What does a dispatcher do?

A dispatcher assigns jobs to technicians, sends them the details, monitors progress through the day, and reshuffles the plan when an emergency or a delay lands. They are the point where the schedule meets reality, and they usually own the customer phone call when something moves.

How does GPS help with dispatch?

It answers who is closest, which is the question that decides most urgent assignments. Omni Field shows live technician positions on a map, and geofences around sites raise arrival and departure alerts so a dispatcher can see progress without phoning the van.

Can dispatch be automated?

Parts of it. Rules can rank candidates by skill, certification and proximity, and can block an assignment that breaks a certification requirement. The judgement call about which customer gets bumped for an emergency still belongs to a person.

Dispatch

Dispatch is the act of assigning a job to a technician and sending them what they need to do it. It sits between scheduling, which decides when work happens, and the field, where it gets done. Good dispatch matches the job to a nearby person with the right skills, certifications and parts.

What dispatch decides

Dispatch decides who goes, in what order, and with what information. The decision weighs four things at once: who is qualified, who is close, who is free, and how urgent the job is against everything else already booked.

The hard cases are the interesting ones. An emergency callout at 14:00 has to displace something, and dispatch is the judgement about what gets moved and which customer gets the phone call.

Dispatch compared with scheduling

Scheduling answers when, dispatch answers who and now. A job scheduled for Thursday morning is dispatched on Thursday morning, when the dispatcher confirms the technician, sends the details, and starts tracking progress.

In small teams the same person does both, minutes apart, which is why the words blur. In larger teams they are separate roles with separate screens.

What good dispatch software gives you

Good dispatch software shows you the whole day at once and makes reassignment cheap. If moving a job takes four phone calls, dispatchers will avoid moving jobs, and the schedule will drift out of line with reality.

Omni Field shows the team's day on one board with drag and drop reassignment and conflict detection, live technician positions from GPS, and certification rules that can block assigning a technician whose required certificate has expired. Customer updates go out by email and WhatsApp when the job moves.

Common questions

See it in the product

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