Dispatch Summary Screen

The Dispatch Summary Screen was designed as a real-time interactive tool to help dispatchers keep track of incoming jobs, their current statuses, and manage officer's in the field.

It can be set to pop up automatically for users added as Dispatch Officers via Administration > Dispatch Administration > (Add) Animal Protection Officer, Ambulance and Animal Control officers.

Sheltermate - Dispatch Administration

Alternately, it is available from the Orange Menu on the left of the screen. Click Dispatch Summary to open it in a new screen. 

Overview:

The Dispatch Summary page will show you at a glance what jobs need assigning, who's working, what their job load is and allows you to filter information as required:

At the top of the page are a series of filters:

Show: This filter allows you to filter your view for specific job types, i.e. Cruelty Complaints, Ambulance Jobs, Animal Control jobs or General Dispatch.

Region: Click the down arrow to view jobs linked to a specific Physical Location or Region. Only jobs entered by users at this Region will then display. It will default to the current user's Region for this session, however, an option to view 'All' Regions is also available here.

Status: Filters the display by Job Status. This defaults to 'All' statuses.

Inspector Region: Distinctly different from Physical Location or Region, the Inspector Region will limit to zones covered by the officers on duty as set in Dispatch Admin. 

Urgency: Filters your view by Job Urgency. Different urgencies can be set to display in different colours for added impact in Dispatch Administration. 

Show Old Jobs: If your site has had data imported from another unrelated site, this checkbox will help you find those jobs specifically, and exclude any jobs entered directly onto Shelter Buddy. It also looks for jobs with data entered in a field on the Dispatch Edit Job # page called "Old Job# / Data Import#:"

Usually, the only information held here is from data imports (jobs on SB are usually linked using the Related to Jobs function). However, if users manually populate this field with information for any reason, these jobs will be omitted from the Dispatch Summary display unless this field is ticked. 

Open Job List

This is the list of open jobs as filtered by the options above:

Click the orange numbers beneath this list to move through different pages.

The square box next to the Job Number will show you the job summary page (the printable version you can email)

Clicking anywhere on a job in this uppers section will show a small question mark next to your cursor arrow. Click again to apply the status Awaiting Assignment to that job, or click one of the Icons mentioned further down to apply an action from them.

The circle with the > arrow beside that will open a pop-up window where you can view and edit the Job Details page. 

At the top of this list are a variety of orange headings: click the heading to change the way the list is sorted*.

*NOTE: the option Inspector will sort by last assigned inspector if none are currently assigned. Jobs that have never had an inspector assigned will appear at the top of the list in date order.

*NOTE; If you click on an assigned job a small question mark icon will appear with your mouse cursor and follow it around. Click again on any job in the top section of the page (unassigned jobs) and a pop-up will appear asking if you wish to change the status of the job to "Awaiting Assignment". Click ok and the job status will re-set to Awaiting Assignment and any assigned officer will be removed. 

To assign a job to the officer, click anywhere on the job at the top of the page, then click the job list for the officer you'd like to assign it to. The job will appear in the job list and will automatically be marked assigned to that officer. 

To assign a job to a different officer, click the job in the first officer's job list, then click the second job list. As before, the job will appear in the second officer's job list and be automatically marked assigned to that officer. 

Icons

In the middle right of the Dispatch Summary Screen are a series of icons. Hover the mouse over each to see a tip on what they do.

If you click on a job in the open job list, a small question mark will appear attached to the bottom right corner of your mouse cursor. If you then click one of the icons while this question mark is present, it will apply the action described in the icon tip to the job you clicked on.

To turn the question mark off, click the Stop icon. 

Duty Inspector Jobs

The Dispatcher has the option of viewing the open jobs for any officer on duty that day. 

These officers' jobs will display grouped alphabetically by officer beneath the Open Jobs list. 

You can add officers to the list by clicking the icon at the top left of the Duty Inspector list that resembles a person with a + symbol:

Click the clipboard icon on the left of the job to mark a job as being Attended by that officer.

Click the circle with the > arrow to view and edit the job details for that job.

Click the orange headings to change the order of the jobs displayed for that officer.

Activities:

At the top of the officer's job list is a drop-down marked Activity followed by a section to set times:

Click the down arrow to select an activity that may be taking the officer off the road, but is still relevant to their time-tracking (e.g. phone calls, emails, etc), then set the time they commence and click Update. 

The view for this Officer will change so the activity and time boxes are greyed out, and the Update link will change to read End instead. When the activity is complete, click End to return the view to normal.

Click the link Start Break to indicate the officer is currently on a break and unavailable. The officer's details will be highlighted thus:

Click End Break to return the view to normal. 

Click the link Finish Shift under the Activity box to indicate the Officer has finished for the day. This will remove them from the Dispatch Summary Screen.

Optional:

There is an optional audio alert that can be activated to remind your dispatcher that an officer has entered a property and may need to be checked on. If enabled, there are two options:

1. The alert beep will sound whenever a job is placed into the status "Entering Property". The beep does not begin immediately, but from the first time, the Dispatch Summary screen refreshes after the status has been applied. It will continue to sound until the status changes. 

2. The alert beep can be set to commence after a certain amount of time has elapsed. This is set on the Status Change Pop Up on the Edit Dispatch Page when applying the status:

If the timer here is set at 0, the beep will sound immediately the next time the Dispatch Summary Screen refreshes. If a timer is set the beep will commence on the first refresh that takes place after that time has elapsed.  

Please contact [e-mail] if you would like the audio alert option turned on.