The Dispatch Monitor is designed to help you ensure that all your routes are covered. Like the other live monitors, it enables you to observe activity in real time, but unlike the others, its focus is on your routes, whereas the other Comparative Analysis (CA) monitors are vehicle centric.


The Dispatch Monitor is an add-on service with an additional monthly fee, and it requires that you have both the Time and Attendance (TAA) and CA modules. It relies on employee schedules, so you must have those set up for all your drivers, including assigning the bus to the schedule.

Note: You can go to The Process of Using Schedules for details on creating schedules for your employees.


Caution: You may find that your employee schedules do NOT have individual vehicles attached to them, especially if your school district is large. This is because they are designed to be time based and not bus based. Therefore, step 5 of The Process of Using Schedules is absolutely necessary. You MUST assign each individual employee schedule (at the employee level) to the bus they usually drive, as shown in Editing an Employee's Schedule. The step to pay particular attention to is the one in which you click the Choose Vehicle drop-down arrow and select the vehicle name. This is required in order for the Dispatch Monitor to function.

To verify that your routes are completely covered for the time of day, follow these steps:

Note: The monitor shows ONLY the time frame of the current time of day. Your times of day are typically delineated as follows:


  • AM Route: 12:00 a.m. to 9:59 a.m.
     
  • MID Route: 10:00 a.m. to 12:59 p.m.
     
  • PM Route: 1:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
     

The time ranges might be different for you, as school districts have their own settings for these.

  1. Click  >> Dispatch Monitor.
     
    The Dispatch Monitor screen will appear and display all your routes for this time of day in a grid at the bottom of the screen, and your buses will appear on the map at the top.
      
    The grid lists all the routes by name, scheduled start time, scheduled and actual driver, scheduled and actual vehicle, and its status (such as Covered, Not Covered, Started Without Clock-in, and At Risk). 
     
    Just below the map is an option that can show you which routes have no driver schedules and which driver schedules have no assigned bus; again, having these set up is essential for the Dispatch Monitor to work. Go to the tip "Checking Which Employees Are Missing Schedules and Which Driver Schedules Are Missing an Assigned Bus" at the bottom of this article for help using this feature.
    Note: In the grid's Actual Employee column, you might see in front of the employee's name. This indicates that more than one employee is clocked in on that bus (such as a driver and a bus aide). In addition, the Actual/Substitute Vehicle column will have  before the vehicle name if a substitute bus is running the route.
  2. You can do a quick visual check to verify whether your routes are all covered by looking at the color of the rows in the grid. If all your route rows are green, they are covered.
    Note: Don't be alarmed if you see no green rows! The green is a feature of the final design plan for the Dispatch Monitor and may not be available at the time you are previewing the screen.
  3. You also can check route coverage by looking at the Status column. When the final design of the Dispatch Monitor is implemented, routes that are covered will have a status value of Covered.
     
    If you are viewing this before the new status values are available, routes that are covered will have a status of Early, On-Time, Late, Started Without Clock-in, or Completed.
     
    The final design will have these values for the Status column:
     
    • Covered: The route is covered for the current time of day. These rows will be green.
       
    • Not Covered: The route is NOT covered for the current time of day. These rows will be red and will appear at the top of the screen.
       
    • At Risk: The driver hasn't clocked in at their scheduled time and the route hasn't been started yet. By default, this status is triggered 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time and continues until 15 minutes after that. At that minute, if the route still hasn't begun, the status will switch to Not Covered. These rows will be yellow and will appear at the top of the screen, just under the Not Covered rows.
       
    • Started Without Clock-in: The route is being run (so is covered), but the driver didn't clock in. If no driver schedule is attached to the route/vehicle, these rows will be green. If there is an assigned schedule, these rows will be white (despite being covered), which will indicate to you that you need to clock the driver in.
      CLOCKING IN A DRIVER

      You can clock in a driver as follows:
       
      1. Right-click the row with a status of Started Without Clock-in.
          
      2. Click Check Driver In on the menu.
         
        The Quick Edit window for the driver assigned to the route will be displayed.
          
        The Punch In time will be automatically filled with the current time.
         
      3. If you need to change their clock-in time to earlier, click the Punch In time picker and select the correct hour.
         
      4. Click the Job Type drop-down arrow and select the job type the driver is performing.
         
      5. Click Save.
    • Checked In: The driver has clocked in but not selected a vehicle (such as a punch-in via the TAA Portal). These rows will be white.
       
    • Pending: It's not time for the route to be a concern yet — that is, it is long enough before the scheduled start time that you won't need to check it soon.
       
  4. To limit the grid's data to only certain status types or change the At Risk window, follow these steps:
     
    1. Click  at the top right of the screen.
       
      The Settings dialog box will appear.
       
      Currently, it will show the old status values, but the new status values discussed above will be there on the monitor's next iteration.
          
    2. Leave the status types you want to appear in the grid selected and deselect those you don't want to see. ( means selected, and  deselected.)
       
    3. You can change the time range set for At Risk by clicking and dragging one of the current values above the green/gray line to the right to make it later or to the left to make it earlier. For example, if you want to be warned about routes sooner than 15 minutes before the scheduled start time, click  and drag it left until it reads the number you do want, such as 20.
       
      The green line will increase or decrease in size according to your modification.
       
    4. Click Apply.
       
  5. You can click a route's row in the grid to zoom in on the vehicle running it on the map.

CHECKING WHICH EMPLOYEES ARE MISSING SCHEDULES AND WHICH DRIVER SCHEDULES ARE MISSING AN ASSIGNED BUS

To see what schedule cleanup you'll need to perform (check which drivers need a schedule added and which schedules have no assigned bus), follow these steps:
 

  1. Just under the map, click at the far right of the Currently There Are X Route(s) with No Driver Schedules and X Driver(s) Schedules with No Vehicle Assigned line.
     
    Two grids will appear.
      
    On the left, you'll see which routes need to have a driver schedule associated with them.
     
    The right grid will list all the drivers with schedules that don't have their vehicle specified.
     
  2. To fix the issues, you'll need to look up which drivers drive the routes in the left grid (and just look at the names on the right).
     
    Then open each the individual driver's schedule and add the bus they drive. (Again, see Editing an Employee's Schedule and its Choose Vehicle step.)