GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

The Tech's Phone Follows the Board: Route Order in the Garage Door Tech App

A dispatch board is only as good as the link between it and the van. If the office moves a spring call to the front of the route and the tech does not find out until he calls in, the board did not really change anything. In GarageDoorBossPro, the tech's phone shows the board's order. Change one, and you have changed the other.

Requests Become Stops

How a request becomes a job is covered in From Service Request to Scheduled Garage Door Job. Once that job is on a van and a day, it is a stop on the tech's phone.

The tech app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android and can be installed to the home screen, with no app store. Techs log in with the company login and their own personal PIN, and see their own day in route order, top to bottom.

One Order, Two Screens

The order on the phone comes from the dispatch board. When the office auto-routes a van Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, that is the order on the phone. When the office moves a stop by hand, the phone reflects it. When a job moves to another van or another day, it leaves this tech's list and shows up on the right one.

That is what makes same-day dispatch work without a phone call. The office adds a car-trapped job, puts it next, and the tech sees it as the next card after finishing the current job.

What Each Card Shows

Every stop on the phone is a card with what the tech needs before getting out of the van:

• The address with a navigation button. One tap opens directions.
• The service. Spring replacement, off-track repair, opener install, yearly tune-up, commercial door repair.
• The equipment. “Garage Door · Amarr Stratford 3000 · 9x7 · Wood · installed 2014,” with the serial on the next line and the bay, like “Bay 1 · the left door is the problem.”
• Access notes. Keypad codes, side doors, dogs, detached shops.
• Past notes. What happened on earlier visits to the same house.

All of that comes from the house record and the job, so the tech does not have to scroll through texts from the office or remember what the dispatcher said at 7am. If the office adds a note mid-day, like “customer will be home after 1,” it is on the card the next time the tech looks.

Working the List

The tech's day is a loop: look at the next card, tap navigation, drive. When they head over, the customer gets the on-the-way text automatically. On arrival, the arrived text. Tap Start, do the work, take before and after photos, run the door safety inspection checklist on tune-ups and wherever else it fits, then tap Complete. The invoice is created and a card on file can be charged.

If a stop cannot be done, the tech taps Skip and notes why, so the office can get it back on the schedule. For more on that, see Skipped Garage Door Jobs: Getting Them Back on the Schedule.

Why Techs Should Not Reorder on Their Own

Techs sometimes want to rearrange the day themselves, and sometimes they are right. But if a tech skips ahead to stop five without telling anyone, the office's picture is wrong. Customers at stops two through four may have been told the tech is coming. A customer watching the live map in the customer app sees the tech go the wrong way.

The better habit is for the tech to text the office: “Can I do the Oak Street tune-up first? I'm right there.” The office moves it on the board, and everyone, including the customers, stays in sync. Office and tech both want the same thing; the board is just where the decision gets recorded.

Changes Flow Back From the Phone

The link works both ways. When a tech completes a job, the office sees it on the board right away. When a tech replaces springs or installs a new opener, the change flows back to the house record. Notes and photos from the visit are on the job for the office. Crew GPS shows where the tech is on the office map. The time clock records the tech's hours. The office never has to wait until end of day to know how it went.

Learning It in a Morning

Because the phone mirrors the board, there is not much to learn. A new tech needs to know how to log in, how to open the next card, where the navigation button is, and what Start, Skip and Complete do. A morning riding along with a senior tech is usually enough.

For how the tech app fits with the dispatch board, routing and customer texts, go back to the garage door scheduling software page.