Frequently Asked Questions

Article Sections

Determining your Role: Dispatcher, Technician, or Both?
What does each Status mean?
How do I change the status of my job?
Job vs. Appointment: What's the difference?
Who can see Notes and Photos?
What if someone leaves my organization?
What if I cannot see my Technicians location?

Determining your Role: Dispatcher, Technician, or Both?

There are three Roles in Dispatch: Dispatchers, Technicians, and Both

Dispatchers are people who receive jobs or create jobs and assign these jobs to technicians. These individuals are typically responsible for communicating with customers and scheduling appointments for them. Dispatchers are able to use either the web application, work.dispatch.me, or Dispatch Manager to work through their day.
Technicians are people who complete jobs in the field and provide service to customers. Technicians are only able to access Dispatch Field to work through their day.
Both are people who create and assign jobs but also provide service to customers. Both are able to use either the web application, work.dispatch.me, or Dispatch Manager to work through their day.

If you fulfill both of those functions for your organization, you can also be Both, meaning you will have access to everything that a Dispatcher sees in the application. You will also be able to schedule yourself on Jobs and Appointments and use both Dispatch Manager and Dispatch Field.

	Dispatcher	Technician	Both
Role	scheduling appointments	providing service in field	scheduling appointments and providing service in field
Platform	work.dispatch.me or Dispatch Manager	Dispatch Field	work.dispatch.me or Dispatch Manager
Calendar	can see all appointments	can only see appointments assigned to self	can see all appointments

To learn how to update your team's user profile roles, visit our help article HERE.

What does each status mean?

New Offer
A new job that has been offered via a connected Account or a service request that was submitted from our customer booking page.

Unscheduled
The job has been accepted but yet to be scheduled by adding an Appointment.

Scheduled
The job status of Scheduled indicates that an appointment has been scheduled for the job. The appointment has been scheduled for a particular date and time, has been given a duration, and may or may not have been assigned to a specific technician. These appointment details can be edited if needed.

In Progress
Refers to whenever a job has an appointment that is either...
A. Enroute
Corresponds to “On My Way” in the mobile app. Sends a text message to the customer, along with the technician’s estimated arrival time. Allows you to get directions to the appointment via GPS on your phone. Updates the status of the appointment across your service provider’s system, so that technicians, dispatchers, and customers will all be in sync.

B. Started
Its important to mark a job as started once you’re at an appointment, for two reasons:

Lets the customer know that you’re arrived.
Marks the appointment internally as started, so that customers can’t say you didn’t show up to the appointment.

C. Paused
When you are unable to complete the current appointment or need to complete the job at a later date or time. Some reasons are:

You need to order a part
The customer wasn't at the location when you arrived.
You were interrupted from the work for some reason (an emergency call).

Complete
After an appointment, you must mark it as complete! Why? This marks the appointment as completed in the internal system It allows you to move to the next job. A completed appointment will allow the customer to receive a survey request asking for feedback.

Canceled
When a job has the status of canceled, all appointments will be canceled. However, by changing the status back to scheduled, appointments will again be active, and new appointments can be added as usual.

How do I change the status of my job?

Jobs can have the following statuses in Dispatch which have color-coded borders and headers in the web application:

New Offers: when a third-party enterprise/brand sends you a job offer or a service request is submitted from the customer booking page (green)
Unscheduled: when a Job exists but there are no Appointments added (red)
Scheduled: when a Job has at least one Appointment scheduled (blue)
Paused: when a Job is waiting for some reason before it is completed (yellow)
In Progress: when a Technician has indicated that they are en route or have started an Appointment (orange)
Complete: when all work on a Job is finished (gray)

For the most part, changing Job status results from actions being completed in the web application or mobile app. The below chart outlines the possible status changes and related actions.

Start Status	Action	End Status
--	Create Job: no Date/Arrival added	Unscheduled
--	Create Job: Date/Arrival added	Scheduled
New Offer	Accept	Unscheduled
New Offer	Decline	(no job access)
Unscheduled	Create Job: Date/Arrival added	Scheduled
Scheduled	Delete Appointment	Unscheduled
Scheduled	On My Way/En Route	In Progress
Scheduled	Start Appointment/Started	In Progress
Scheduled	Complete/Appointment Complete	Complete
Scheduled	Cancel Job	Complete
In Progress	Complete/Appointment Complete	Complete
In Progress	Paused	Paused
Paused	New appointment scheduled	Scheduled
Paused	Cancel Job	Complete
Complete	New appointment scheduled	Scheduled

Job vs. Appointment: What's the difference?

Across field service enterprises, contractors, and systems, there are many different terms used to describe what and when services are delivered. In Dispatch, we use the terms Job and Appointment to capture these, and in order to create either, you must have a Customer.

By Customer, we mean the individual or company that is having you complete work.
By Job, we mean a specified project, work order, or other body of work that has scope and goals. It is not tied to time, date, or specific site visits.
By Appointment, we mean a site visit at a particular time that fulfills the needs of a particular Job.

To sum it up, you must have a Customer to create a Job; you must have a Job to create an Appointment. You might complete multiple Jobs for the same Customer, and it might take multiple Appointments to complete a Job.

Who can see notes and photos?

Dispatch provides the ability to attach Notes and Photos that you complete and we are very conscious of the need to protect your business information. Here is how we manage access to your Notes and Photos:

Customers have NO ACCESS to view notes and photos that are added to a job by a Technician or Dispatcher.
Enterprise/brand job providers only have access to Notes/Photos for Jobs that they provide you which you mark as PUBLIC; not all brands have or use this access at this time.
Technicians in your organization only have access to Notes/Photos for Jobs that they were assigned.
Dispatchers in your organization ALWAYS have access to Notes/Photos for ALL Jobs whether they are are PUBLIC or PRIVATE.

What if someone leaves my organization?

If someone leaves your organization, it is important that you deactivate that user so that he or she no longer can log into Dispatch and access your vital business data. If that individual ever works for you again, reactivating them is a very easy process. Dispatchers are able to update user profiles by going to "Settings > Team" from the navigation bar on the left while in our Web Platform (work.dispatch.me).

What if I cannot see my Technicians or another Dispatchers Location?

Each user will need to go into their phone's Settings and enable Location Services for Dispatch Field and Dispatch Manager. If you cannot see the location of a Technician/Dispatcher, there are two things you will want to check. First, make sure the user is on the most up to date version of Dispatch Field. Second, make sure the user has their location services turned on. Our apps can only track location as long as this feature is turned on. See below for help on checking on both Apple and Android devices.

For Apple devices, go to Settings > Dispatch Field > Location. From here, your technician will want to be sure that at least "While Using the App" is selected.

For Android devices, go to Settings > GPS Location and confirm that this is toggled on.

If you are continuing to have trouble, reach out to our Customer Experience team and we'll help troubleshoot more and address your problem thoroughly. You can reach our Customer Experience team by sending a message to: support@dispatch.me.