Dispatch and scheduling

Plan around the customer promise

A service appointment has a customer, a location, a skill requirement and a time window. Bring those details together before assigning the job. Dispatchers can see unassigned calls alongside committed work and choose a technician or crew that can reach the customer with enough time to finish the visit. The schedule retains the agreed start and end, so a later routing suggestion does not quietly change the promise already made.

A priority label helps the team decide what needs attention. It does not create another available technician. When an emergency arrives, the dispatcher can assess affected visits and explicitly agree the changes. Existing appointments remain visible while the team resolves the conflict, including any customer communication needed before a new window is accepted.

Put the right skills on the job

Match the service category to active technician skills and certifications covering the entire planned visit. Crew work checks each participating person’s availability instead of treating the crew name as unlimited capacity. Dated leave or training exceptions, overlapping commitments and travel buffers remain part of the same decision. Daily capacity uses each selected technician’s working intervals; crew visits count once as jobs while their required person-minutes include each participating technician. A day with no available time shows no utilization percentage. Historical utilization uses a frozen daily availability basis, including days with no jobs, so a later roster or working-hours change cannot rewrite last month’s results. A technician whose certification expires before the visit cannot become eligible just because they appeared in an earlier suggestion.

Dispatchers manage assignments while Operations Manager maintains the crew structure. Technicians receive their accepted work through their own mobile route. Customer access instructions stay limited to people who need them for the assigned visit; ordinary scheduling access does not expose every gate code or site secret.

Keep rescheduling accountable

A revised appointment retains who changed the assignment, which earlier window it replaced and why. The system checks the current revision before accepting an edit, so two dispatchers cannot unknowingly commit conflicting plans. Cancelling or rescheduling a visit must release the correct reservation and preserve its history. Completed work stays in the service record and leads to a linked follow-up when another visit is needed.

How the work moves

Accept the service request. Dispatcher or a configured inbound service resolves Customer, its owned ServiceLocation and ServiceCategory and creates one ServiceCall using the source event key. Capture the requested window and channel permissions. A recall references the original completed call; customer and location must agree. Duplicate intake returns the existing call.

Commit dispatch and route. Dispatcher reviews skill, crew, leave, customer-window and travel-aware capacity checks, then commits assignment and ScheduledStart/ScheduledEnd with the expected Revision: Status: Created → Scheduled → Dispatched. Exactly one technician or crew is assigned. Route planning proposes ordered RouteStops; it cannot silently rewrite committed customer windows. Dispatcher accepts a feasible revision; emergencies require explicit reallocation and customer communication, never double booking.

Review the exception

If a route suggestion conflicts with a promised window, keep the accepted appointment in place while the dispatcher chooses a feasible alternative. If a crew member becomes unavailable, reassess the whole crew reservation before dispatch. The daily view and board should make these unresolved calls visible without presenting an unaccepted plan as a confirmed customer commitment.