Read the dispatch board

Most of a dispatcher's day is spent reading the board, not clicking through it. So knowing what each part is telling you — and where a problem hides before it becomes a missed appointment — matters more than knowing every button. This guide walks the board top to bottom: the three views, what a job card tells you at a glance, what to check first thing, and how a change takes effect.

Three views of the same day

The switch at the top of the board flips between three ways of looking at the same work:

Schedule — the timeline. Rows are technicians; each job sits against the time it's scheduled, so you can see gaps, overlaps, and who's free at 2pm. This is the default and where you'll spend most of your time. You can view it by day, week, or month.
Board — a status view. Jobs are grouped in columns by where they are in their life — unscheduled, scheduled, en route, on site, complete — so you can see what's stuck rather than what's when.
Map — the same jobs as pins, so you can see who's driving across town and who's clustered. On a day that's been route-optimized, each tech's stops connect in order.

Use the search box (top of the board) to narrow any view to matching jobs — type a customer name, a work-order number, a city, or a tech. If the shop runs more than one branch, the branch chips filter the board to one branch at a time.

What a job card tells you

Every job on the board is a card, and it's built to be read in a glance:

Customer name is the headline. The scheduled time sits top-right — or Unscheduled if the job hasn't been placed on the timeline yet.
The meta line underneath reads WO-number · type · location · equipment — enough to know what the job is and where without opening it.
A priority badge and a colored left stripe flag the jobs your eye should jump to: a red stripe and Emergency badge for emergencies, an amber stripe for high priority. Normal and low jobs carry no stripe on purpose, so the urgent ones stand out.
Small pills flag anything the office needs to hold in mind: Waiting · Parts or Awaiting customer for a stalled job, Warranty for covered work, and SLA warning / SLA breach when a job is approaching or past a guaranteed response time from the customer's agreement.

Suggested assignments

An unassigned job may show a suggested technician — a name, a short reason (the drive time, the matching certification, the open slot), and a match percentage. This is a proposal, not a done deal: nothing is assigned until you act. Accept takes the suggestion; Change clears it and lets you assign someone else from the dropdown. If the planner couldn't find a qualified tech — say the job needs a certification nobody available holds — it says so in an amber note instead of guessing, and you assign manually.

What to check first

Reading the board in the morning, work in this order:

Anything unassigned with today's date. An unassigned job is the most direct path to a missed appointment — it won't get done today until someone's on it.
SLA warnings. A job flagged as approaching its guaranteed response window is a promise about to break. Handle it before the flag turns to SLA breach.
Emergencies. The red-striped jobs — make sure each one has a qualified tech and a realistic slot.
Drive-time conflicts. Two back-to-back jobs across town from each other is a gap the board can flag but won't silently fix. Re-order or reassign.
A job still "on site" well past its expected duration. Worth a quick check-in call before it cascades into the rest of that tech's afternoon.

The summary line above the grid gives you the headline count for the day — scheduled jobs, emergencies, and how many techs are on shift — so you can sanity- check the shape of the day before you dig in.

Making a change

To reassign a job, drag its card onto a different technician or time slot. As you do, Thermal re-checks skills, required certifications, and drive time, and warns you if the move creates a conflict — it won't stop you (you may know something it doesn't), but it won't let the conflict pass silently either. The move takes effect immediately. There's no separate save step.

If a change needs a judgment call the board can't make for you — bumping a customer's window, or telling someone their tech is running late — that part is still on you. The board surfaces the problem; the phone call is yours.

Reference

Job and priority values — the full set of work-order statuses (unscheduled through completed) and priorities (emergency, high, normal, low), generated straight from the product, are in Status & domain values.
Who can reach Dispatch — Owners, Dispatchers, and Office users; not Technicians. See Roles & permissions.