Filter by date
2.) Filter by type (estimate, job, or task)
3.) Filter by assigned technician
4.) Filter by Category -
5.) Filter by Status
6.) Filter by Priority
Everything but the date, in order to accommodate the appearance of the unscheduled items, can be filtered in the bottom section of the dispatch grid. We see this filter presented as a persistent filter and can be used at the same time we are also filtering information in the top section of the dispatch grid. We see this filter presented adjacent to the bottom section, present here:
