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 (unless you created your schedules from your routes, as shown in Importing Master Schedule Templates). 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 a message informing you how many routes have no driver schedules and how many 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 to determine which schedules need updated.
    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. ( means one clocked-in employee.) In addition, the Actual/Substitute Vehicle column will have  before the vehicle name if a substitute bus is running the route;  signifies a substitute driver.
  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.
     
  3. You also can check route coverage by looking at the Status column. Routes that are covered will have a status value of Covered.
     
    These are the 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 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time and continues until the start time. 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 Employee In on the menu.
         
        The Quick Edit window for the driver assigned to the route will be displayed.
          
      3. If you need to change the driver assigned to the route, you can click the Employee drop-down arrow and choose their name from the list.
         
        You can select the Display Spare Drivers Only toggle to have the list show only drivers that have been specified as backups. (See the tip "Designating Employee Types" below for details on how to do this.)
         
        The Punch In time will be automatically filled with the current time.
         
      4. If you need to change their clock-in time to earlier, click the Punch In time picker and select the correct hour.
        Note: A driver's work is linked to their vehicle's activity and appears in the GPS Reference Data grid, so you can use the actual driving hours recorded by the GPS device. To use this feature for the clock-in time, select the correct row in the grid and then click the Fill from GPS button () to the right of the Punch In field and time picker.
      5. Click the Job Type drop-down arrow and select the job type the driver is performing.
         
      6. 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.
           
    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 blue/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 10 minutes before the scheduled start time, click  and drag it left until it reads the number you do want, such as 15.
       
      The blue 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. To see which routes have no assigned driver schedules, click  in the top-right toolbar.
     
    The No-Schedule Routes window will appear.
      
    On the left, you'll see which routes need to have a driver schedule associated with them.
     
  2. Take note of the route names.
     
  3. Click Close at the top right to exit the window.
     
  4. To see the drivers whose schedules don't have an assigned vehicle, click  in the top-right toolbar.
     
    The No-Vehicle Schedules window will appear.
      
    The grid will list all the drivers with schedules that have no associated bus, the names of their schedules, and the days/times their schedules specify.
     
  5. To fix the issues, you'll need to look up which drivers drive the routes in the first window (and just look at the names in the second one).
     
    Then open each individual driver's schedule and add the bus they drive. (Again, see Editing an Employee's Schedule and its Choose Vehicle step.)

DESIGNATING EMPLOYEE TYPES

You can use the Employee Type Setup dialog box to specify which employee types you want to include in the No-Vehicle Schedules window and to use for the Display Spare Drivers Only list in the Quick Edit pop-up, as follows:
 

  1. Click  in the top-right toolbar.
     
    The Employee Type Setup dialog box will appear.
      
    All your employee types will be displayed in both sections. (See An Introduction to Employee Types and Job Types if needed.)
     
    By default, all the types will be selected in the Employee Type(s) to Display in Unassigned Section area.
     
  2. Click the toggles of any types you want to deselect.
    Note: The Dispatch Monitor needs all your regular drivers to have schedules with their vehicles specified. Only deselect types of employees that do not typically run your usual routes — for example, a Spare Driver type if you have one.
    If you have previously changed your selections, you can click any deselected toggles to now choose them. ( means selected, and  deselected.)
     
    Only employee types you leave selected will appear in the No-Vehicle Schedules window.
     
    By default, none of the types will be selected in the Employee Type(s) for Spare Driver section.
     
  3. Click the toggle of the type you want to use for backup drivers only, such as a Spare Driver employee type, to select it.
     
    If you have previously set a spare driver type and want to change it, you can click any selected toggle to now deselect it. ( means selected, and  deselected.)
     
    Only drivers with the employee type that you choose here will be displayed in the Quick Edit pop-up's Employee drop-down list when you click the Display Spare Drivers Only toggle.
     
  4. Click Save.