Communicate quickly with field personnel using features in OnTime Dispatch.
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Transcript
In this video, we're going to talk about sending messages out to the field to your delivery drivers. To do this, we're going to use the OnTime Dispatch program and show you a few ways that this can be done.
The first way is by going to the Dispatching View and then to your list of drivers. You can right-click on a driver and you'll have two options: either to send a text message or an email to this driver. By clicking one of these two items, the default mail program on the computer will be launched and you'll be able to compose your message and send it out through your email program. So, these really act as shortcuts from OnTime to your email program.
Another way to send out messages is through this Messages area. This actually adds an additional avenue of communication beyond emailing and text message. Once I'm in here, I could click on the New Message button at the top to compose my message. My option to Send as is as a General OnTime Message, or as a text message or email. If I use the General OnTime Message Option, that will send the message through the phone's data connection and down into the OnTime Mobile application that's running on their mobile device. If I use text message or email, then it will relay through the phone's text messaging application or through their email account. So, there's multiple ways to communicate that are available here. I'll use my Reply to address that's associated with me as a dispatcher, logged in. That way if one of the drivers wants to reply to the message, it will come back to me individually instead of some other person in the company. In the To field, I can choose which driver I want to be able to send this message to. I can choose an individual driver or I can choose to send the message to all drivers. One situation where it may be useful to send to everyone at once is if there's some sort of notification or alert that everyone needs to know at the same time. So, let me paste an example here. Maybe there's bad weather and you need to let everyone know to re-route. Or perhaps there's a staff meeting and you need everybody to group at a specific time, sending a message to the All Drivers option is a quick way to make that happen.
When I send this message and I go back to the General Messages tab, you'll notice that it keeps track of the messages that I sent out and I can tell when somebody has read the message. So, clicking on one of these, I can see what the message was and when it was sent and when it was open and read by the recipient using the OnTime Mobile application. So, that can be very handy in tracking these notifications and knowing who got them and when they got them.
This has been a brief demonstration of how messaging from Dispatch out to the field personnel or drivers works. If you have any questions about how to stay in touch with your drivers, please feel free to contact OnTime Customer Support and we'll be happy to assist.