Dispatch

Dispatch is the act of assigning a unit of field work — a job, a service call, a delivery — to a specific person or crew at a specific time. In a small operation a dispatcher may also run the calendar; in a larger operation dispatch is its own role. Good dispatch decisions consider technician skill set, vehicle and tool availability, the customer's preferred window, geographic proximity to the next job, and any service-level commitments.

In FSM software, the dispatch surface is typically a day-grid or week-grid showing technicians as columns and time as rows, with draggable job cards. The dispatcher's goal is a tight schedule with low drive-time and no skill mismatches. Real-time location and status updates from the field — running early, running late, parts not on truck — are what make dispatch a live decision-making surface rather than just a planning artifact.