ElectricalBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Saved Views on the Electrical Dispatch Board: One Click to the Board You Check Every Morning

Dispatchers look at the same few things over and over. The service van today. The install van this week. Tomorrow for everybody. Each of those is a set of filters on the dispatch board, and setting them up from scratch every time is a small annoyance that adds up across a year of mornings. Saved views take that annoyance away.

A Shortcut on Top of the Board

The previous guide, Printing Route Sheets for Electrical Service Vans, covered getting a van's day onto paper. Saved views are about getting to the right part of the board in the first place.

On the ElectricalBossPro dispatch board, you can filter the Scheduled List by van and by day. Once you have a combination you use often, save it as a view. Next time, one click brings it back.

Views Worth Saving

Every shop is a little different, but a few views come up in almost every electrical company:

• Service van, today. The view the dispatcher keeps open most of the day. This is where same-day calls get slotted in and where Skip notes show up.
• Install van, today. Usually one big job. A quick check to see if the crew is on site and whether the job is running long.
• All vans, today. The owner's view. How the whole company is doing at a glance.
• All vans, tomorrow. The end-of-day check before customers get their night-before reminders.
• Install van only. Step forward day by day to see which days have installs booked and which are open for recurring visits from the Waiting List.

Different People, Different Views

Office user roles mean more than one person can work in the office side of ElectricalBossPro. Each person tends to watch different things:

• The dispatcher lives in today's single-van views.
• The owner checks the all-vans views a few times a day and the install vanchecks the all-vans views a few times a day and the install van's week before approving estimatesapos;s upcoming days before promising an install date.
• Whoever answers the phone needs a fast look at the service van's day to answer “can you come today?”

Saved views let each person get to their part of the board without rebuilding filters.

Views and the Morning Routine

A good morning routine in an electrical office goes something like this. Open the all-vans view for today and make sure every van has a route and every route is in order. Open each van's view and auto-route if needed. Print route sheets if you use them. Then open the Waiting List to see what recurring work came due overnight and slot it into open days later in the week.

With saved views, the first half of that routine is a few clicks. For auto-routing, see Closest First Routing: Building an Electrician's Day Outward From the Shop.

Views During the Day

Saved views pay off most when the day gets busy. A customer calls about a tripping breaker. The person answering clicks the service-van-today view, sees three stops left, checks the crew GPS on the office map, and gives a realistic answer in under a minute. A tech taps Skip because nobody was home. The dispatcher sees it in the same view and can move the job right there.

Views for the End of the Day

The tomorrow views matter in the late afternoon. Before customers get their night-before reminders, it is worth a look to make sure tomorrow is right. Has a job been moved that should not have been? Is the install van overloaded? Is there a customer who asked for the first slot? Fixing it now means the reminders go out with the right information.

Views When the Company Grows

Saved views matter more as vans are added. With one van, the board is small enough to read without filters. With three or four, an unfiltered day is a long list, and the dispatcher needs to jump between vans quickly all morning. A saved view for each van, plus one for all vans, turns that into a row of one-click shortcuts. When a new van comes on, add a view for it the same day so it becomes part of the routine from the start.

Keep the List Short

It is easy to save a view for every possible filter and end up with a long list nobody scrolls through. A good rule: if you have not used a view in a couple of weeks, delete it. The views you use every day should be the first ones you see.

Small Shortcut, Big Habit

Saved views are not a flashy feature. They are the kind of small shortcut that makes an office faster every morning and every time the phone rings. To see how saved views fit with the dispatch board, routing and route sheets, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician scheduling software page.