Dispatch: planning trips

Dispatch is where a manager plans the day: which vehicle goes where, in what order, and who drives. The driver sees the same route in the LemursEye app and confirms each stop as it is done, so the office knows how the run is going without calling anyone.

Dispatch is part of the Insight Engine module. You need the Dispatch permission to plan trips (owners and managers have it by default).

The words used here

Plan a trip for one vehicle

1. Open Dispatch and press Plan a trip.
2. Choose the vehicle. The driver defaults to the vehicle's usual driver; change it if someone else drives today.
3. Give the trip a name ("Morning deliveries, Nasr City") and a start time.
4. Add the stops, in any of three ways:
   • Add a saved place from your list of places;
   • Click the map where the stop is;
   • Paste coordinates (30.0444, 31.2357) or a full Google Maps link.
5. Optional: set a start point (usually the depot) and whether the vehicle comes back to it at the end.
6. Press Best order to let LemursEye reorder the stops for the shortest drive by road, or keep your own order and press Road route to see it on the map.
7. Save trip.

On save, LemursEye works out the road route for the saved order: the line on the map, the kilometres, the driving time, and an estimated arrival time at every stop (counting the minutes spent at each stop). That route is what the driver gets.

A stop added by clicking the map or pasting a location can be kept for next time with Save as a place.

Split stops between several vehicles

When you have more stops than one vehicle can do, choose several vehicles in the same planner and press Split between vehicles. LemursEye decides which vehicle takes which stop and orders each route by road, respecting:

• the time windows of the stops;
• the start and back-by times of the day;
• the minutes spent at each stop;
• an optional maximum number of stops per vehicle.

You see one route per vehicle, with its kilometres and finish time, before anything is saved. Stops that cannot fit (no road to them, or no window that works) are listed with the reason. Create the trips saves one planned trip per vehicle.

Routing uses typical road speeds, not live traffic, and every vehicle starts from the same start point.

Repeat a trip on set days

For a run that happens every week, open Repeat in the planner and choose On these days (for example Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday), with an optional end date.

LemursEye keeps the next 14 days of trips made from it, each with the same route, driver and time. When you change the route or the days, Save this and following applies the change to every later trip; Save this trip changes only that day. Deleting one day keeps it deleted; Delete this and following ends the repeat.

Visit targets

Some work is not on fixed days: "visit each pharmacy twice a week, any days you like". For that, choose Visit target in the planner:

1. Set how many visits, and whether it is a week or a month.
2. Choose whether the count is to each place or of the whole route.
3. Choose the check day (for example Thursday).

LemursEye counts the visits by itself from the vehicle's stops: a visit is the vehicle staying at least 3 minutes inside the place's radius, counted once a day. On the check day, any place still short of its target raises an alert. The driver sees the target and this period's count in the app.

The week starts on the day set in Settings > Calendar (Saturday by default).

The driver's side

The driver uses the LemursEye app with a driver code, not an account:

1. In Fleet > Drivers, press App code next to the driver, then Create the code (8 characters, like K7M2-9QX4). It is shown only once: send it to the driver right away. If it is lost, Make a new code: the old one stops working and the driver's phone is signed out until they type the new one.
2. The driver opens the app, chooses I am a driver, and enters the code.
3. The Route tab shows today's and tomorrow's trips. A trip opens on the map with its road line, the stops in order and their arrival times. Navigate opens Google Maps with turn-by-turn directions to the next stop, or through all the remaining ones.
4. At each stop the driver taps Done (with an optional note) or Couldn't (with a reason: closed, nobody there, couldn't reach it, refused). A mistake can be undone.

Following the day

On the Dispatch page each trip shows its progress ("3 of 7 done") and its status:

A stop the driver could not do is listed under the trip with its reason. Open a trip to see every stop, when the driver answered and their note.

Today, stops are checked off by the driver in the app. Automatic detection (a stop turning done by itself when the vehicle arrives and leaves, late and missed stops, live progress on the map) is the next step of Dispatch.

Questions

Do drivers need an email or a password? No. A driver code is all they need, and it only opens their own trips.

Can I change a trip after it started? Only a planned trip can be edited: once a vehicle is on the road, the plan is what the day is measured against. You can still cancel it, or duplicate it for another day or vehicle.

What if the driver forgets to confirm a stop? The stop stays pending. Their tracker still records where the vehicle went, in History.