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Jobs and automations

The Jobs table

Every job is a row in the Jobs table, on its client. Open a client's Jobs table to see their past and upcoming visits and change them in place — with the same checks as the board. You can add your own columns for whatever your trade needs — they appear in the new-job form, and your queue rules can use them. While Dispatch is on, the columns it relies on (Status, Tech, Date, Start, Priority and the rest) show a lock and can be renamed but not deleted. Switched off, the Jobs table is an ordinary table. See Tables that belong to a feature.

The calendar

A job with a technician, a date and a start time is on that technician's calendar, and in their Outlook or Google calendar if it's connected. It counts as busy time, so nothing else gets booked over it. Change the job and the entry follows; give the job to someone else and it moves to their calendar; unassign or cancel it and it goes.

It works the other way too. If a technician moves the entry in their calendar, the job's date and start follow it within a couple of minutes; if they delete it, the job goes back to the queue. The board flags either for a day. These changes run your Cell Change automations, like any other change to the job.

Text the customer

Dispatch uses the automations you already know. (An Emergency job can start one too: a Cell Change on Priority, Only when the new value is one of: Emergency, to text your on-call technician.) A few that are worth setting up:

Text the customer when the tech is on the way

  1. Start a workflow with a CRM Trigger: Custom Table: Cell Change on the Jobs table's Status column, Only when the new value is one of: On the way. It starts only when the status changes to On the way, not when a job that is already on the way is saved again — see Acting only on some changes.
  2. Add a Send SMS (or WhatsApp) to the client: "Hi, {tech} is on the way."

Text the customer when a job is late

  1. Start a workflow with a Date Trigger: the Jobs table's Date, Time Column: Start, Offset: 30 minutes after.
  2. Add an If: Status is still Scheduled or Dispatched.
  3. Add a text to the client saying you're running late, and a note to your office.

Ask for a review when the job is done

A CRM Trigger on Status, Only when the new value is one of: Done, then a text or email with your review link.

Book a job from a form, a call or an email

Use the Table task to add a row to the Jobs table. It goes through the same checks as a job booked by hand, and lands in Needs a tech on the board.